Travelers' Rest State Park

 Lewis and Clark Expedition camped beside a stream that they named Travelers' Rest Creek in September of 1805 before they started their arduous trip over the snow covered Bitterroot Mountains. They camped in the same spot on their return trip. Archeologists discovered a trench latrine tainted with mercury, fire hearths, and a small amount of melted lead used for making bullets which pinpointed a meadow in the park as the exact location of their camp. 

 

The small visitor center has exhibits on the Expedition, Native Americans, and natural history. A hard packed, gravel, lollipop trail with interpretive signs makes a half mile trip out and back. Two hard packed dirt trails follow the creek. We followed the east nature trail to the end, about 1/3 mile out and back. 

 

The visitor center is accessible. The gravel trail has a very steep hill up to the bridge across Lolo Creek. The bridge deck does not meet flush to the ground on either end. The nature trail has some rough spots. Both trails are doable but wheelchair users may need assistance.  

 The parking lot has long RV spaces. Park  46.75319, -114.08852

 

Granite County Museum

Two floor of exhibits focus on Native Americans, silver mining ghost towns, logging, and early settlers. The basement floor has large equipment, a mock mine, a cabin, and pioneer and farming artifacts. 

Don't miss the collection of Ringling and Barnum Bailey in the conference center room. They were found rolled up and stuffed in some cubbyhole in one of the town buildings.

 The first floor of the museum is accessible. To visit the basement ask for the rear door to be opened then drive around to rear of the building.  Parking is in the alley. The basement exhibits are not completely accessible. The mock mine has rails and rough spots on the floor and the two rooms with pioneer exhibits have a step up and down to access them. 

 

Parking is in front of the museum or on the side street across from the museum. The sidewalks are in bad condition. Museum  46.33158, -113.29465  

Flint Creek Campground

One of the first things visitors see when entering the campground is this warning sign. The campground sits at the base of the dam holding back Georgetown Lake which is almost 1000 feet above the campground. If the dam broke we would have been doomed because there's no way that we could have scaled the steep hills on either side of the campground. We decided not to worry about it, however, I just looked it up and the dam was built in 1885! According to the internet dams can last for 50-100 years. Yikes! In blissful ignorance we camped at Flint Creek for several days and didn't drown. 

The campground has ten widely spaced sites with a turn around loop at the end of the road. None are designated as accessible but most can be used. I think we were in site 1. The table and fire ring are down a slight slope. There are a couple of paths to Flint Creek behind the site that are not accessible. 

The campground road is hard packed and makes a good walking/rolling trail. The road continues past the turn around loop. There's a no trespassing sign but one of our fellow campers said that a gate had been removed and he had walked along it on previous trips so we decided walking would be okay. It's a beautiful half mile walk that ends at the fencing around the dam power plant. 

The very welcoming campground host brought me a wild flower bouquet. :)

 The campground road has big potholes in the beginning but gets better farther in. The website says maximum trailer length is 22' but some of the sites seemed longer than that to me.  Campground  46.23631, -113.30466

 

Old Works Historical Trail

Anaconda, Montana was founded as a copper smelter town to refine the ore mined in Butte. During the processing the ore was exposed to high temperatures and chemicals which produced large quantities of slag and released toxic particles of arsenic, lead, copper, cadmium, and zinc into the air.  Several smelters operated for almost 100 years.

Shortly after the last smelter closed in 1980, the town was declared a Super Fund site. The clean up has been extensive and ongoing. It includes removing soil, capping former smelter and slag sites, restoring wetlands, and cleaning residential properties.  One of the projects was the construction of a golf course on the site of an early smelter. The polluted ground was first covered with a layer of crushed limestone, then a thick layer of clay soil, and finally a layer of top soil. A few mounds of slag were incorporated into the golf course design for visual interest and fine slag is utilized for the sand traps.

 Old Works Historical Trail climbs the hill on the west side of the golf course and follows the ridge for about a mile before dead ending at an overlook. Interpretive signs are located along the trail. 

