Dodge and Virginia Cities

After a two hour drive south through a lush, highly irrigated valley and then up to the Tobacco Root Mountains we came to two gold mining towns originally established in the 1860's during the gold rush. Actually, a small number of towns cropped us along the river but these are to only two to survive. Dodge City was a small mining community that is still here today due the diligence of folks willing to move homes to this city or rebuild and refurbish the buildings. It is mostly a living, outdoor museum with people dressed in period costume doing tasks and chores of that day such as rebuilding guns, washing wool and spinning it, preparing a lunch of stew with mountain spinach and re-enacting scenes from that era. We started our tour in the museum where they had a large collection of musical pipe organ like instruments that played with compressed air or by piano rolls. There must have been about 30-40 buildings to explore, stables, post office, general stores, homes, slaves quarters, hotels, a school, jail and bar. In the bar, the barman explained five different gambling games the miners would have played with cards and dice. The hotel had been refurbished so that people could stay there and the bakery actually sold bread, coffee and ice cream.

A small gas powered train ran between Dodge City and Virginia City which are only about a mile apart but we chose not to ride it. Virginia City is more the commercial and touristy town. Even though most of the buildings are original from the 1860's and are being used for stores, bars and restaurants, it was not near as appealing to us as Dodge City. Virginia City has survived in its original condition because it never burned down as happened to many gold mining towns. The city had a reputation as a wild town until a group of vigilante miners decided to put an end to all the murder and gambling and bring law and order to the city. They hung 4 men inside one of the buildings and killed or hung 15 more, including the "sheriff", before things calmed down. Boot Hill Cemetery contains the graves of the first ones hung.

The drive from Virginia City to Yellowstone Country south of Bozeman went through two mountain passes and was a curvy road. We had selected three National Forest campgrounds along the Gallitin River to try to find a place to stay but they were all full. After visiting with the campground host in the first one, we ended up staying in the parking lot of the day use area of Moose Creek CG. Then 4 more RV's pulled in next to us as well. It was nice having close neighbors to visit with.