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 Ennis
was a very nice small town.The motel we stayed in was called the "El
Western", which had several very nice duplex cabins.
They had all just been remodeled and refinished. They were immaculate
inside and out. In fact, they looked brand new. The weekend we were staying
there the town was hosting its first annual fly fishing competition. It
turns out that the Madison River, which flowed thru town, was a well known
fly fishing location.
We stayed there for two nights and during the day in between did a touristy
day trip over to Virginia
City and Nevada City which are two old gold mining towns that
date back to about 1863. The towns started when gold was discovered in
Alder Gulch, a creek that ran between the two towns. After the gold ran
out, the towns were nearly abandoned. In the mid 1940's, a rich couple
from Great Falls, Montana, started buying up the buildings in the towns
and repairing and restoring them. They also purchased old historic buildings
in the nearby area and moved them to Nevada City where they created an
"open air museum" of historic structures. They turned the two
old nearly abandoned towns into tourist destinations. Finally, in 1997,
the state of Montana bought the properties and now maintains and preserves
them as a museum. Virginia City is the larger living city. It has more
tourist attractions, an old steam train, stage coach rides, two live play
houses, more gift shops and places to eat and drink.
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^ Looking down one of the streets of the "fake" ghost
town of Nevada City. They had many buildings set up in the open-air
museum recreating the appearance of an old town.
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^ A stable building that they imported from somewhere. Inside
were all the tools and supplies, laid out just as they had been
back when the stable was originally built.
> A double-decker outhouse. Supposedly the upper stall was
for Montanans and the lower stall was for out-of-state guests.
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^ Ennis is somewhere back in that valley. Montana as you can
see is very desolate. Lots of wide open land - guess that's why
Montana is called "Big Sky Country". We took this shot
as we were leaving Ennis and heading for Sula and our first fire
lookout tower.
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