Bannack (Montana)

Bannack
	; Bannack (Montana)
County and state location
	Bannack
	Bannack
Basic data
Foundation :	1862
State :	United States
State :	Montana
County :	Beaverhead County
Coordinates :	45 ° 10 ′ N , 113 ° 0 ′ W Coordinates: 45 ° 10 ′ N , 113 ° 0 ′ W
Time zone :	Mountain ( UTC − 7 / −6 )
Height :	1758 m
GNIS ID :	806886

Bannack is a ghost town in Beaverhead County in the state of Montana in the United States , on Grasshopper Creek, about 11 km upstream from the point where the Grasshopper Creek united at the south of the city with the Dillon Beaverhead River. Founded in 1862, the city is now a National Historic Landmark and is administered by the State of Montana as Bannack State Park .

history

Founded in 1862 and named after the local tribe of the Bannock Indians, Bannack was the site of a major gold discovery in 1862 and briefly served as the capital of Montana Territory in 1864 until the capital was relocated to Virginia City , Montana for 10 years in 1865 . Bannack continued to be a mining town , albeit with a shrinking population. The last residents left the city in the 1970s.

At its peak, Bannack had about ten thousand residents. The extremely remote town was only connected to the rest of the world by the Montana Trail. There were three hotels , three bakeries , three blacksmiths , two stables , two meat markets, a grocery store, a restaurant, a brewery , a billiards hall and four saloons . Although all the shops were built from logs, some of them had decorative mock fronts.

One of the founders of the city was Dr. Erasmus Darwin Leavitt, a Cornish New Hampshire born doctor who gave up medicine for a time to become a gold digger . Dr. Leavitt came to Bannack in 1862 and took turns practicing medicine and mining gold with a pick and shovel . “Although a certain success crowned his work,” according to a Montana story by Joaquin Miller , he soon found “that he was more respected as a doctor than as a miner, and that it was more useful if he let someone else use his hoe and swinging a shovel while he was doing his job ”. Then Dr. Leavitt on to Butte , Montana, where he devoted the rest of his life to his medical practice.

Bannack's sheriff, Henry Plummer , has been accused by some of secretly leading an unscrupulous gang of street agents called The Innocents , with early reports alleging that the gang was responsible for over a hundred murders in the Virginia City and Bannack gold fields, as well as the roads to Salt Lake City were responsible. However, with only eight deaths historically documented, some modern historians have questioned the exact nature of Plummer's gang, while others have denied the existence of the gang entirely. In any event, Plummer and two compatriots - his two deputies - were hanged without trial in Bannack on January 10, 1864. Some of Plummer's associates have been lynched and others exiled on the death penalty if they ever return. Twenty-two people were indicted, informally sentenced and hanged by the Vigilante Committee (German: Self-Protection Committee ). A member of this vigilance committee was Nathaniel Pitt Langford (1832-1911), who a few years later became the first superintendent of Yellowstone National Park .

State park

Bannack

Sixty historical block, brick and frame structures have been preserved in Bannack, many of which are in good condition; most of which can be explored. The site, now the Bannack Historic District , was declared a National Historic Landmark (NHL) in 1961 . Bannack State Park is currently on the town's premises . Although this site is not frequently visited by tourists, it remains popular with locals and historians alike.

Bannack days

Hotel Meade

Every year, on the third weekend in July, the abandoned city witnesses a historical reconstruction known as Bannack Days . For two days, Bannack State Park officials are organizing an event that seeks to relive the times when Bannack was a boomtown by recreating the daily lives of the miners who lived there during the gold rush . An authentic, old-fashioned breakfast is served at the old Hotel Meade, a well-preserved brick building that was the seat of Beaverhead County for many years before Dillon, Montana became the seat of the county .

Description of nature

The mines surrounding Bannack are on either side of Grasshopper Creek, which flows southeast through the district and joins the Beaverhead River about 12 miles downstream.