Hotel Deer Lodge ...

I've mentioned before that I'm a big fan of old signs ... they're very intriguing visually, and they have the ability to evoke an earlier time in a way that few other things can. Here's a shot of another one that I've always liked.

The Hotel Deer Lodge was a classic downtown hostelry in its namesake city, a hub of activity there for the better part of a century. By the time I got to know it in the 1980s, though, it was down on its luck ... by then, it was a faded, mostly residential property, and most of the travelers stayed at the Super 8 out by the freeway. The hotel closed not long after that, and it's been sitting there empty ever since.

Up till the end, though, it was still the local Greyhound bus terminal, and I remember another big old sign in the lobby, next to what once might have been a transportation desk. All the bus schedules were listed there, but there were train schedules, too ... even though no passenger trains stopped in Deer Lodge anymore. A couple of the trains on the sign, in fact, had been gone since the 1950s. For some reason, I really liked that.