Butte con't----May 30, 2010

We all went to church today. Dee and Marvin to a Baptist and Bob and I to the Serbian Orthodox. Their churches are always painted with pictures of their saints, Mary and Christ, but this one had the entire inside painted even the ceiling.There is a lot of liturgy and responses by the people and the priest. Afterward we went back to the coach to await a call from Marv and Dee to meet for lunch--their church started after ours. We had lunch at the Hanging Five, it was very busy but fast and good. We almost always bring back half of what we order because we can't eat it all at one setting anymore.

We all went home and Dee and Marvin rested and later Bob took me back to the Mine Museum so I could take the underground tour. He decided he didn't want to go. A young man who graduated from Montana Tech in engineering or mining was our tour guide. He has been doing this for several years and his Dad was a miner and he has talked to many of the old time miners. He and another person are preparing to write a book based on the memories of the miners from the area. We got suited up with a belt, battery and lamp and a hard hat after he explained a number of things up top first. He showed us how beginning miners started their digs and how they progressed and then we went down in a tunnel that was dug specifically for these tours but toward and included seeing the shaft to the Orphan Girl Mine. The students from the school there are still continuing to expand the tunnel for the tour. The mine is dry but about 44 degrees. The actual mine has water standing in it. When we got to about the 65' level we could look down the original shaft and see the original car that took at least 7 miners up and down to their work stations. Their were ore cars still on the tracks and he showed and told us how they drilled and blew rock out. The whole thing was very interesting but I was glad to get back home and warm up. Their thousands of miles of tunnels all under the city of Butte and it also stands on the Continental Divide fault. He said they do experience sink holes from time to time. Over the many years there have been about 2000 deaths in the mines and the worst hard mineral mine disaster was here in 1917 and 168 men were lost.