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Digging Butte: This Montana mine town has a lode of antiques shops - Mountain Travel Guide - Montana travel quide - Brief Article

* Butte, Montana, wears its past proudly. It boomed in the 1900s as a copper-mining town, and the streets are still lined with many stately Victorian homes that sprang up then. Its more than 4,000 historic buildings form the nation's second largest National Historic Landmark District.

But Butte is second to none when it comes to antiquing. The best place to get started is in a corner of the Uptown Historic District, from Montana to Wyoming Streets and Granite to Mercury Streets. You'll find more than a dozen antiques shops and consignment stores, and a rich vein of heirloom furniture and collectibles to be mined.

Start with Someplace Else (117 N. Main St.; 406/782-2864), an antiquing El Dorado, with more than 125 consigners offering everything from washboards to Roseville pottery. At Old Butte Candy and Antiques (123 N. Main; 406/723-4341), Arts and Crafts furniture and collectible cameras are for sale alongside sweets.

Looking for the perfect antique cocktail gown? Head southeast a block to Rediscoveries (83 E. Park St.; 406/723-2176), where a bonanza of vintage taffeta and costume jewelry awaits. Two blocks west, D&G Antiques (16 N. Montana St.; 406/723-4522) carries Western prints and etchings plus timeless kitchenware.

You can work up an appetite mining for antiques, so walk east two blocks to West Park Street and Gamers Cafe (15 W. Park; 406/723-5453), a traditional Western luncheonette known for its chicken pies and Cornish pasties since 1904. The menu-traditional miners' fare--is another tribute to Butte's past.

Lynn Donaldson

Maps that stay above it all

* In flight, looking down at the Western landscape from some 35,000 feet, do you wonder what that mesa, mountain, highway, or city might be? New Passenger Flight Maps will clue you in. Due out this month, the maps will detail, in shaded relief, what's on the ground below air corridors out of Denver to six cities: Chicago, Dallas, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and San Francisco. They'll be printed on heavy glossy paper that folds out easily. Each will call out points of interest, most visible from the air; on the back, you'll find facts about weather, geography, and flying. The maps will be available at Denver bookstores or by phone. $6.95 plus $1.50 shipping and handling. (970) 375-2321 or www.spinmaps.com.

Claire Walter

A museum that really computes

* Remember room-size mainframe computers? Or Kaypros, early personal computers? Electronic football? You can see them at the 12-year-old Compuseum, the American Computer Museum in Bozeman, Montana. It's dedicated to documenting not just computers, but the broad history of communications, from early forms of writing to the Internet. The museum's exhibits range from a clay cuneiform tablet to an arithmometer (a mechanical calculator) and an Apollo Moon Mission guidance computer. In addition to a 19th-century office, there are "historic" electronic toys and video games. Closed Sun-Mon, Thu; $3.234 E. Babcock St.; (406) 587-7545 or www.compuseum.org.

Caroline Patterson

Sweet sleep in Telluride

* Set on the fringes of Telluride's historic town center, the Hotel Telluride, which opened last fall, is a stylish place to stay. Outside, it's an upscale mountain chalet with a few twists: a porte cochere, balconies, a turret. Inside, 59 guest rooms feature luxurious furnishings and rich fabrics. There's plenty of pampering offered in the hotel's day spa and a generous breakfast buffet at the Bistro tavern. For skiers, the hotel couldn't be more handy: It's a short stroll from the Telluride Ski & Golf Company's gondola and chair-lift. There's first-rate spring skiing through April 7; save time to explore the new 733-acre Prospect Bowl expansion area. From $329 for two in March (rates drop in April and May). 199 N. Cornet St., Telluride; (866) 468-3501 or www.thehoteltelluride.com.

C.W.

Riding and gliding at Silver Mountain

* The Silver Mountain Ski and Summer Resort in Kellogg, Idaho, has long been famous for its 3.1-mile gondola route. Now that lift can be a visitor's ticket to the new Silver Mountain Ice Skating Center, an outdoor rink in a mountain meadow outside the Mountain Haus Lodge, with views of the northern Bitterroot Range and Cabinet Mountains. All-day skating packages (including lift ticket and skate rentals) cost $14. The rink (open only in winter) is the start of an expansion planned for the next few years that will boost Silver's skiable terrain and vertical drop. (208) 783-1111 or www.silvermt.com.

Julie Fanselow

25 years of great design

* Feb 23-May 26. A quarter of a century of America's best and most cutting-edge decorative arts, industrial design, graphics, and architecture is showcased at the Denver Art Museum's US Design 1975-2000. Organized thematically and set against the late 20th century's social and cultural context, it features both the mundane and the ethereal: Everything from elegantly sculpted plastic wastebaskets to modern architectural landmarks was fair game for the curators of this groundbreaking exhibit. 100 W. 14th Ave. Pkwy.; (720) 865-5000 or www.denverartmuseum.org.

C.W.

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