Our day started with a stroll down the streets of Virginia City, an old gold town that is being maintained as both a historic site and a living town. Some interesting old buildings displayed a way of life that is now gone. Not far from Virginia City is the town of Nevada City an even smaller town again with a good collection of late 1800 buildings and a lot of railway relics and a workshop in which some locals maintain a train that runs from Virginia City to Nevada City. Both these towns were major centers of gold production in the late 1800's and at one point Virginia City was the capital of the Montana Territory.

From Virginia and Nevada Cities we moved on to Twin Bridges and into the Beaverhead Valley down which flows (you guessed it) the Beaverhead river. At the top of this valley is a large limestone outcropping from which the valley and the river get its name (the local Indians thought it looked like a beavers head). This is the place that the Lewis and Clark expedition met up with the Shoshone and got horses with which to cross the Rockies. Before the arrival of whites to the area the local Indian tribes used this location as a summer meeting place.

From Twin Bridges the highway follows approximately the route of the Road Agents Trail (a route used by miners and settlers in the late 1800s) to the town of Bannack; which is today a ghost town, maintained by the Montana Department of Fish and Wildlife as a state park. The towns name apparently derives from a Scottish word for small cakes cooked over an open fire because the local Indians cooked a form of grain cake.

Our arrival at Bannack was accompanied by a thunderstorm and hail stones as you can see in the photo. Within half an hour of this, the sun was again shining. We spent an interesting hour or so strolling among the old buildings including a visit to the school house. Reminded both Nina and I of our years in elementary school in rural Australia. And then we adjourned to the nearby camp ground for the night.