Southwest Montana Blog
Ghosts & Paranormal

The Butte Silver-Bow Public Archives sit at 17 W. Quartz Street in a building that once served as “Fire Station Number One.” This building remained the Quartz Street Fire Station until 1976 when the Montana and Mercury Streets Station was opened.  As you may know, the mining town of Butte, America saw its...

For over 100 years the (Old) Montana Prison at the south end of Deer Lodge housed the state’s worst offenders. Perpetually over-crowded and frequently mismanaged, the Prison was finally replaced by a new facility outside of town. Today, the Old Montana Prison, which still dominates Deer Lodge’s...

Fall has arrived, and with it a lovely Halloweenish atmosphere. If you are in search of a guide through the spookiest bits of Montana’s past, you’ll not find better than Ellen Baumler. Before retiring last year, Baumler had spent 26 years digging into the stories of Montana’s past. She’...

The haunting of Grandstreet Theatre, which was originally the Unitarian Church built in 1901, is so famous that it is included in Haunted Places: The National Dictionary. Progressive Unitarians designed the church to double as public space, and so the sanctuary also functioned as a public auditorium with...

Bannack. The once-bright star of Montana, now a ruin. A town in arrested decay. The sun glints blindly off of the few remaining storefronts, stores with neither wares nor customers. The saloons do not hum with music, mule trains no longer clog main street, and the town’s five thousand plus residents no longer...