Yesterday, Desiree and I drove through the Big Hole Valley and spent the better part of two hours visiting Bannack Ghost Town. The town and some nearby campsites are currently a state park.
Bannack
was founded in 1862 following the discovery of gold along nearby Grasshopper
Creek, which also sparked one of the first major gold rushes in the region.
Bannack and Virginia City, some 50 miles away as the crow flies, flourished
concurrently.
Along
with prospectors, a host of thieves and bad actors also swept into what is now
southwestern Montana. Notably, on January 10, 1864, Henry Plummer and two of
his road agent associates were arrested and summarily hanged in Bannack by a
company of Vigilantes, a group of citizens who took the law into their own
hands to combat this criminal activity. The town briefly served as Montana's
territorial capital from 1864 to 1865 but failed to secure this position
permanently. As the gold reserves dwindled, miners moved on to more promising
locations, and Bannack's population began to slowly decline, with a significant
downturn in the 1940s. This decline continued, leading to its eventual
abandonment by the 1970s.
I am
sharing a few photographs from our tour of Bannack.
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—Mitchell Hegman
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