Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
bust economy. Philipsburg is by far the most attractive destination—it is quaint rather than
past its prime—but Anaconda and Deer Lodge have some fascinating and fun sights to vis-
it, not to mention one of the coolest golf courses in the West.
Set in a grassy valley that was known by Native Americans for its abundance of deer,
Deer Lodge was both a mining town and a ranching community during its evolution. It has
also long been a county seat, giving Deer Lodge an interesting if somewhat random collec-
tion of specialized museums. There is a museum in the old frontier prison, a museum ded-
icated to antique cars, one built around a collection of cowboy paraphernalia, and another
full of whiskey memorabilia. There is a law-enforcement museum as well as a local history
museum.
Philipsburg is itself a study in Montana's boom, bust, and renewal economy. The town
was named after mining expert Philip Deidesheimer, who came to the area in the late 1860s
to design and run the territory's first smelter, the road to which became the main street of
town. In gratitude, the townspeople named their village after Deidesheimer, deciding that
Philipsburg was easier than Deidesheimersburg. The town and its mill plodded along un-
til 1881, when a string of silver strikes nearby allowed the town to blossom. The Northern
Pacific Railway was eventually routed to Philipsburg, ensuring its place on the map. There
were ups and downs, immortalized in a poignant poem by Richard Hugo titled “Degrees of
Gray in Philipsburg.”
Anaconda took its name and its identity from the Anaconda Mining Company, which
established a smelter for the huge amount of copper coming out of the mines in nearby
Butte. It was by all accounts a company town, but one that managed to hang on and is work-
ing to redefine itself since the company pulled out in 1980. Structures like the
Anaconda
City Hall,
the
Deer Lodge County Courthouse,
and the
Washoe Theater
hark back to the
town's glory days, when it vied for the status of state capital and narrowly lost to Helena. Its
proximity to
Georgetown Lake
and the phenomenal Jack Nicklaus-designed
Old Works
Golf Course
keep Anaconda hopping with visitors in the warmer months.
Nestled between the Flint Creek and Garnet mountain ranges sits the small town of Deer
Lodge (population 3,130, elevation 4,521 feet). Although initially a trading and trapping
town like the other towns in the area, Deer Lodge grew when gold was discovered just a few
miles outside town. With the gold and quartz mining, businesspeople, among them copper
king W. A. Clark, flocked in to set up mills.
