Day 59 - Bannack 150 Years old

After a very late night at the Symphony under the Stars we pulled everyone out of bed (literally in a couple of cases) and went to early church. Early church here is 9 am as opposed to 8 in MS so that worked in our favor.   One of the assistant pastors spoke this morning and he started off his sermon with a comment saying "haven't we had a nice HOT week this week".   We laugh almost daily at the local comments about this horribly hot summer they are having here in Montana.  Now, I will admit it is hot temperature wise but it certainly is not like MS where you just have to walk outside to sweat. Here it might be 95 degrees for part of a day but to cool off you just go in the shade.  All in all it was a good service with a sermon concentrating on the Corinthians and how they were treating each other.  After church we headed home and packed for a day trip.

In keeping with our summer tradition here in MT we loaded food/drinks into the car and headed south on I-15 towards Butte. There is an old Ghost town about an hour south of Butte called Bannack. Each year they have a weekend that they call Bannack days where people dress in period costume, have gun fights, hang people and do all that fun western stuff.  This year happens to be the 150th anniversary of the town. This town was founded in 1862 when gold was discovered and it then became the first terratorial capitol of Montana. The town lasted until sometime in the 1930's and is now part of a state park.  It has approximately 60 structures still standing and in good condition.

This was a little over a 2 hour ride from home and we rose in elevation about 2000 feet to almost 7000 feet above sea level.  As we turned off the interstate for the final 20 minute ride once again we found ourselves in the middle of nowhere (this happens quite often here).  The good news was that the roads were paved nearly the whole way (which is not the norm in this state).  We felt like we were being whisked back into a western movie/show like Gunsmoke.  This town is in incredibly good condition.  We walked into lots of houses where you could still see the many layers of wall paper on the walls. We went into the church and got to listen to a family play some blue grass music where we all sang along (I'll fly away).  Christina leaned over and asked how I knew any of these songs.  As we proceeded through town there was a post office, school, Hotel (with 15 rooms) and the jail (which interested Caleb the most).  There were wagons being pulled (loaded with people) by oxen. The kids fell in love with the oxen.  Everyone stopped and was able to make candles and we could have panned for gold if we had wanted to but we chose to skip that one.  Caleb was able to shoot a real musket that a man loaded with gun powder.  Joshua and I hiked back to where the actual gallows were where they hung people. Luckily there was no one still hanging there. 

At about 3 pm we walked down the street and a bunch of cowboys and saloon girls came out of the saloon into the street. The marshall came trying to arrest someone and the sheriff was there to keep the peace. That didn't last long as 2 men started arguing over one of the saloon girls and then the shootin began. Of course, the girl was killed and the madam of the saloon demanded that the culprit be hanged. So we proceeded to walk down the street to the hangin.  When it was over they asked if anyone wanted their picture with the dead guy and to my suprise none of my kids wanted one. 

As the afternoon went on a storm started settling in and the wind stated to blow.  I cannot imagine living in this town 150 years ago if this wind blew up the dust and dirt like it did today.  We could feel it hitting out legs and arms.  It just went to prove to us how hard a life this had to be back then.  As it started to rain we decided we should go. So we packed all back into the car and headed out of town into the wilderness.  Amazingly within about 10 minutes the temperature had dropped from 85 to 57.  As we headed back over the continental divide we drove into the rain.  We were able to stop in Butte and have dinner and then we were back on the road.  In our last 30 minutes of driving we rounded a corner and there across the mountain was a double rainbow. One of them had the most brilliant and brightest colors any of us have ever seen.  Again God is just awesome.