homeward bound again...

...and after days and weeks of wide open spaces the journey today takes in an underground mine and a prison, both noted for confinement and possible claustrophobia.

The Orphangirl Mine, now in Butte's grandly named World Museum of Mining, was an operating lead, zinc and silver mine extending down  2731' during its 82 years of operation.
Now with level 65 opened as a visitors' mine it is an example of the conditions man and beast (mules were used to haul  ore trucks back and forth from tunnels to lift cage) worked in to extract ore.

Down the road at Deer Lodge, the Old Montana prison ws built by inmate labour, the first prisoner incarcerated in1871 and used until the late 1970s.
A curious collection of buildings including a very grand theatre and a very forbidding women's prison (later to become men's maximum security) where orange would not have been the new black.
On display is an art exhibition including a lock of ceramic turkeys (extra) honouring 'Turkey Pete'. Convicted of murder and sentenced to life in 1918, Paul Eitner was  a model prisoner and given the responsibility of tending the prsion turkey flock. Losing touch with reality, he sold the flock to a passer by for 25c a bird and became the prison entrepreneur, inmates allowed to 'print' 'Eitner cheques with which Pete ran the prison and paid expenses!
He died in 1967 and his cell, 'No 1" was retired, Pete being given the only funeral held within the prison.

Like Pete who spent his life in prison, the mine mules once underground lived their lives there becoming blind after some months, most living only five to six years.
Also like Pete, there was a character and she was Annie. She lived and worked 16!!! years underground and finally was returned to the surface to live out the rest of her life for five years with free range of Butte city.
Although blind she apparently found her way around and 'knew' the miners when she met them!