Kerouac said it better..

Alright...this post is going to be dedicated to to Butte, Montana. This might get wordy...but the next posts won't be. As many of you know, Cindi, my girlfriend, is from this very unique place. It used to be an expansive mining town nestled a mile high against the Continental Divide in the Rocky Mountains. It was once called the "Richest Hill on Earth" and has been described as "A Mile High and a Mile Deep", since the mines actually, against all physics, delved that deep into the earth. It used to be one of the richest cities in the world per capita when the mines were going full steam. Winter grips this beautiful and treacherous landscape for 6 months at a stretch. Jack Kerouac visited this place frequently on his journeys east-west, west-east. Reportedly his favourite bar in the world was this bar the "M & M", which still stands today. But, now the mines have been shuttered and the population and wealth have dwindled with it. I love taking pictures in places I've never been before or visit rarely, because I get much more excitement about the possibilities. You can walk the historic streets and feel the history. You can shoot expansive landscapes or microcosmic moments...there will be many more Butte posts to come, but I think Kerouac's memoirs of his first visit to Butte, describe it best.

"I slept en route to great Butte...over the Divide, near Anaconda and Pipestone Pass...Butte of the rough geographies. Arriving I stored my bag in a locker while some young Indian cat asked me to go drinking with him; he looked to crazy. I walked the sloped streets in super below-zero weather...and saw that everybody in Butte was drunk. It was Sunday night, I had hoped the saloons would stay open long enough for me to see them. They never even closed. Montanans drink to much, fight too much, love too much. What characters: old prospectors, gamblers, whores, miners, Indians, cowboys, tobacco-chewing business men! Hundreds of men played cards in an atmosphere of smoke and spittoons. It was the end of my quest for an ideal bar. I also saw a ninety-year-old man called Old John who cooly played cards till dawn with slitted eyes, and had been doing so since 1880... There were Greeks and Chinamen. The bus didn't leave Butte till dawn. I promised myself I'd come back. The bus roared down the slope and looking back I saw Butte on her fabled Golden Hill still lit like jewelry and sparkling on the mountainside in the blue northern dawn."