A Ghost Town and Playing in the Dirt, Monday, 6/23/14 and Tuesday, 6/24/14

Monday, June 23, 2014 

We had another day off today and set off west at 10:00 a.m.  After a beautiful hour and a half drive we arrived at Bannack State Park.  Bannack was a thriving gold rush town in 1862 with a population of about 3000.  It has a colorful past that is closely intertwined with that of Virginia City and Nevada City.  Today, however, the roads and boardwalks are deserted.  The doors sway in the wind.  There are no children laughing and adults gossiping.  The gold rush is long over.  It is but a memory left in old dusty journals.  It is a ghost town and is a moment frozen in time.  Under the direction of Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, Bannack is preserved rather than restored. 

There are over 60 buildings remaining at Bannack today—each one with a story to tell.   We bought a guide for $2.00 at the visitor’s center and it was well worth the money.  The guide included a map and there were numbers engraved in the boardwalk or on posts throughout town that corresponded with the guide.  We went in several homes, two hotels, a school, the jail, a Methodist church that was built in 1877, and many other structures.  The most infamous building was Skinner’s Saloon where there were many shootings and killings.  The actual bar was still there and it was quite beautiful.  A barber used to perform his craft in a chair in the corner of the saloon, and it is still there.  There was a sign posted that said, “So much shooting and violence occurred daily in this saloon that the barber in the corner wouldn’t miss a stroke with a straight edge razor when the bullets started flying.” 

The people who lived in Bannack had a hard life.  In our brochure there was quote from an actual letter written by a concerned mother in 1863.  It said, “We had extremely cold weather here the week before last.  The mercury in the thermometers after going forty degrees below zero froze in the bulb.  I never knew such cold weather.  I was so afraid that the children would freeze their noses or ears that I got up a number of times in the night to see that their heads were covered.  Their beds would be covered with frost.”   

After spending a fascinating two hours in Bannack, we went to the parking lot and saw a really strange camper with a red car sticking out the side.  It has to be one of a kind.   

We stopped in Dillon to buy a few groceries and got home at 4:30 p.m.  Chuck made homemade meatball sandwiches for the inn mates, and they were well received.  Duel and Lucinda came over later and we played a rousing game of Smart Ass. 

 

 

 

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

 It was nice weather again today.  Chuck drove the train and spotted a bald eagle.  Cindy worked with Duel at the gold panning operation and she did not have fun there today. 

We sell bags of dirt to go for $8.00, and it is quite amazing how many people actually take dirt home with them.  She sat out in the dirt pile for over an hour this morning filling up 36 bags with dirt.  She piled them in the wheel barrow to take them inside the office, but it was so heavy she couldn’t even budge the wheel barrow.  Duel came over to try and help, but all he did was accidentally tip over the wheel barrow.  We wound up making three trips to get all the bags inside the building.   

The next order of business was cleaning out one of the large troughs.  After Duel got most of the water out of the trough, Cindy stood on a bench and used a five gallon bucket to dip out water and mud.  We then transported the buckets of mud to a discard pile.  After several hours, Cindy was heartily tired of playing in the dirt and mud.