You know I can't pick and choose photos to show you!    The museum is mostly outdoors with buildings and equipment that were brought to the property and then installed and filled.   We did decide though this isn't really a place to be if it is 95 degrees or warmer although there were plenty of places to sit down and there are refreshments/beverages sold in the gift shop.   If going in the summer, take along your water bottle!

Mom and I both commented that it is much like going through the Collier Logging Museum in Oregon last fall.  Robin and I had a blast doing photos here!

The campus is all outdoors and you go at your own pace.   Signs give information about each building and it is set up literally like a replica of town.   All of the buildings that are furnished are enclosed with glass viewing areas so more through the looking glass photos to show as well.

This is the old church (there are two on the property but the other is much newer).   You could go in to this one and see one of the antique organs as well as the old confessional box.   Yes Butte is known for their Catholic history.

I asked my Mom if she saw the face in the old wooden trough - she hadn't.

We learned that this iconic head frame (which you can actually see from the interstate) was not the original for this site.  The museum is on the site of the Little Orphan Girl mine but this was brought in specifically for the museum.  It is I believe 120 feet tall and we were able to go up about 1/2 way in it - wondering the entire time exactly HOW they moved it up there....did they do it piece by piece, helicopter, or ?  As you can see there is also a great deal of mining rails around the area as well.    We did find out that you can actually drive to just about all of teh head frames still around in Butte and there are signs to tell you how tall they are and for what mine etc.  

Here is how the original mines got their ore.  One guy would go in the hole and dig and another would haul up the buckets of ore.  Needless to say that wasn't exactly productive.   Oh and for those wondering - Butte is known for mining COPPER.    They no longer actively mine it there and the smelters in Butte and the big one in Anaconda no longer operate.   As I remember some of the other fun facts from our tour I'll put those in.... An old stone grinder. One of the buildings on the property was the Sauerkraut Factory.   I guess I knew that potatoes and often kraut were put in pasties but I didn't realize the extent of the production.  This was one of the original photos and holy cow! Granite everywhere!   Told my Mom that we could do wonders with that in the yard but we weren't sure they'd let us out with it. Old firehose wagon. Ore car....