Mostly Pictures

At the end of August, we traveled to Dillon, Montana to look at UMW (the University of Montana Western). On Sunday before our campus tour, we drove to Bannack State Park to look at the ghost town. Gold and other ores were mined from 1862 through a time in the 1950s, then the town and surrounding area were made into a state park.



The buildings are restored structurally rather than decoratively. Only one house contains assembled furniture (wood burning stove, cabinets, etc.) and decorative items (plates, wall hangings, etc.). It seems to me that the emptier buildings better challenge the imagination, allowing one to imagine making a place for oneself.

Besides houses, the town has a hotel, a Masonic Lodge and one-room school, a church, a saloon, two tiny jails, several store fronts, and some storage sheds and barns. Outside of town there's an animal corral (cattle? ponies?). There is exactly one road, running east to west through the town.