Location: On I-90, 37 miles west of Butte, 83 miles east of Missoula. Population: 3100. Visitor Information: Powell County Chamber of Commerce,
1109 Main Street
Deer Lodge, Montana 59722; Phone: (406) 846-2094;
Email: chamber@powellcountymontana.com;
Website: www.powellcountymontana.com
Montana’s second oldest city, Deer Lodge developed after the first gold strike in the state was made nearby on Gold Creek in 1852.
The former state prison located right on Main Street is now open to the public as the Old Prison Museum, featuring a cellblock building, an automobile museum ranked one of the top 10 in the US, and a frontier museum featuring one of the West’s largest collections of guns and memorabilia.
Deer Lodge is also the location of Grant-Kohrs Ranch National Historic Site, interpreting the frontier cattle ranching era on land held by cattle king Conrad Kohrs, whose holdings once covered a million acres.
