Mulvanys Serve Time at Old Montana Prison

 Today we went to prison...Old Montana Prison.  The prison was built in 1871 and housed prisoners until a new facility was built in 1979.  This was Montana's only home for convicted criminals for 108 years.  The walls are 24 feet high, three feet thick at the top, and four and a half feet thick at the bottom.  The wall extends four feet underground.  No inmate was ever successful at tunneling under the wall, although quite a few tried.

Carol is out of bounds.  Inmates were not allowed to proceed beyond this area without a pass or a guard.  If they crossed this line without authorization, the guard posted at Tower 7 (directly behind Carol) could shoot them.  Fortunately for Carol there wasn't a guard posted so he lived to finish the tour.

Does he look like a hardened criminal?

Cell House was built in 1912 in only eleven months using convict labor.  The Cell House was a model facility in its day.  Each cell had running water, flush toilets and good ventilation.  There were eight galleries, four per side.  Each gallery contained 25 cells for a total of 200.  Cells on one side were single inmate and the other side for double occupancy.

Entrance to the Cell House.

Theater built in 1919 using money donated by the son of the Butte copper king.  It had 600 seats.  Going to the theater had to be earned so it was the center of the work incentive and prison discipline system.

Carol hopes for a good meal.  A sign in the dinning hall said, "Take all you want, but eat all you take."  

The gallows.  A total of seven men were hung on this gallow.

Sally Port for vehicles to enter the prison.  It was a double door, double lock system.  A vehicle would enter the first door and be locked inside the Sally Port where the vehicle was searched before it was allowed in or out of the prison..  Only one door was open at a time.

After the prison tour, we went to Montana Auto Museum.  There were 150 cars on display from the earliest to modern era.  Also displayed in the museum were pictures of Deer Lodge in early years.

This picture shows camping in the 1930's on the property which is now the KOA in which we are now camped.  The brick building is still standing at the property.  The date above the door of the building is 1919 and the building is called the "Town Pavilion."

We had never seen a car that could be transformed into a tractor until we saw this one.

A picture of an early motorhome.

1933 Kozy Kamp Pop-Up Trailer.

1956 BelAire Chevy with gold an black color.  Grace H. Wright owned one of these.  I worked with Grace at SAC Headquarters from 1966-1969 and every day she came to work in a car exactly like this one.    When I left the job, she was still driving it.  Probably drove it until she died.

This is an old Diamond T  log truck.

This is an E-70 electric locomotive named "Little Joe."  General Electric was contracted to build 20 electric locomotives for the USSR in 1946.With the Cold War, the USA prohibited delivery.  The electrics were built to the Soviet gauge of 5 feet and had to be converted to the American gauge of 4 feet 8 1/2 inches.  Employees of the Milwaukee Road Railroad referred to the engines as Little Joe Stalin's locomotives, shortened to "Little Joes."

After touring the prison and auto museum, we ate a late lunch at a local restaurant called "4 B's."  I had their famous tomato soup and a tuna sandwich.  Carol had fish and chips.  Both were very good.  Following lunch we drove around a bit looking at the older houses in the town.  Deer Lodge is a nice little town.  The streets are four lane and in addition each side has parallel parking.  It makes for very wide streets.  There is only one stoplight right in the middle of town.  The night we ate supper at the Pizza Hut, we saw a man about our age come in with a holster and gun on his hip.  It didn't bother me to see him with a gun but it isn't something we would see in Illinois.  This is the west, cowboy country. This would be a place we could come back to.

Back at camp, we loaded the car so we would be ready to move out tomorrow.  It has been a nice two days.  We hardly drove the car because everything is close.  We could have walked but we didn't.  Tomorrow we plan to be camping in Washington.