...WAIT! There's MO!

Besides the old prison itself, the price of admission also includes The Montana Law Enforcement Museum (actually a set-aside area within the old prison), Frontier Montana Museum, Desert John's Saloon Museum, and the Montana Auto Museum!

Whew. What a goldmine of cool stuff!

But before I get to those, here's another photo from the prison:


That's some contraband confiscated from prisoners and other related artifacts including weighed down shoes (twenty pound concrete soles, for likely escapee prisoners) and a set of locks used in a lock-picking 'school', set up by inmates. They also had the bazooka used by the Montana National Guard to help suppress a prison riot in 1959.


The Montana Law Enforcement Museum was pretty minimal, but it was being revised and expanded. All that was open was a memorial for officers slain in the line of duty, and some sample uniforms. (See lead photo of the memorial above)

The Frontier Montana Museum was small but very impressive. EVERYTHING there was of extremely high quality, for a museum exhibit. I don't have many photos from there, as my camera battery decided to take a dump, and I was too lazy to go back to the car for another one. It was a mini-version of the Buffalo Bill Center in Cody, with an emphasis on just Montana history. All sorts of artifacts and curios are exhibited from gambler's tools of the trade to firearms and military regalia. All sorts of pioneer stuff, too. Pretty cool.

The two shots I did take, before that camera battery pooped out, are of a replica of a sheriff/town marshal office. Except for a few of the antiques, it doesn't look much different than my home office.

I guess some things never change.




Desert John's Saloon Museum was an odd place. It is an attached section of the Frontier museum which was basically an old saloon bar and accouterments and a massive collection of liquor bottles. I mean, they had walls of shelves filled with empty booze bottles and crockery. Now, I am no bottle collector, so I just glanced around a bit as I sauntered through. I did notice a few from some now defunct Seattle distillery. Who knew Seattle provided spirits to cowboys, miners, and ranchers in them olden days? Again, no photos by me. Visit the website link above.

Now the Montana Auto Museum was something to behold. USA Today rates it as one of the 10 Best auto collections in the country. From the outside it doesn't look like much. It looks rather small. Once inside I understood. They jammed the cars in there like sardines. There's about 120 cars in the collection. Here's a few choice bits:






Forgive the photo quality as it wasn't lighted very well and my tiny camera's flash wasn't up to the job at hand. If you are wondering about that camouflaged VW dune buggy in the first photo, that was used in the film The Road Warrior (Mad Max II). How that ended up in Montana, I'll leave for you to figure out. I think it would be more at home in Wyoming.

Another little treasure Deer Lodge, Montana had was a shop that sold crafts made by Montana prison inmates. The shop is nestled among the museums I visited. They had all sorts of things, but mostly equestrian and cowboy related items: tack, bridles, hat bands, belts, etc. All of it was was extremely high quality and expensive. A nice decorated belt (I think it was braided/woven porcupine quills on leather) was $250.00! But it was gorgeous and the craftsmanship impeccable. If I was into cowboy fashion, I would have bought it. They also had some inmate "art" of varying quality; lots of nekkid wimmin and such. Heh. (No I didn't buy anything!)