Friday, July 19, 2024
Trolley Tour and Wildlife Management Area
We finally got the Butte Trolley Tour worked into our schedue this morning. Joe wanted to do the 10:00 tour before it got hot, although he struggled to get out of bed that early. We had not made reservations, but fortunately we were able to get on. The bus had 25 people on our tour, and I believe it was full. Our driver/narrator was very knowledgeable about the mining history of Butte, which is rich. As I said earlier, this is known as the Richest Hill on Earth. After a 10-minute introduction to the story of the mining, he drove us to the open pit mine just north of town. As we got close, we could see a shovel and truck on display. Both had been retired because they were too small. This was once the largest truck-operated pit copper mine in the USA.
The "Berkeley Lake" is the pool of water from the mines. It is part of the SuperFund cleanup process going on around Butte. The water, although pretty to look at, is toxic. Interestingly, they are able to remove the hard chemicals from the water -- copper, gold, silver and molybdenum (molly) -- which actually pays for the cleanup costs.
The trolley tours stop here, but you can also drive up here on your own. Our trolley tickets were $20 each, but the ticket to enter this was $5.00 which I assume was part of our $20 trolley ticket. We entered through a visitor center/gift shop area, then walked through a tunnel to a platform overlooking the "lake."
The green color of lake is from the copper in the water. The SuperFund cleanup also includes cleaning up all the homes and yards in town. They go in and check the insulation in the house, among other things, and if they find even a speck of contamination from the mine, they completely strip the wiring and replace it. Likewise with the yard, if they find contamination in the soil, they dig it down to bedrock, remove all the dirt and replace it with fill dirt, and vegetation. This has been going on for years but they are not done yet.
Berkley lake is toxic. It is 1100 ft deep, the water continually coming from the underground mines. There is a pump station across the lake and it pumps 10,000 gallons of lake water a minute, and they clean the water up and reuse it for mining. They clean the water through a cleaning building, then through a pipeline to creeks on the other side of town. But with the water generated in the mining tunnels, the level of the lake stays even with what is pumped out of underground mines.
Those "derricks" we saw the other day are actually called "gallus" frames.
"Sometimes called “gallows" or "gallus" frames, the headframes are a symbol of the cost of human life to extract those precious metals, as well as of the strength of America's trades and labor organizations." These are their "elevator," beneath the frame, they raise and lower the workers and supplies to the bottom of the mine.
The walls surrounding the lake are solid granite, and prevent water from soaking into the ground. They can't make the lake any deeper because it would go below the level of granite, and then the water would soak into the soil, beginning the contamination again. There are over 10,000 miles of mine tunnels under Butte, beneath the streets and everything else. There were once hundreds of mines on the Butte hill, and workers (immigrants) from every country. At one time Butte had largest Irish immigrant population in the country.
To protect birds from landing or drinking from the lake, noises go off periodically to scare them away: sirens, air cannons, music blasts etc. 2 workers also patrol with drones when migrating birds are in the area.
There is a botanical gardens right next to the Visitor Center here, honoring the Irish heritage. You can see a shamrock, a celtic symbol, and a harp.
The conversation came around to "Our Lady of the Rockies" which is a statue up on the top of the mountain overlooking Butte from 8,015 feet above sea level (one foot shorter than the Statue of Liberty, he said). Built in the likeness of Mary, the mother of Jesus, it stands atop the Continental Divide and is dedicated to "all women, especially mothers." A bus tour is currently the only way to get a close-up look at the 90-foot statue, and the bus crosses the Continental Divide 5 times. He said there are plans to build a tram to it. The bus ride is an hour up and just under an hour back down, so we decided not to do this. The trolley we were on was "of the era" and the wooden seats were pretty uncomfortable, the bus ride didn't sound much more inviting.
One tidbit our driver shared with us was that Evel Knievel was born, raised and buried here in Butte. He said he didn't hang out with him too much because Evel was always in jail. Once, Evel got arrested for riding his motorcycle on the courthouse steps.
We finally drove on into the old mining town. Our driver knew the dates most of the old buildings were built, many are still in use. I took a photo of the old brothel, a 3-story red brick. He said the basement offered the least expensive services, the main floor a little more, and the top floor was the most expensive services. He didn't elaborate.
There was a little garden of statues on one corner in town, but I don't think he explained that.
