ghost town huntin'

so i travel back a ways into montana and then cut up into the green monarch mountains; up prospect creek canyon rd to coopers gulch and a janky gravel forest service road up over the pass back into a different part of idaho(damn rough going, making less than 10mph progress most of the way over the pass, i opted to take the freeway back through cour d'alene for the return). as i came down into the valley below i started passing what id come hunting; theres a line of ghost and semi-ghost mining towns coming down off the mountain left over from the silver boom. all these towns were involved in the mine wars around the turn of the last century. in most of them, little is left but tailings trailing down the mountain sides, but a few had considerable ruins left, even the tiny bit left over from the frisco mine that was dynamited by miners on the commandeered train labelled the "dynamite express" in 1892 and never rebuilt. one of the first houses i came to inexplicably had dried animal carcasses hanging in the windows above handstitched curtains. kinda creepy... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coeur_d'Alene,_Idaho_labor_confrontation_of_1899