Homeward Bound through the Wild Wild West

Warning: This is a very long post with LOTS of pictures...

(But very cool, so take a load off your feet and enjoy the show)

The morning we left Dillon Montana, we came across a pamphlet about an old ghost town that wasn't too far off of our path home, so we decided to go see it.  We were so glad we did!  It's something we would have missed if we hadn't read about it.  It was probably the most fun thing we got to see on this trip.  We spent over two hours there just looking around.

Bannack Montana

There is a visitors center, where you do have to pay $5 per vehicle.  They also have a really cool tour manual that is $2.  I went ahead and bought it because it goes through a lot of the history, and the buildings by number so you can read about things that happened there. 

Most of the buildings are open to walk through.  Some are in pretty good shape for as old as they are.  Some of the buildings are pretty dilapidated.  The town of Bannack was settled in 1862.  It was a gold mining and really wild boom-town.

Tourist Tom!

This is the main hotel in Bannack.

What a Grand 'Ol building she is, too!

It was lovely to walk through, even in it's rough state.

The grand staircase in the hotel.

The massive old wood stove that would have been used to feed lodgers in the dining room.

I'd never seen an old tin sink before.  This was in the hotel kitchen.  I noticed they had updated the plumbing!

This is the upstairs hallway.  It was huge!  That's about a 14 or 15 foot ceiling there.  I don't know why they made it so high!  Seems like it would have been hard to heat.  The guest rooms had ceilings that high too.

Tom took this picture.  I love the look of the cabin outside framed by the windows inside.  this is from one of the guest rooms in the hotel.

Walking down the grand staircase.  There were all these little nooks and crannies everywhere.  I wondered if they decorated them with plants or something else to help keep up the 'grandeur' of the hotel.

The Roe/Graves house.  One of the nicer homes.

Exploring another old house - not the Roe/Graves house.

Some of the floors were a bit squishy, which made Tom and I nervous.  Winston had a great time blazing through them, without even a worry.

Winston at the bar in one of the saloons.  This particular saloon belonged to a guy named Henry Plummer.  He'd done some time down in California at San Quentin for manslaughter.  He was able to escape the law and came to Bannack, where he was elected Sheriff.  During his time as Sheriff, he got together a posse (or gang) that he called "The Innocents".  They proceeded to rob the stage coaches and pioneers traveling through the area.  He married, then divorced, during his time in Bannock.  Eventually a group of vigilates - including William Roe of the Roe/Graves house - nabbed Henry and had him hanged.  Henry was 27 years old when he was hanged.

A fast and busy life in a short time.

The saloons in town also hired 'Hurdy-Gurdy' girls.  These girls were not prostitutes.  They were just hired to dance with the guys for money.  Even though they weren't 'ladies-of-the-night', the other women in town treated them as if they were.  A Hurdy-Gurdy girl made a pretty good living, and were usually some of the prettiest girls in town.

There were a lot of really cool old picket fences.

I tried to be a pro-photographer here.

Not sure I quite have the touch.

The old church.

The traveling preacher in the town inspired a fear of indians in the population, which in turn inspired a fear of God.  That was something for this really wild town.  So he convinced them to build a church, and here it is.

Winston, hailing from the pulpit.

Checking out an outhouse.

Winston said "I don't want to use that bathroom.  I will get slivers in my bottom!"

Winston climbing the 'grand staircase' in the other hotel in town, most likely the 'budget' hotel.  This is where we would have probably stayed in the olden days.

The old jailhouse - with a little Winston bird in the window

 Something I found very interesting inside the jail, there were nails peppered all over the floor, walls and doors.  I suppose this was to keep the prisoners from pulling up the boards and escaping.  One of the cells, which was a very small cell, had one little tiny window that faced up the hill straight to the gallows.

This building suited a dual purpose.  The ground floor was a schoolhouse.  The upper floor was where the Freemasons met together.

An old merry-go-round in the schoolyard

Winston, trying out the desks.

One of the blackboards had the rules for teachers written on it.  Among the rules were:  "No teacher is allowed to be married during the period of her teaching assignment.  The teacher is not to be seen associating with men other than a father or a brother.  No loitering at the ice-cream parlor.  No dying hair or wearing dresses higher than two inches above the ankle" - just a few of the many rules a teacher in Bannack must follow.  Some of the rules were so silly they made me giggle!  It seems that beyond the classroom, teachers didn't have much of a life.

I really liked this set of kitchen cabinets in a home that was a little more updated.  They reminded me of the cabinets in our old house in Halfway Oregon.  I got a kick out of those drawers!  They go all the way to the ceiling!  What would you keep in those at the very top?  And how hard would it be to get anything out of them?  I guess you'd have to pull the whole drawer out.  But think of all the storage!

That same house had a lot of the old wallpaper, and it was in pretty decent condition.  This one was really kind of cool.  The booklet said that people lived in the town up until the late 30's, but to me this wallpaper looks like something from the 50's.  Hmmmmm.

Some more wallpaper from the same house.  Very pretty!

Well, that concludes our tour through Bannack.

It also concludes our South Dakota trip.  After we left Bannack we headed for home, with a quick stop in Missoula again for a bite to eat.  It was a really fun vacation.  I can't wait to take another one just like it!

Thanks for comin' along!