Montana Ghost Towns

Bannack State Park is one of the best preserved (as opposed to restored) ghost towns in the country. Over 50 buildings remain at Bannack today, each one with a story to tell...from tumble-down, one-room bachelor cabins to the once-stately Hotel Meade.

When gold was discovered in Grasshopper Creek in 1862, Bannack became Montana's first boom gold camp. By fall, there was a small town of tents, wagons, huts, wikiups and dug-outs. By the summer of 1863, the population of Bannack was around 3,000.

It was here that a whole list of Montana firsts were achieved...Bannack was the first territorial capital, and it had the first hotel, the first jail, the first school, the first chartered Masonic Lodge, the first hard rock mine, the first electric gold dredge, the first quartz stamp mill, the first commercial sawmill. And the first to have an outlaw for a sheriff. The infamous Henry Plummer and his "deputies" were actually a gang of murderous road agents who called themselves The Innocents.

On May 26, 1863, six prospectors discovered gold at Alder Gulch, some 75 miles northeast of Bannack. Word spread like wildfire and miners swarmed in. The hillsides were soon covered with tents, brush shelters and crude log cabins. The townsite of Virginia City was platted on June 16.

Some historians have estimated that at its peak, in mid 1864, the population of the nine towns of Alder Gulch, sometimes called the "Fourteen Mile City" reached 30,000. Virginia City became the largest settlement with an estimated population of 5,000 by mid-1864. The territorial capital was moved from Bannack to Virginia City in 1865. In 1975, the capital was moved to Helena after gold was discovered in Last Chance Gulch.

In the mid-1940's, Virginia City was on the brink of abandonment. It was about that time that Charles and Sue Bovey of Great Falls, MT began buying the dilapidated buildings. The town became the focus of one of the first preservation efforts in the West. Some of the the buildings were reconstructed using vintage materials. Others were stabilized or restored and still others were built to resemble buildings long disappeared. Bovey also constructed new buildings to accommodate tourists.

Virginia City once included more than a thousand buildings; some 237 remain today. Of those, more than 50 are first generation dating to the height of the gold rush from 1863 to 1865. Virginia City boasts the largest collection of gold rush era buidings in the West.

Today, Virginia City is a thriving tourist destination from Memorial Day through Labor Day.

After Charles Bovey finished restoring Virginia City, he wasn't done yet. Just a mile from Virinia City is Nevada City. At the peak of the Alder Gulch gold rush, Nevada City boasted dozens of stores and cabins that extended back about six blocks. By 1869, the population had fallen to one hundred ten, but there were still three general stores and two saloons. In 1872, the town had a miners' store, a brewery, a blacksmith, a butcher, livery stable and Masonic hall. By 1876, Nevada City was nearly a ghost town.

After the placer gold played out, dredges came through to find the precious metal that remained. As the first miners had cut trees for their cabins and changed the look of the landscape working their sluice boxes, the dredges continued this work, gnawing at the streambeds and leaving piles of tailings as big as barns. The dredges slowly worked their way toward Nevada City.

Gold dredging and highway construction ate up most of the original landmarks but the buildings on the north side of the highway were spared.

This is where Charles and Sue Bovey stepped in. The Boveys had been collecting buildings and other historical artifacts since the early 1940's. In 1959 Charles Bovey began moving his buildings and other collections to Nevada City. There are more than ninety buildings along Nevada City's streets. A few are original, many have been carefully placed along the streets, and some are historic reconstructions.

There is much to see in Nevada City. Two of the displays that I thought were quite interesting and unique to Nevada City were China Town and the Nevada City Music Hall.

The Music Hall houses the largest public collection of automated music machines in North America. Charles and Sue bovey began collection the machines in the 1940's, bringing together a unique assortment of antiques like no other collection anywhere. Many of these machines are still in great working order, while others are being restored in partnership with AMICA's Adopt-A-Piano program.

China Town is a collection of seven buildings moved from various locations, representing an often forgotten element of Montana mining camps. In 1870, 10% of the territorial population was Chinese and nearly all were male. Territorial laws prohibited Chinese from owning placer claims, so they mined the leavings of others or turned to other employment, such as laundries or domestic service.