The story
Bannack sprang up on Grasshopper Creek with Montana's first big gold strike in 1862, briefly served as the territory's first capital, and lived the whole frontier arc — boom, vigilantes, decline — before emptying in the 20th century; its story includes Sheriff Henry Plummer, hanged in 1864 by vigilantes who accused him of leading the road-agent gang he was sworn to catch, a episode historians still argue. Preserved as Bannack State Park, its sixty-odd weathered buildings — the Hotel Meade, the Masonic lodge and schoolhouse, cabins and the gallows site — make it the state's finest ghost town, walkable on self-guided visits and alive each summer for Bannack Days. Its ghost lore centres on the Hotel Meade: visitors and staff describe a young woman in a blue dress, linked in telling to a drowning in the dredge ponds, children's voices in the schoolhouse, figures in windows and footsteps on empty boardwalks. These accounts should be presented as park-era telling layered on real and sometimes violent history, told respectfully. Park hours, fees and event details should be confirmed from Montana state park pages.