We needed some pet and van supplies, so we headed to Butte, thinking we would then travel on to Bannack State Park. While in Butte, we changed our minds, which is an advantage to having no reservations made.

After our shopping, we drove through the advertised historic downtown of Butte, which has many old historical buildings, all of which are busy places of business. This is not a tourist loop by any means. Parking is hard to find, and people there are working, not walking around admiring the sights.

Montana Tech campus (formerly Montana State School of Mines) is on the edge of Big Butte Open Space park where Big Butte and its big letter “M” are located. There are trails for hiking, skiing, biking and UTVs all over this area. We found a place to park and hiked up to the “M”.

Butte has 10,000 miles of mining tunnels and was a huge supplier of copper at the turn of the twentieth century. Other valuable trace elements were found as well. The city streets reflect this with names like iron, aluminum, platinum, gold, silver, etc. among the normal street names like main, broadway and park.

We stayed at the Butte KOA, which is right off I-90 and next to the visitor information center with a nice walking path.