From the ridge the huge pile of slag, which will eventually be capped  with a layer of soil and vegetation, can be seen in the distance by looking southeast of the town and the golf course. The 555 foot stack, part of the Washoe smelter that operated from 1919 until 1980, is visible from almost anywhere in town. 

Nothing grows around the ruins of the foundations of the Old Works smelter that are sandwiched between the trail and the golf course. Long flues that ran up the hillsides to smoke stacks are almost completely intact. 

The trail is paved but first section is very steep with some grades reaching 12% so it can be difficult even with assistance. 

The parking lot is large enough for any vehicle. Trail 46.13404, -112.94702

Mai Wah Museum

Chinese immigrants came to Montana in the 1860s to mine for gold. As towns and cities developed they began working in laundries, restaurants, gardens, and service industries which were among the few places were they could find jobs. Their journey was marked by significant discrimination and they were barred from becoming naturalized citizens. Chinese women were not even permitted to enter the US, however, an exception was made for the wives of business owners. Some built very successful businesses like Chin Chun Hock who opened the the Wah Chong Tai Company in the late 1890. 

 

Chin Yee Fong joined his father, Chin Chun Hock, in 1905 and was able to bring his wife to the US in 1911. The couple had eleven children while living in Butte and westernized their names to Albert and Lou Chinn. 

 In the mid 1940's the store closed and the building was rented to Paul Eno who ran a second hand store. The display cases and merchandise were sold to Charlie Bovey, a Montana legislator, who collected abandoned buildings and relocated them to Nevada City, a ghost town that still had a few buildings standing. The display cases and merchandise from the Wah Chong Tai Company were moved into one of the buildings. 

 

In 1997, the State of Montana purchased the town of Nevada City along with the contents of all the buildings. In a desire to interpret Nevada City history more accurately, the display cases and merchandise from the Wah Chong Tai Company were returned to the curator and volunteers of the Mai Wah Society who cataloged, and arranged the merchandise in the Mai Wah Museum.

After more than 60 years, with the display cases and merchandise back in place, the store looks as it did in the 1940s.  Fortunately Paul Eno didn't remodel the store so the walls, ceiling, and built-in cases are exactly the same which makes the museum a truly unique place. It really is a step back in time.

Besides the store re-creation, the museum has exhibits on the Chin family and the history of the Chinese community in Butte. The second floor was a restaurant and the stoves and woks are still in place.

The first floors of the two buildings are accessible. A interior ramp provides access between the buildings which have floors that aren't at the same level. The second floors can only be accessed by a long flight of stairs. 

Parking in front of the museum is angle-in but the other side of the street has parallel parking. Museum  46.01137, -112.53633 

 

World Museum of Mining

Orphan Girl Mine was first worked in 1875 and changed hands many times before being bought in the1920s by the Anaconda Company which operated it until the 1950s. It opened as a museum in 1965. The mine earned its unusual name because, unlike the cluster of mines east of downtown Butte, only a few were situated on the western edge.

The museum consists of a mine tour, a museum/gift shop, a recreated mining town, and the original building where the workers cleaned up after their shifts and where the huge engines that lifted the hoists and provide compressed air to run underground equipment are located. Dozens of pieces of old equipment are scattered around the property. We were surprised that there are no barriers preventing visitors from accessing any part of the grounds.  

Nothing at this museum is truly accessible but some of it can be experienced with assistance. Understandably, the mine tour is not accessible due to the rough and uneven ground. Although the mine shafts go down  2700 feet, the tour just reaches the 100 foot depth by walking down a long, sloping walkway. 

After navigating a rough patch to get to the entrance, the museum/gift shop is accessible. A room displaying a collection of dolls and doll houses is accessible.

The mining town has bumpy brick streets and boardwalks with extremely steep ramps or no ramps at all. The buildings are not opened but have plexiglass windows to view the interiors. Some windows are too high to peek in from a seated position. 

   The building housing the engines has a ramp on the side and is accessible. Go around to the back of the building to access the basement floor which has a mock up of a mine. The memorial to the hundreds of miners who were killed while working Butte’s mines is accessible. 

  

The grounds where the old equipment is stored are rough and uneven.  

The parking lot is large enough for any vehicle.  Museum  46.00904, -112.56456