Fairmont RV Park - Anaconda, Montana

Friday, July 20 - We left Wolf Lodge in Coeur d’ Alene, Idaho around 8:00 AM and drove I-90 across Idaho’s narrow north part of the state to Fairmont RV Park in Anaconda, Montana. Located in the great outdoors of Southwest Montana, nestled in the Rocky Mountains near the historic cities of Anaconda and Butte, surrounded by Forest Service and wilderness experiences. It's Montana at it's finest. The beautiful Fairmont R.V. Park is just a few minutes from the continental divide. The drive over showed a lot of diversity in the land and the closer we got to the park, we saw the area become higher in elevations and yet surrounded by even higher mountains.

On the side of the interstate about five to six feet a way from the coach ,in major traffic, there was a moose just eating away at the grass and not the least bit bothered. What a photo-op, but missed it. We passed OVER Wallace, Idaho, known as the “Silver Capital of the World”. the only place on earth where more than a billion ounces of silver were mined in 100 years. Wallace is also known for the fact that every downtown building is on the National Register of Historic Places, which is why the government finally had to go over instead of through Wallace in order to complete the Interstate Highway system in 1991.
We arrived around noon at Fairmont RV Park in Silver Bow County, Anaconda, Montana, at 5,100 ft. elevation. Park is nicely spaced for RV sites, and mountains surround the area and driving in we saw a lot of cows grazing in the valley. In one section, there are teepees for rent and they sleep 4-6 people. They are built according to the Indian specs using Lodgepoles inside.

Saturday, July 21 - We drove around 16 miles to Butte to investigate the history and were we surprised. Of course, since Butte is a mining town, the most obvious thing about Butte today has to be the dozens of abandoned mining rigs that dot the skyline around Butte. Some of these rigs are just a stone throw away from downtown, with most of the rigs being less than 4 miles as the crow flies away from downtown. These mining derricks, which are black in color and often rise 200 feet in the air, make a definitive statement about what drove the Butte earlier in the 1900’s.

One of the neat things in Butte are all the “ghost signs”. “Ghost Signs”, in case you’re wondering, are old – often very old – signs painted on the sides of buildings (a cheap version of a billboard). Most of the businesses these signs promote are long-gone now, yet the signs remain – promoting strange and long departed businesses. These signs add a certain mystique to Butte which is sort of hard to explain until you visit and see them for yourself – especially since these signs are often 70 years old or more. I was gratified to learn that Butte is making an attempt to preserve these “ghost signs.”

The Copper King Mansion is a 34-room Victorian mansion built from 1884 to 1888 as the Butte residence of William Andrews Clark, one of Montana's three famous "Copper Kings" who helped establish the fledgling Montana territory through their business ventures.

Butte began as nothing more than a bunch of mining camps back in the early 1870’s. a fire in 1879 burned down the entire central business district. Following this disaster, the Butte city council passed a law that required all new buildings downtown (known as "uptown Butte") to be built from brick or stone – most of which still stand today and what help make Butte such a historic and unique city. It was the 1950’s, though, that really began to change things for Butte. The Anaconda Mining Company, to reduce the costs involved in the labor-intensive nature of underground mining, began to shift to open strip mining. Thus, instead of tunneling down for the copper, entire hillsides were instead simply removed. The legacy of this strip mining is that two towns and countless homes that were once located “on the hill” were completely destroyed. The Anaconda Mining Company in 1977 merged into the Arco company. ARCO then ceased all mining operations in Butte in 1983 (although they still ended up paying for the Superfund Cleanup that followed). Strip mining operations resumed in 1983 when Montana Resources began active strip mining in adjacent areas near the Berkeley Pit.

b:if cond='data:blog.pageType !="item"> >