Between Stone Walls and Storytelling:

The Old Montana State Prison — History and Haunt

Perched on Main Street in Deer Lodge, the Old Montana State Prison reads like a chapter from Montana’s past: grey sandstone perimeter walls, crenelated towers, red-brick cellblocks, and the slow, weathered patina of more than a century of work and confinement. The complex—now preserved and interpreted by the Powell County Museum & Arts Foundation as the Old Montana Prison & Auto Museum—was built by convict labor beginning in the 1870s, served as the state’s primary penal facility until 1979, and today stands as a museum, a teaching place, and, for some visitors, a setting for encounters they describe as paranormal. 

A hard, practical past

The prison began as Montana Territory’s penitentiary and first received prisoners in 1871. Over decades the place expanded, using inmate labor to quarry, shape, and lay the sandstone walls that still define the compound. Building campaigns in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—most notably the 1912 brick cellhouse and later administrative additions—left a layered architectural record: functional correctional design overlaid with almost-castellated masonry that made the complex visually arresting. The site and many of its buildings are documented in the National Register of Historic Places nomination and catalogued by state archives. 

Life inside these walls was shaped by economy and policy as much as by the architecture. Long periods of overcrowding, underfunding, and a reliance on convict labor meant that daily routine often centered on hard work—road crews, brickmaking, quarrying—undertaken under strict rules. The Montana Historical Society and state prison records (convict registers and mugshot collections) preserve the administrative paper trail: names, offenses, movement lists and institutional reports that historians use to reconstruct prisoner lives, sentence conditions, and the ebb and flow of reforms. 

The riot that stayed in memory

The Old Prison’s history is not only institutional detail; it includes violence and crisis. In April 1959 inmates seized parts of the facility in a violent takeover that lasted roughly thirty-six hours, resulting in several deaths and multiple injuries. The takeover drew statewide—and for a time national—attention, culminating when the Montana National Guard and law-enforcement units used force to regain control; contemporary and later accounts note that bazooka fire was used to breach the cellblock towers during the assault. That 1959 disturbance is central to the prison’s later reputation: it punctuated a narrative of an overcrowded, antiquated institution that by the 1970s was judged inadequate, prompting the move to a modern facility outside Deer Lodge in 1979. Scholars and local historians have examined the riot’s causes and consequences in books and journal pieces; the event remains a primary historical touchstone for the site. 

From corrections to curation

When the last prisoners were transferred in 1979, the emptied structures presented a preservation challenge and an opportunity. Local stewards turned the complex toward interpretation: exhibits about the penal history, displays of prisoner-made items, the preserved administrative and cell areas, and more recently a suite of museums including an auto collection and community exhibits. The Powell County Museum & Arts Foundation runs tours—historical, dusk, and special interpretive programs—that aim to balance factual history, objects, and human stories. The site’s official materials emphasize inmate labor, notable people (from wardens to long-term inmates), and the difficult conditions that shaped daily life. 

Stories in the margins: hauntings and the language of experience

Alongside the archival record and interpretive exhibits runs another current: personal testimony and tourism shaped around the idea that old prisons hold echoes. For many visitors and for certain local guides, the Old Montana Prison’s long, often painful human history makes it a natural magnet for stories of lingering presence. Since the museum began offering overnight ghost tours and partnered events, various groups—professional paranormal teams, television crews, bloggers, and private investigators—have recorded EVPs, cold-spot anecdotes, objects moving, and unexplained audio phenomena. These accounts appear on local news sites, tourism blogs, event listings, and paranormal outlets. The museum itself advertises guided overnight ghost-investigation experiences that include investigative equipment and access to areas not open on normal tours. 

It’s important to treat these reports with the distinctions historians use in other contexts. The documented administrative record (convict registers, legal filings, National Register reports) supplies verifiable facts—dates, names, events. Paranormal claims are anecdotal: they report personal experience, sometimes accompanied by recordings or photographs, often interpreted within the investigators’ frameworks. When a local group posts an EVP or a visitor recounts a cold spot in a cell tier, they are contributing firsthand testimony to a living folklore surrounding the site; those claims do not change the archival record, but they do shape how people remember and experience the place today. For that reason, I treat paranormal accounts as instructive about cultural memory and visitor experience—valuable in that social sense—even while noting they are not documentary evidence in the historical-archival sense. 

