Deer Lodge, Montana.

On our way to visit the Grant-Kohrs Ranch National Historic Site in Deer Lodge, we drove by the imposing gated facility at the south end of town. Just off I-90, the Old Montana Prison Complex contains five museums inside. Due to the pandemic, however, the facility is presently closed to the public as this is being written in November 2020. All I was able to do was capture some photographs of the walled exterior that was built by convicts in the late 1800s.

To be sure that the convicts knew how hard it would be to escape, they were made to build the 24-foot (7.3m) walls that were buried deep in the ground to prevent tunneling. When the museum is open, visitors can wander through the grounds, visit the cell blocks, and take advantage of the other museums in the facility. For a single fee, visitors can tour the Powell County Museum, the Frontier Montana Museum, Yesterdays Playthings, and the Montana Auto Museum. In 1979, work was completed on a new state prison complex about three miles (4.8 km) southwest of the town and all prisoners were moved there.

About the photo: The complex is a challenge to get an exterior shot from across the street. That sandstone wall is three blocks long. Capturing the entire east end of the facility required that I create a panoramic image. As you can see at the left end of the image, I wasn’t able to include the entire wall. I’d captured images from both my Nikon D500 and my Samsung S20U. I found the best images to stitch together came from the cellphone, only because I picked a better vantage point when I captured the cellpic images. I used Lightroom’s panorama stitching tool to create the image from two photos and then made the final tweaks in Luminar 4. Click on the image for a closer look (if your browser supports the function.)

John Steiner