July 31, 2015 Mining for sapphires, brothel house and memorial to miners

Friday, July 31, 2015 Mining for sapphires, brothel house and memorial to miners

Our first stop today was to go to Gem Mountain in Philipsburg to try and find some raw sapphires.  We had done something similar to this in North Carolina.  I was hoping to find a big enough one for them to fire and then cut.  We did find a lot of small ones and only 1 that I could do something with which I elected not too.  We had fun and that is all that matters.  As we were looking for these jewels in the dirt one of the workers had mentioned that he sees moose almost every time he goes down this one road so guess what? Off we go to go find this moose.  Mike is still trying to get a look at a real moose.  No luck.  We had lunch at Doe Brothers Restaurant.  It has a soda fountain that dates back to 1920 and all of the tables were full so we sat at the counter.  We ordered a shake that was big enough for the both of us to share and a bison hamburger that we should of shared.  Both were delicious.  I even had home made potato chips that I took home because I was stuffed.

We left Philipsburg and headed to Butte, MT.  I read about this brothel and of course Mike was all for it.  Dumas Brothel was built in the Victorian style in 1890 and ran until 1982.Rumor has it that it was still in business in the early 90's.   I thought that is was very interesting of all of the stories that were put up on the walls.  Still a lot of work needs to be done but you get the idea as to what it was like back in the days of old.  There was an underground tunnels that went from the brothal to the hotels in the area and there are ghosts.  We didn't see any though.

We left and continued up the hill to the Granite Mountain Monument Overlook. This is a memorial to the 168 men that died in 1917 in a mine fire.  It had recordings of letters that were written by some miners that were trapped.  It is on top the mountain were you can get a panoramic view of the surrounding area,  You can also see mine heads around.  It was a very moving and peaceful setting all at the same time.

Nice ending to our day of sightseeing.

Happy Birthday, Glenda!

Here is what sapphires look like in the rough

This is one way to decorate your trees for Halloween

A Bald Eagle waiting for breakfast

Alicia here is another horse for you

This is downstairs were the miners would go

The Madam's bedroom

and her living room

Upstairs room were the wealthy would go

The Dumas Brothel 

The Memorial

View from the Memorial looking over the mines