Why the stories endure

Why do such narratives persist at the Old Prison? Part of the answer is architectural and sensory: tall walls, narrow galleries, barred windows and dim tiers create a powerful aesthetic that primes visitors to feel unease. Another part is narrative: real episodes of suffering, hunger, violence and the 1959 riot furnish a strong historical seedbed for imaginative extension. Finally, public interest in the paranormal is itself a robust cultural current—television shows, ghost-hunt events, and online communities keep bringing people back. In many cases what people describe (voices on recordings, fleeting shapes, sudden chills) are experiences they report respectfully and often with a desire to connect to the human past of the place. Museum staff and local historians often mediate that interest, offering contexts that foreground facts while permitting visitors to tell their own stories. 

A respectful balance

For visitors, the Old Montana State Prison offers multiple legitimate experiences: rigorous history, material culture, reflection on penal policy, and—if desired—participation in evening investigations and folklore-making. A respectful approach listens to survivor testimony, studies the archival record, and distinguishes between primary documentary sources and contemporary anecdote. The stone and brick keep their silence; the stories—documentary and personal—are the voices we can return to, record, and discuss. For historians, museum professionals, journalists, and curious travelers alike, that balance—between honoring evidence and acknowledging human testimony—keeps the site alive in memory without collapsing memory into mere sensationalism. 

Short annotated bibliography

National Register of Historic Places Inventory — Old Montana State Prison (NRHP nomination PDF) — detailed architectural description, historic significance, and official listing information. Primary historical source (architectural/registration). PDF: https://npgallery.nps.gov/GetAsset/0928e359-fb87-4069-973b-83bd1fc28d7b

.Powell County Museum & Arts Foundation — Old Montana Prison & Auto Museum (official museum site, history & tours) — museum-run pages describing site history, exhibits, and the current program of tours (including ghost-tour listings). Museum/interpretive primary source for present operations; includes promotional material for paranormal events (anecdotal in nature). https://www.pcmaf.org/old-prison-museum and https://www.pcmaf.org/ghost-tours

Montana State Prison records, 1871–1981 (Archives West / Montana Historical Society) — catalogue of inmate registers and institutional records useful for primary-source historical research. Primary archival source. https://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:/80444/xv87228

“A tough place to live”: The 1959 Montana State Prison riot (Montana: The Magazine of Western History / MPI listing) — scholarly and interpretive accounts of the 1959 riot and institutional context. Secondary scholarly source grounded in contemporary records. https://arc.lib.montana.edu/mpi/item/4638

Great Falls Tribune (feature/history piece on the 1959 riot) — contemporary local journalism and retrospective reporting on the riot and its aftermath. Secondary/local journalism (useful for public memory, contemporary reportage). https://www.greatfallstribune.com/story/life/my-montana/2014/09/07/national-guard-storms-rioting-prison/15156885/

MTMemory / Montana Historical Society digital collections (convict mugshots, interior photos) — digitized photographs and inmate description sheets (1910–1955). Primary visual and administrative sources. https://www.mtmemory.org/nodes/view/12954 and item images. 

SouthwestMT — “We Spent a Night in Montana’s Haunted Prison” (visitor/blog account) — a contemporary visitor narrative that documents an overnight ghost-tour experience and personal impressions. Anecdotal / tourism account. https://southwestmt.com/blog/a-night-in-montanas-haunted-prison/ and related Visit Montana listings. 

Local media & paranormal reports — KTVQ local story and a regional posting of EVP/audio claims (963theblaze) — articles noting overnight investigations and published recordings/EVPs claimed by local paranormal groups. Anecdotal/paranormal-source (first-person claims; not documentary history). https://www.ktvq.com/news/montana-news/would-you-stay-overnight-hunting-ghosts-at-the-old-montana-prison and https://963theblaze.com/ghost-voice-caught-on-tape-old-montana-prison-evp-video/