This Montana ghost town once held 10,000 people. Now you can walk through their homes

Montana’s most intact ghost town is waiting

Twenty-five miles west of Dillon, a town that once held 10,000 people, sits almost exactly as it was left. No reconstructions, no actors on the payroll, no gift shop where the saloon used to be.

Bannack State Park preserves more than 50 original buildings along a dirt Main Street at 5,837 feet in southwestern Montana, and you can walk into almost all of them. The gold ran out.

The people left. The buildings stayed.

Gold hit Grasshopper Creek on July 28, 1862

The date is carved into Montana history. A prospector found color in Grasshopper Creek, word spread fast, and within a year, more than 3,000 people had set up camp in the gulch. At its peak, the population hit 10,000.

By 1864, Bannack had become Montana’s first territorial capital.

Then the gold thinned, the crowds moved on to the next strike, and the town went through decades of boom and bust before the last residents walked out in the 1970s. The state started acquiring the property in 1954.

Step inside Hotel Meade’s grand staircase

The big red brick building at the center of town started as a courthouse.

Beaverhead County built it in 1875, used it for six years, then moved the county seat to Dillon and left it empty.

Dr. John Singleton Meade picked it up around 1890, added a porch and balcony, and turned it into the fanciest hotel in the territory. It ran on and off through mining revivals until the 1940s.

Walk through the lobby today and the grand staircase is still there, solid and quiet.

The schoolhouse where kids sat below the Masons

This white two-story building with the Greek Revival columns is one of the most photographed structures in Bannack, and it pulled double duty for more than 70 years.

The ground floor was a public school, running classes through 8th grade.

The Masons took the upper floor and furnished it with the equipment and regalia still visible behind glass today. Built in 1874, it ranks among the first Masonic temples constructed in Montana.

The school closed in the 1940s, and the building hasn’t changed much since.

Saloons, frame houses and the miners who came to strike it rich

Bannack’s 1877 Methodist Church is the only building in town built specifically for worship, and it still stands on the same ground.

Walk a little further and you’ll find Skinner’s Saloon, where the rougher side of frontier life played out on a regular basis.

The Roe/Graves House, framed around 1866, was the first of its kind in town and one of the largest, with a dozen rooms.

North of Main Street, a cluster of small cabins called Bachelors Row housed the single miners who came west on a gamble.

Iron rings still sit in the floor of Montana’s first jail

The small building believed to be the first jail in what became Montana Territory went up around 1863. Step inside and you’ll see metal rings set into the floor where prisoners were chained.

A barred window looks directly up Hangman’s Gulch toward the gallows. A second, larger jail followed in the late 1860s.

The replica gallows still stand up the gulch. During the peak of the gold rush, the jails sat mostly empty.

Vigilante committees handled most problems themselves, usually without much deliberation.

Did the vigilantes hang the wrong man in 1864?

Henry Plummer won the sheriff’s election in 1863. He was well-spoken and organized, and people trusted him.

Then word spread that he was secretly running a gang of road agents robbing travelers on the road between Bannack and Virginia City. On Jan. 10, 1864, vigilantes hanged Plummer and two of his deputies without a trial.

Modern historians still argue about it. Some say the evidence was solid.

Others believe political rivals used the vigilantes to remove a man they simply didn’t like. Nobody has settled it yet.

Hike the Bird’s Eye Trail to see the whole ghost town below

The Bird’s Eye View Trail climbs to an overlook where the entire townsite and the valley spread out below you.

Another trail follows part of the old wagon road that once connected Bannack to Salt Lake City, passing the gallows on the way up Hangman’s Gulch before looping back along the old Virginia City road.

The trails run easy to moderate, with open sagebrush country and mountain ridges in every direction. Pick up a trail map and interpretive brochure at the visitor center before you head out.

Fish the same creek where Montana’s gold rush started

Grasshopper Creek still runs through the park, crossing under a footbridge near the old townsite. The creek is open to fishing, and the surrounding landscape gives you sagebrush flats backed by mountain ridges.

Wildlife moves through the area regularly, and bird watchers work the creek corridor throughout the season. On summer weekend afternoons, the park runs supervised gold panning sessions along the creek.

You’re panning in the same water where someone made a discovery in 1862 that turned a quiet gulch into the most talked-about place in the territory.

Boot Hill’s headstones tell the hard math of frontier life

The Old Cemetery sits on a hill northeast of town and looks straight down over Main Street and the valley. Known as Boot Hill, it was in use from 1862 to 1880.

Hand-carved headstones and Victorian-era grave markers dot the hillside, and the names on them tell quiet stories. Short lives.

Hard winters. Illness and accident.

A newer cemetery lies about a mile northwest along Bannack Bench Road, where later residents are buried. The walk up to Boot Hill takes about 10 minutes and gives you the best view in the park.

Bannack Days 2026 marks 50 years of this Montana tradition

The 2026 event falls on July 18 and 19, the 50th anniversary of Bannack Days.

The weekend packs in historical reenactments, artisan demonstrations, live music, gold panning and horse-drawn wagon rides. Breakfast runs inside Hotel Meade.

Food vendors handle lunch, ice cream and lemonade on the street.

Come fall, the Ghost Walk on Oct. 23 and 24 puts live actors throughout the townsite after dark, playing figures from Bannack’s past.

And in winter, the frozen dredge pond becomes a skating rink, with free loaner skates and a warming house open on weekends.

Plan your trip to Bannack before the summer crowds arrive

The visitor center runs daily from Memorial Day through Labor Day, with guided tours and a gift shop on site. A self-guided walking tour booklet costs $2 and covers every major building with a map.

Guided tours of the Masonic Lodge and Hendricks Mill run through the summer season. Extended hours from late May through Aug. 1, 2026, run 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. The park stays open year-round.

The campground along Grasshopper Creek has 28 sites, including tent spots, RV hookups, and a rentable wall tent.

Visit Bannack State Park in Montana

You can reach Bannack State Park by heading 25 miles west of Dillon on Highway 278. The park sits at 4200 Highway 278, Dillon, MT 59725.

It’s open year-round, with the visitor center running Memorial Day through Labor Day. Summer hours extend to 9 p.m. The self-guided tour booklet runs $2.

Camping is available along Grasshopper Creek, and Bannack Days on July 18 and 19, 2026 is worth planning around. Check the official website for current fees, camping reservations and event details.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

Read more from this brand:

• Montana’s most eerie state park is a gold rush town stuck in the 1800s
• Montana’s biggest state park is full of dinosaurs and bad earth
• Custer and the six Crow scouts who tried to warn him at Little Bighorn