Moving Sale!

When I walk the streets of Uptown I often imagine the trolleys and horse-drawn carriages that pulled people along in this booming mining camp. I often wonder, what did they look like? Who were they?

Layers of stories – this is how I see and how I photograph. The story of the 100-year old business-owner of Matt’s place – her face has aged but the background of the business is still the same. As you visit the Original during the Montana Folk Festival, you can almost imagine the miners holding their lunch pails filled with pasties and gravy. During a walking tour, you can smell the history in the underground speakeasy that was packed during prohibition.

We are made from the people and events that came before us. For me, my great-grandmother was born in Elkhorn, Montana, which is now a ghost town about 45 miles from Butte. Since I was a child, I have been fascinated with the layers of intricately-designed wallpaper and leftover box springs in these homes that are now vanishing into piles of wood. It was always an adventure to explore the buildings – the worn, broken floorboards, the roofs falling in, and the stairs falling sideways. My history lies in Elkhorn – but my future history resides in Butte.

I believe in Butte, and I believe our youth, community, Montana and the rest of the world should see us as we are – a town that helped support the war efforts via copper and other metals, a place where you are not afraid to let strangers help you change a flat tire, a place where you can see, smell, and even taste the mysterious tales that seem too overly fantastic to be true.