Deer Lodge once was a two-stoplight town. It’s a quieter, less-populated place now. The town lost 1,000 residents after the railroad pulled out. This view looks south toward the old prison, towers visible in the distance.
By Kevin S. Giles
I have memories of my father building a contraption that sprinkled used motor oil on the gravel road beside our house. He hitched it to his 1953 Chevy pickup, driving it back and forth to keep the dust down. Neighbors who wanted to help with this endeavor, which included everyone living in the four houses at the intersection of College Avenue and Claggett Street, stood on the
This photo from 1965 shows a conveyer belt hauling earth out of our expanding basement at the corner of College Avenue and Claggett Street in Deer Lodge.
contraption as it bounced along, turning faucet handles that released the oil. It seems gravity created the flow. Possibly it was something more ingenious than that, such as a pump, but time has blurred the details. Dad was blue collar to the core. His first love, I think, was tinkering with machinery. When he wasn’t working inside the walls of Montana State Prison, he was running machines in the detached garage behind our house. He rebuilt motors. He also owned at least a dozen machines for sharpening saws and blades. Often, he kept several running at once, a cacophony of grinding and screeching. Even today, I hear those ear-wrenching sounds.