10 INTERESTING HISTORICAL PLACES IN WESTERN MONTANA

1 Bannack: A major gold discovery on July 28, 1862, led to the birth of this settlement, today a well-preserved ghost town, state park and national historic landmark. On Jan. 10, 1864, vigilantes hanged Sheriff Henry Plummer and two deputies here due to their alleged ties to a gang of road agents. When President Abraham Lincoln signed Montana Territory into existence that May 26, Bannack was named its capital, though in 1865 that honor passed to Virginia City, a lively gold boomtown then and another ghost town worth seeing today.

  The Nez Perce and other tribes west of the Continental Divide called it the Cokahlarishkit (River of the Road to the Buffalo), as they would follow it east to the Plains on annual hunts. Corps of Discovery Captain Meriwether Lewis skirted the river in July 1806 during his return trip from the Pacific Ocean. The primary travel route today is Highway 200. The river features in Norman Maclean’s 1976 novella A River