The Rise and Fall of America's Wickedest Sheriff's Town: Bannack, Montana

In 1863, the citizens of Bannack, Montana elected Henry Plummer as their sheriff. He was charming, capable, and respected — and he personally collected the money to build the town's gallows and jail. Seven months later, a vigilante mob hanged him from his own crossbeam without a trial. Whether Plummer was the secret leader of a murderous gang of road agents or the victim of a political assassination remains one of the great unsolved mysteries of the American frontier. This is the story of the gold rush boomtown those gallows built — a place that struck the purest placer gold in the West, became Montana's first territorial capital, erected a brick courthouse meant to last forever, lost everything to richer strikes and a railroad that never came, and was eventually sold — every building, every lot — for one thousand dollars. From the Hotel Meade's white linen tablecloths to the first gold dredge ever operated in the United States, Bannack's rise and fall traces the full arc of a frontier mining town, from seven hundred thousand dollars in gold dust to a ghost town standing in arrested decay at the end of a gravel road. Sources Frederick Allen, A Decent, Orderly Lynching: The Montana Vigilantes (University of Oklahoma Press, 2004) Thomas J. Dimsdale, The Vigilantes of Montana (Virginia City, M.T.: D.W. Tilton & Co., 1866; first book published in Montana Territory) R.E. Mather and F.E. Boswell, Hanging the Sheriff: A Biography of Henry Plummer (Missoula, 1999) Montana Department of Environmental Quality, Bannack Mining District historical summary (cited via Western Mining History, westernmininghistory.com) Historic American Buildings Survey, Bannack Historic District documentation (Library of Congress, HABS MT-6 and related records) Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks, Bannack State Park historical materials and the Bannack Preservation Plan (fwp.mt.gov)