Deer Lodge

Deer Lodge is an incorporated city in, and the county seat of, Powell County, Montana, United States. The population was 2,938 at the 2020 census. The city is perhaps best known as the home of the Montana State Prison, a major local employer. The Montana State Hospital in Warm Springs, and former state tuberculosis sanitarium in nearby Galen are the result of the power the western part of the state held over Montana at statehood due to the copper and mineral wealth in that area. Deer Lodge was also once an important railroad town, serving as a division headquarters for the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad before the railroad's local abandonment in 1980.

The current Montana State Prison occupies a campus 3.5 miles west of town. The former prison site, at the south end of Deer Lodge's Main Street, is now the Old Prison Museum.