Don't Tell Anyone How Great Helena, MT Is

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I enjoyed one of the most amazing days of my life in Helena, Montana on Saturday, and Sunday wasn't half bad either.  My new friends, Zoe Ann Stoltz, historian at the Montana Historical Society, and Heather (whoops, don't know her last name and won't hold up posting while I find out), librarian at Carroll College, took me on a whirlwind of interviews and museum tours, a Mansion District drive-through, estate sales, and, naturally, bakeries.

Here are just a few momentos of fabulous Helena (but sssshhhhh, Zoe says, don't tell anyone how friendly, open, polite, helpful, generous, kind and fabulous 99% of the population is.  If Helena gets crowded, it won't be this great anymore.)

This iron horse was in someone's front yard, a selling feature.

One of many interesting historic homes in Helena.

Me with my toes on one side of the continental divide and my heels on the other while I try to control Dory and Deuce, the dogs of historian Zoe Ann Stoltz.

A scene from near the continental divide, facing east (I think).

Helena Cathedral.

Public art outside the Holter Museum.

Another iron horse, in the Mansion District.  During Montana's Gold Rush, there were more millionaires per capital in Helena than anywhere else in the nation.

In case I come back...

The Capitol of Montana

A mountain ash outside the Capitol.  The red berries ferment on the trees over the winter and in the spring, the birds eat them and get tipsy and flop on the grass in front of the Capitol.

Jeannette Rankin of Montana, the first woman ever democratically elected to any national legislative body.  Two years after Montana gave women the right to vote, in 1914, she was elected to U.S. Congress.  Her first vote was cast against the U.S. joining World War I, and when she returned to Congress in 1940, she cast the lone vote against joining World War II.  Her vote ruined her political career.  Would that current politicians were that courageous in voting their consciences.

The interior, below the dome.

A shot of the dome itself.

The grand staircase.

Artwork and poetry of students from all over Montana, displayed in the Capitol.

Look how my camera distorts scenes that, I assure you, are perfectly straight.

The stained glass at the top of the grand staircase.

A buffalo skull sculpture at the Montana Historical Society, near the Capitol.

A man named Meagher, from Ireland, fought in the U.S. Civil War, distinguished himself in Montana and then fell off a steamboat on the Missouri River. His body was never found.

Self-explanatory.

A bullwhacker, the kind of man who drove oxen across the Rockies by cracking a whip over their heads.

A statue of a newsboy on Last Chance Gulch, a street named after a gold mine.  The street has as much character as the name suggests.