Pintler Scenic Route
— — the old highway the interstate forgot.
Not only on a wall.
“Sixty-four miles of Montana Highway 1, looped off Interstate 90 between Drummond and Anaconda. The route runs past Georgetown Lake under the Pintler Mountains, through the brick-storefront town of Philipsburg, and along the upper Flint Creek valley. Granite mining left ghosts in the hills around Granite town, and the sapphire diggings outside Philipsburg still let walk-ins sift gravel. Most of the road sits above six thousand feet. The Pintler peaks hold their snow until July.
Pintler Scenic Route, on ceramic.
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The place, in three passes.
The Pintler Veterans Memorial Scenic Highway is the sixty-four-mile run of Montana Highway 1 that loops south off Interstate 90 between Drummond and Anaconda. The route follows Flint Creek through Philipsburg, climbs past Georgetown Lake at roughly sixty-four hundred feet, then drops into the Deer Lodge valley at Anaconda. It is named for the Anaconda-Pintler Wilderness, which runs along the Continental Divide just to the west. The byway was officially designated by the Montana legislature in 2005.
Philipsburg grew up on silver in the 1860s and held on through the manganese boom of both world wars. The brick storefronts along Broadway date from the late nineteenth century and were restored beginning in the 1990s. Granite town sits two thousand feet above Philipsburg on a switchback road, abandoned since the silver crash of 1893 — the bank vault still stands open. Sapphires from the nearby gravels of Rock Creek and the Sapphire Mountains have been mined commercially since 1892.
The byway is plowed year-round, but the character of the drive turns hard with the calendar. Georgetown Lake freezes solid by January and draws ice fishers for kokanee salmon through March. The Pintler peaks above the lake hold snow into July, and wildflowers in the high meadows along the Wilderness boundary peak in late July and early August. Aspen along Flint Creek turn through the second half of September. November and December bring black ice on the climb to Georgetown Pass.