Some say 'He-LAY-na' but most say 'HEL-e-na'. The gold prospectors did not like living in a town with a feminine sounding name. They liked the more masculine pronunciation with the emphasis on 'HEL'! Ha Ha!
We are the only ones camping in the Lewis & Clark County Fairgrounds camping area so it is pretty quiet this evening. We pulled in her about 10 AM this morning so we had time to explore the capital of Montana including the capital building. The Last Chance Train gave us a nice tour of the city featuring many of the beautiful mansions of the rich and famous. The name "Last Chance' came from 4 Georgian gold miners who had panned for gold in the Last Chance Gulch without much success. They started to move on up the mountain but were told there was no gold to be found there so they came back to Last Chance and decided to give it one more try or "Last Chance" and they struck it rich! The people of this town have done a great job of maintaining and restoring the buildings of their past.
A very unusual building in Helena is the Cathedral of St. Helena. The architecture of this 1914 church is based on a church in Vienna, Austria and the stained glass windows came from Germany. This church has at least 20 windows that tell stories from the Old and New Testaments. It seats 800 people and is used by the community for many musical concerts as it has a wonderful pipe organ and is a beautiful setting. The two spires reach 220 feet into the air. One story our tour guide told us was that some men were drinking and betting about what they could do and one gentleman said he could fly his plane between the spires. He won the bet with three inches to spare but he lost his pilot's license.
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