The Beaverhead River, Bannack Ghost Town, and Pioneer Mountains Scenic Byway

We arrived in Dillon in the afternoon of July 24th. This town lies along the Beaverhead River, next on Jack's fishing list. Dillon is a well laid out town and we easily found the visitor's center and Chamber of Commerce. Outside the center was a masterful bronze sculpture of two cowboys or ranchers on horseback shaking hands, which gives the impression they are sealing a contract. We located a nearby flyshop and a nearby KOA that had access to the Beaverhead. We headed first to the flyshop where a lone woman was on the phone closing a guided trip deal. We noticed that a driftboat guide for  one day was going for $475 for two fishers and $415 if one fisher. Jack thinks these prices are ridiculously high and after waiting about 15 minutes for the lady to get off the phone, we decided to go to the KOA, which had a nice spot with access to the Beaverhead.

When a handshake was all that was needed to close a deal.

Beaverhead Evening of Fishing  beside the KOA (by Jack)

After claiming our KOA spot, Carol and I decided to first drive upstream to investigate water conditions and fishing access spots, and see the large Clark Canyon Reservoir Dam on the river. The dam is a large earthen dam that is there solely to collect and control water for irrigation of farmlands downstream. The dam does not generate electric power. The river was full to its banks and flowed fast through the prairie, making it appear to be a fast flowing canal. What I saw reminded me of the Owens River near Bishop in east central California. There the Owens River channels most of the creeks and mountain snow melt and pipes it to Los Angeles as drinking water in a canal and pipeline (another case of the long tentacles of a city altering the country landscape).
 
The Beaverhead has a reputation of being VERY hard to catch fish, particularly for a bank/wading fisherman like me, due to deep fast water and thick overhanging willows. My guide books call it a "trophy water," meaning it has large fish that are very hard to catch, and go to great lengths to emphasize how tough the fishing is, even for experienced anglers. Such a river is mostly fished with nymphs from boats. About 15 miles downstream there is another diversion dam that takes about half the water out of the stream for irrigation purposes.

Our KOA is even further downstream. The river looked better here except it was excessively full of floating river-bottom moss. Moss constantly gets on your lines and flies, requiring you to stop after every cast to remove it from your line and flies. Nevertheless, I found a nice spot on the river where trout were chasing rising nymphs. I fished for about an hour and and had one take that immediately broke my line. I decided to call it a night and make a new plan.

Dam Moss

In the morning Carol and I headed to the Poindexter Slough, a small tributary of the Beaverhead, just above Dillon and 22 miles below the dam. Here the water ran very calm and clear with a wavy moss bottom and moss floating by. Several times I could see trout taking nymphs, but I was unable to catch any. Very wary trout.

Jack and Carol starting the morning fishing and birding at Poindexter Slough.

Look at this! Wavy moss all over the bottom of the stream.

After lunch we went to a fly shop for advice. I got a batch of recommended smaller nymphs and some ideas on where to go to fish that evening. While there, Carol bought herself a Japanese Tenkara fly rod. The latest "zen" minimalist fly fishing craze (actually an ancient Japanese fishing technique that seems to be catching on here). It reminds Carol and me of the days when we were kids fishing with a line tied to the small end of a long bamboo pole. But, hey, now maybe Carol will get hooked on fly fishing.

Wow! Huckleberry ice cream. This is better than fishin' the Beaverhead!

That evening we headed up river to the spot where the fellow in the fly shop told us to go. Again fish were rising on the far bank. Cast after cast  produced only one strike that broke off my top nymph and dropper nymph. We fished until it was dark and we both were chilled, and then we headed back to the KOA.

The evening river access. A wet wade even before you get to the river.

 We discussed the fishing problems here, and decided to head for the next rivers, near Livingston. Maybe we'll come back through this area and try this river again later. [Carol: Jack could probably catch fish here if he sprung for a guide--and maybe a new fly rod, and different line, and different flies--but he doesn't want to spend the money because he doesn't really like the river that much. Too much like an irrigation canal.]

Carol writing now while Jack naps. The next morning (July 26th) we packed up and headed off, planning a side trip to tour the nearby ghost town of Bannack and drive the Pioneer Mountains Scenic Byway. Bannack Ghost Town is a state park. It's a well-preserved gold mining boom town from the 1860s, and was actually the capital of Montana Territory for awhile, before it became a state. It's way out in the middle of nowhere now. Richer gold strikes were found elsewhere and finally everybody in the whole town just left for greener pastures. The buildings are mostly in great shape, for their age. It's a classic Western frontier town, with board sidewalks and a dirt main street lined with wooden and log buildings. Could easily be a movie set.

Bannack Main Street

The only brick building in town was once the courthouse.

Fancy staircase inside the courthouse.

With a nice view of the town.

It was a rip-roaring place at one time! In fact, at one point a group of vigilantes hanged the sheriff and two deputies -- the gallows is still there, visible from the main street. The sheriff was discovered to be the mastermind of a criminal gang of highwaymen and robbers terrorizing the countryside. They called themselves, with a certain ironic touch, "The Innocents." (Their password to each other: "I am innocent.") Bullets flying through these streets on a Saturday, or even a Sunday, night was commonplace, not even sneezed at. As one woman wrote in her journal at the time, everybody is too drunk to shoot straight anyway.

The only church in town.

We had a nice afternoon wandering through the town. All the doors are unlocked, so you can pretty much go anywhere you want. The nicest building in town was the Masonic lodge, which had the schoolhouse on the bottom floor and the lodge upstairs. This is still somehow an active "historic" Masonic lodge. The lodge is completely furnished and decorated with Masonic furniture and artifacts from the late 1800s. The carpet, covered with Masonic symbols, is original. A large portrait of George Washington in his Mason's clothing hangs on the wall. An older Mason was there giving tours of the lodge and explaining all the items. This lodge is supported by other lodges all over the area and once a year they have a meeting and over 200 Masons crowd into this relatively small room in a ghost town. Very cool.

Masonic Temple above and schoolhouse below.

All this is authentic Masonic furniture and decor of the period.

Next, leaving Bannack, we drove over the scenic byway, heading up to the Butte area where we would spend the night. This road closes to auto traffic on December 1 and becomes exclusively a snowmobile road into and over the mountains. It starts with rolling brown treeless ranchlands drained by Grasshopper Creek, and then becomes steep tree-covered granite mountains, the headwaters of the Wise River. Jack had to stop and look at the river a few times. His kind of trout waters--small, with boulders and tumbling rapids. Snowcovered peaks appear again. You're never too far away from snow in Montana, even at the end of July, it seems. The Scenic Byway was scenic, as advertised! (Forgot to take photos, for some reason.)

Pulled into Butte and decided to use a $45 motel coupon for a break from camping. This was at America's Best Value Inn. We haven't stayed at one of these before, and it met all our requirements--good Wifi, relatively quiet, comfy bed, and 6 pillows! Also had a good flatscreen TV with free movies. We watched the latest Star Trek movie.  Our loyal blog followers might remember last year's Epic Journey blog, when Jack got thrown out of the theater showing this movie, when the movie staff thought he was illegally photographing the movie screen with his iPad. (He wasn't--he was trying to photograph the fancy theater reclining seats for our blog. [Jack aside: Besides, it was Memorial Day, nice way to treat a vet.] So he finally got to see the movie...