Through Virginia City to the Battle of the Big Hole

SIT hit the road Wednesday June 5^th to head to the Battle of the Big Hole.  The drive from Henry’s Lake was beautiful and guess what – it wasn’t raining!!  Did you know there was a Virginia City Montana? We didn’t either!

Driving into the town was so interesting that we decided to pull over and tour the old western town. They have maintained many of the buildings with the original contents still in them so it provided for a great history lesson of the area.

We took this picture of the 1876 Madison County Courthouse. Many of the buildings in the town are from that era and their fame is the discovery of gold in 1873.

Courthouse still used today

 

We left Virginia City around 1:30 and landed in Wisdom Montana for the night. We stayed just out of town at a small park.

Later that evening a young man pulled in riding a bicycle. We befriended him and learned he is from South Korea and doing the North American Bicycle Ride. He left from Virginia and will end up in Astoria Oregon. He is a nice young man and we got a chance to talk with him.  His name is Yong sam (unsure about how I spelled it but you pronounce it Young).

The next morning Steve loaded Yongsam up with some freeze dried food and other items. He took off on his bike with the goal to reach Hamilton for the night. We took off to see the Big Hole Battlefield.

When we arrived at the visitor’s center at the battlefield, Yongsam was just leaving.

We hiked the trail that went to the Howitzer capture site. They have a replica of the Howitzer cannon there, and the actual cannon is in the visitor’s center. I was able to take a few pictures from the capture site. It really is gorgeous country.

The Howitzer

 

From there we took the siege area trail where they have identified where the soldiers dug trenches to try and get out of the line of fire from the Nez Perce warriors.  The history of the battle at Big Hole is quite telling and extremely tragic. If you enjoy learning the early history of this area, this would be one place to visit.

 

The Nez Perce Village that was attacked

We left our little camp on Friday morning to end up in Missoula. We are planning on staying in Missoula for about 10 days so we can get caught up on some things, visit friends, and fish, fish, fish!  Oh yeah, we saw Yongsam on the road as we were driving near Florence.  We hope he makes it to his next destination - Missoula!