Dillon, MontanaJul 10, 2008
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Our site in Clark Canyon Recreation Area, Dillon, Montana
Gold Mill, Bannack Ghost Town, Montana
Tour bus, Bannack Ghost Town, Montana
7/10 – 7/15
It took us two days to travel 354 miles to Dillon, Montana. Along the way we stopped at the Fort Hall Indian Reservation to check out the small but interesting Shoshone-Bannack Tribal Museum. Along the way we spent the night in a Wal-Mart parking lot in Blackfoot, Idaho.
We had a beautiful campsite outside of Dillon at the Clark Canyon Recreation Area. This is a free camping area with great sites and gorgeous views of the reservoir. While in the area we got a chance to take our new Jeep on some good four-wheeling trails. It did a good job.
We spent a day visiting Bannack State Park. This state park features a ghost town that goes back to 1862 when Montana had its first big gold strike on the banks of the Grasshopper Creek. The town of Bannack holds a whole list of Montana firsts: the first territorial capital, the first hotel, the first jail, the first school, the first chartered Masonic Lodge, the first hard rock gold mine, the first electric gold dredge, the first quartz stamp mill and the first commercial saw mill. The town immediately declined after mining proved unprofitable, but the town continued until the 1930’s. In 1954 Bannack became a state park. But Bannack is not a restored ghost town. Instead there are 50 preserved buildings displaying town life from the late 1800’s to the early 1900’s. We took two excellent guided tours. The first one was of the mill where gold was separated from the ore. This tour even provided transportation to the mill – on the back of a 1931 Ford truck. The other tour was of some of the buildings in town including inside tours of a couple of the closed buildings. We highly recommend visiting this state park, it was extremely interesting.
