Montana - Bullets, Butte and Beartooth

Bob assures me these aren’t bullet holes in the “Welcome to Montana” sign…just pellet gun shots! Ok so that’s a lot better!

Butte, MT

The Richest Hill on Earth
We didn’t think we were going to like it as much as we did - such great history.

Butte is an old mining city. Gold and Silver in the late 1800’s, but then it was all about copper. Butte had over 100,000 people in its mining hey day and was the biggest city between Chicago and San Francisco. It supplied over 25% of the world’s copper! There was a lot of money in Butte!!!! Butte’s current population is only 40,000 people and the downtown seems frozen in time with all the old mines, mansions, and downtown buildings. There are 14 headframes (once used for underground mining), and the Berkley Pit.
The Berkley Pit - this is sad. This is an old open pit copper mine (in operation from 1955 to 1982). Now its filled with toxic water. It’s a US Superfund site (one of the over 1300 EPA sites for environmental remediation). The key is to keep the water level low enough so it doesn’t seep into the ground water.
I really wanted to see the 90 foot Our Lady of the Rockies that sits above Butte….it was too smoky to see much of anything…so I only have the on line picture. Sigh.

Livingston, MT

Cute town, the location for the movie “A River Runs Through it”, and the HQ for Fly Fishing International (for all your fishermen!) Unfortunately, most things are are closed on Sunday.

Billings, MT

Known for its Rimrocks that surround part of the city. It was just too hot and not much to sight see….so we took off for the mountains. Oh, it is the home of the Montana Women’s Prison, but they don’t give tours.

Beartooth Highway

A National Scenic Byway called the “All American Road”. It starts at the town of Red Lodge MT and is 68 miles to the Northeast entrance to Yellowstone. The climb is to almost 11,000 feet - IT WAS 73 degrees on the top of Beartooth Pass. Just Beautiful. It was another white knuckle drive but just in the car.

Fire broke out just north of Red Lodge.