Deer Lodge was the site of the College of Montana, the first institution of higher learning in the state.
Deer Lodge is the county seat of Powell County, Montana, United States. The population was 3,111 at the 2010 census. The city is perhaps best known as the home of the Montana State Prison, a major local employer. The Montana State Hospital in Warm Springs, and former state tuberculosis sanitarium is in nearby Galen are the result of the power the western part of the state held over Montana at statehood due to the copper and mineral wealth in that area. Deer Lodge was also once an important railroad town, serving as a division headquarters for the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad (“the Milwaukee Road”) before the railroad’s local abandonment in 1980.
The current Montana State Prison occupies a campus 3.5 miles (5.6 km) west of town. The former prison site, at the south end of Deer Lodge’s Main Street, is now the
Old Prison Museum. In addition to a former cell-block building, the museum complex includes a theater, antique and automobile museums, and a former Milwaukee Road “Little Joe” electric locomotive.
Deer Lodge is also the location of
Grant-Kohrs Ranch National Historic Site, dedicated to the interpretation of the frontier cattle ranching era. This site was the home of Conrad Kohrs, one of the famous “Cattle Kings” of Montana whose land holdings once stretched over a million acres (4,000 km²) of Montana, Wyoming, and Alberta, Canada. The Grant-Kohrs ranch was built in 1862 by Johnny Grant, a Scottish/French/Metis fur-trader and trapper who encouraged his people to settle in Deer Lodge because of its pleasant climate and large areas of bunch grass prairie, ideal for raising cattle and horses. The city’s name derives from a geological formation known as Warm Springs Mound which contained natural saline that made for a natural salt lick for the local deer population, the protected valley in which Deer Lodge is located was where most of the local wildlife would winter as the temperatures lowered in the high country.
From the City of Deer Lodge
DEER LODGE, 98.8 m. (4,530 alt, 3,510 pop.), seat of Powell County, is bisected by Clark Fork of the Columbia, here called the Deer Lodge River. On the west side of the town are the somber stone walls and guard towers of the State penitentiary, and the yards and shops of the C.M. St. P & P R.R., the town's leading industrial unit, which employs 250 men. On the east side, which has broad streets, are many sturdy square houses popular in the West during the 1870*5 and i88o's. Castles built with the wealth of mines and ranches and log cabin homes survive almost side by side.
In 1862, when the first important gold strikes in this area attracted attention (see HISTORY), a shack town sprang up here, called variously, Cottonwood, Spanish Forks, and La Barge. Deer Lodge was the name officially adopted in 1864. An important stop on the Mullan Wagon Road, it was listed by Captain Mullan in his Miner's and Traveler's Guide. It was one of the few places along the route where immigrants could obtain fresh beef and vegetables, and the services of a blacksmith. Prospectors coming up from the south called it the "good little town on the road to Bear" because it was a pleasant place to break the journey on the trail to Bearmouth, a mining camp 50 miles farther down the Clark Fork (see Tour 1, sec. d).
From Montana, A State Guide Book, Page 208