Butte to Broadus, Montana

Thursday, October 20 – Where’s Broadus, Montana, you ask?  Don't ask me.  I’m here but I’m still not sure.  Mom says that we are about 150 miles northwest of Rapid City, South Dakota.  Rapid City is by Mount Rushmore.  We will leave Broadus in the morning and go toward Rapid City.  But first, I need to catch you up on what we’ve been doing.

We decided to spend Tuesday night and Wednesday night in Butte.  On Wednesday, Mom and Dad went to the World Museum of Mining.  They said that it was a very worthwhile stop.  The people who built the museum brought in lots of old buildings from the area and each one is furnished as a business that would have been in Butte at the time the mine was operating.  There was a bank, a barbershop, a ladies millenary shop, a railroad depot, funeral home, church, and school.  That’s what I could see from the parking lot, because I wasn’t allowed to go in.  Mom said there were lots more buildings full of cool stuff.

All of this is over a real mine!  This is the headframe for the mine and some of the other buildings and equipment that are left from the days when the mine was running.  The headframe has the pulleys that run the elevators up and down the shafts to get ore out of the mine.  Mom and Dad learned that the bigger the head frame, the deeper the mine.  They also learned that Butte is a mile high (like Denver) and has mines that are a mile deep under it, so the people of Butte consider themselves well balanced.  

Mom and Dad added on the optional Underground Mine tour, so got to go into a real Copper Mine.  One of the things that Mom found most interesting was that all the mines were linked underground.  That way, if there was an accident, the miners had a chance to escape through another mine and up the elevators at the other mine.  A really smart thing to do, but still pretty amazing since the mines were competitors.  There are over 10,000 miles of tunnels under Butte.  This is a picture of Mom and Dad getting ready to go into the mine and another picture taken in the mine when the guide explained how the ore was taken out of the mines on elevators.

The mountains around Butte are getting snow.  In fact, it snowed for a little while when we first got to the museum, but it didn’t last long and the ground was warm enough that it didn’t stick.

After the museum, we went for a drive to see some of the sights around town.  There were some beautiful homes built by the Copper Barons for their families and other interesting buildings.  In the evening, Mom and Dad went out to dinner at Casagranada’s Steakhouse which they would highly recommend to anyone traveling through Butte.

Thursday morning we left Butte and spent the day driving.  We drove 393 miles to get to Broadus.  Broadus is a nice, old west town.  We are parked at the City Park.