As we ended the tour, he talked about some of the millionaires (and took us by their homes) from back in the day. Montana Resources now runs the mine, and they donated funds for a beautiful park in town, Stoddard Park. It has a water park, zip line, golf course, and a beautiful carousel with hand-made wooden horses. We decided to check it out. The water park and carousel had just opened when we were there, and there was a long line for the water park.
There was also a very cool playground, with mine-themed equipment.
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I seem to really like carousels. I guess because I love horses, real or wooden. But these are beautiful. I'm pretty sure we can no longer ride them (can't get our legs over the saddle), but there was another booth we could have probably sat in. But we didn't.
There was a small display of carousels in a glass case. I don't know if they were for sale, but they were very pretty.
People were enjoying the golf course on this beautiful day.
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Having finished with our touristy things, we headed back to the camper, but we decided to take an evening drive so at 6 o’clock we headed back to Anaconda to a wildlife management area I had found on the map. Before we got to Anaconda, we spotted a small herd of antelope well-disguised in the middle of a herd of cattle.
Driving around in Anaconda looking for a place for dinner, we passed a little city park and there were five deer in it. One of them was standing on a raised flower garden eating either the flowers or the tree.
We turned off of the main highway just after 7:00. We’re really on a wild goose chase. We’re trying to find the Mount Hagan Wildlife Management Area, which is off of this road, according to the map. We came home on this road the other night as part of our "marathon" day, but we’re not sure if there’s any side roads into this area, so it’s good that we saw the antelope and the deer before we started on this drive. The good thing is there’s no traffic on this highway, so we can poke along at our own speed. We just hope we see something.
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About a half hour in, we turned off on our first dirt road and Joe saw a sign that said Wildlife Management Area in small print (along with instructions about food storage because of bears).
We followed this road/trail (California Creek Road) for about 3 miles. We met a through-hiker on this little road and stopped and talked to him for a minute. We asked him if he had seen anything and he said he’d seen a lot of things since he left Canada. That wasn't exactly what we meant. He was hiking the Continental Divide Trail. There was a pickup in front of us that we had seen turn onto this road. He turned around and was on his way back out so we talked to him a minute. He said they had seen 2 cow elk at the very beginning of this drive.
We took a side road off of our side road back a little ways but ran into a fence. Joe had to make a four- point turn to get us out of there. One side was a mountain and the other side was a cliff. Some of the things he loves about his little Jeep is that is turns around in small spaces, makes u-turns, and is easy to park. He uses all those features every day.
We only went in about 3 miles but the road was pretty rough so we were only traveling about 5 miles an hour. We turned around at 8:00, hoping to our return trip would be more fruitful. We have a fleet of flying insects pacing us and we sure we’re not outrunning them.
I don’t think they’re managing this wildlife management area very well. I think they lost all the wildlife. We know they lost five deer. They’re now residing at the park in town. 25 minutes later, we were back on the main road highway (and we did not see those 2 cow elk).
About a mile down the road we came to another side road and there was the main sign for the Wildlife Management Area. Now it’s 8:25 so we’re gonna give this road a try for a little bit. We saw one cow elk, but as soon as we stopped, she ran off into the trees. There were three different campers on this road so we think we found the right road this time. These roads are in really bad shape. It’s not very much fun to drive them, even for Joe.
This road took us about a mile and a half before we hit gate number two. This was a three-point turn around, same situation. We saw a couple squirrels on this drive.
Back out on the highway, we continued on Hwy 43 to I-15 and just made a loop out of this drive. We probably saw half a dozen deer and an osprey in a nest on this last part of the drive. The Hwy 43 part was very pretty, and we were beside Big Hole River again. Had it been earlier, I'm sure we would have pulled into some of the camping areas along the river.
We got home just before 10:00. It turned out to be 100-mile loop with our two little side roads We got to watch the sun set and the moon rise on this drive. My picture of the sunset is through the buggy front windshield. I didn't even try for the moonrise.
As we neared Butte, we could see the "Lady" statue lit up at the top of the mountain. We could see her for miles. We probably should make that bus trip but it does not sound very appealing, and I think it's about $25/person, plus you have to make reservations. Our trolley tour only took us through the old mining part of town. We thought it would stop at the Mining Museum but it didn't so that's one thing here left on our agenda. The weather has been pretty nice high 80s/low 90s but 50s at night. It's supposed to be 87 tomorrow, and 86 on Sunday when we leave. We can deal with that.
Butte has been interesting. We have certainly seen a lot of southwestern Montana
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