A trip to Butte, America

Butte is one of the most unique towns in Montana. Last October, I took a tour of the town, riding through its cavernous back alleys on a golf cart with my tour guide. While the facades of the buildings are wonderful and beautiful, the real treasure of Butte is what you don't see on the main streets. Take a walk around its alleys, and the abandoned neighborhoods and there's no end to the great things. Old advertisements hand painted on brick walls, chipping paint and vintage neon signs. The light is great for photography, slanting in at odd angles and wrapping around the rusting fire escapes in that perfectly photogenic way. The above photgraph is of the interior of one of the old hoist houses used at the height of Butte's mining days. Talk about character. It's full of pigeons, pigeon poop, and still has a wall full of abnormally large wrenches used for working on the equipment. The hoist was used to lower and raise men and tools into the mine shafts by cable.