Montana's Most Historic Towns

Montana's history is defined by the 1862–1875 gold and silver rush, the cattle frontier, the arrival of the transcontinental railroads, and the profound displacement of the Blackfeet, Crow, Sioux, and other nations.

Virginia City and Nevada City
Gold was discovered in Alder Gulch in 1863, and Virginia City grew from nothing to 10,000 people in months. At its peak, Virginia City was the territorial capital. Today, it's one of the best-preserved gold rush towns in the West — many of the original 1863–1870 buildings remain intact and operate as a living history district run by the Montana Heritage Commission. Nevada City, one mile west, is an outdoor museum of relocated historic buildings. The Virginia City–Nevada City Alder Gulch Short Line steam railroad connects the two communities.

Bannack
Montana's first territorial capital (1864) and the site of the first major gold discovery in Montana (1862). Bannack is now a state park — a ghost town of 60 original buildings preserved in a state of "arrested decay." The Meade Hotel, the assay office, and the sheriff's office (home of the infamous Sheriff Henry Plummer, secretly the leader of a gang of road agents) are open for exploration.

Fort Benton
The "Birthplace of Montana" and the head of Missouri River steamboat navigation. Fort Benton was the most important inland port in the West from the 1850s to the 1880s. The original American Fur Company fort is partially reconstructed; the Museum of the Upper Missouri and the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail Interpretive Center tell the full story of the Missouri River era.

Butte
Once the world's leading copper producer and the largest city between Chicago and San Francisco. The Berkeley Pit — a copper open-pit mine nearly a mile wide and 1,780 feet deep, now filled with acidic water — is Butte's defining landmark. The Copper King Mansion (William Clark's 1884 Gilded Age home) and the World Museum of Mining preserve the mining era. Butte has a rich Irish and Cornish immigrant heritage and one of the most distinctive urban characters of any small city in the West.