MTLinks - Bannack, Montana

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Bannack

A view from 1939:

BANNACK (5,510 alt., 180 pop.), Montana's oldest town, which was named for the Bannack Indians, who once roamed the region.

Here, on July 28, 1862, John White and a small party of prospectors from Colorado discovered a bonanza of placer gold along GRASSHOPPER CREEK. News of the strike spread, and in a few months a roaring, vigorous tent, shack, and log cabin city of about 1,000 people grew up. A horde of rough-and-ready adventurers from all parts of the West came in, among them scoundrels such as Henry Plummer, who had been run out of California and Nevada gold camps. For a year, until vigilantes caught up with him and his deputies, Plummer and his gang robbed and killed miners by the score.

In September 1863 Sidney Edgerton, a brilliant lawyer of Akron, Ohio, who had been appointed chief justice of the newly created Idaho Territory, arrived here with his family. He was on his way to Lewiston, Idaho, but because of the lateness of the season and the difficulties of travel over the mountains, he decided to remain in the lively camp for the winter. In the spring he returned to Washington to advocate creation of a new territory. On May 26, 1864, Congress, heeding his pleas, created the Territory of Montana; President Lincoln named Edgerton its Governor and Bannack the temporary capital.

Governor Edgerton called the first Montana legislative assembly to order at Bannack on December 12, 1864. By that time the Grasshopper diggings had proved shallow and most of the miners had pulled stakes for the richer prospects in Alder Gulch; there Virginia City boasted a boom population of about 10,000, with as many more people in its vicinity. The first legislature therefore decided that the second session should convene at Virginia City.

Bannack remained a mining town, with small quartz mines and placer operations nearby. Its post office was closed in January 1938, but the weathered remains of the State's First Capital, First Jail, and First Hotel still face the single street in the narrow gulch.

Source: Montana: A State Guide Book; Compiled and Written by the Federal Writers' Project of the Work Projects Administration for the State of Montana; September, 1939.