MY MONTANA

History comes alive in Montana's territorial capital

Ben Pierce

BANNACK – Through the doorway of Doctor Ryburn's house the harmonies flowed freely into the crisp afternoon air.

Piano songs recalled a bygone era when similar tunes enlivened the breweries, gambling halls and hotels that one time lined these dusty streets.

Bannack, once a bustling mining camp, first territorial capital of Montana and birthplace of vigilante justice, is now a state park. Here, the past is present and the music still stirs the soul.

Jaye Christensen, born and raised in nearby Grant, began playing here during Bannack Days celebrations in 1978. Christensen plays old-timey piano music, western and gospel tunes from the 1890s through the 1940s. She still plays at Bannack Days, held annually on the third weekend of July, as well as many Wednesdays and Sundays throughout the year.

The Dr. Ryburn House in Bannack has period furniture inside. Ryburn practiced medicine in Bannack from 1897-1915. He was the first person in town to own an automobile and often accepted chickens and vegetables for his services.

"When I was little, someone gave me a phonograph and some records and I just listened," Christensen said on a recent Sunday. "I've never had a music lesson in my life."

Watching Christensen's fingers dance across the keys of an 1881 Kimball Co. pump organ it's hard to believe, but like many of Bannack's stories, it's true.

Bannack boomed after John White and a group of Colorado associates known as the "Pikes Peakers" discovered gold in the banks of Grasshopper Creek in 1862. By that fall, word had spread across the West, and an encampment of 400 hardscrabble miners were working the "Grasshopper Diggins." The camp would swell to 3,000 the following spring. On Nov. 21, 1863, a post office was established and the town of Bannack was born.

Numerous dwellings and structures sprung up quickly around Bannack. Early buildings included an assay office where gold was inspected for purity, a brewery constructed by John Manheim during the winter of 1862-63, and Skinner's Saloon, built on the south side of Grasshopper Creek on Yankee Flats and moved to Bannack in the spring of 1863.

Located near Dillon, Bannack State Park offers visitors a chance to step back in time to Montana’s first gold rush.

By that time Henry Plummer had made his way to Bannack. The former San Quentin Penitentiary inmate who served time for manslaughter arrived in the upstart mining town with mayhem on the mind. Shortly after arriving in Bannack, Plummer was tried and acquitted for the murder of Jack Cleveland, but by May 1863 had somehow managed to get himself elected sheriff.

Plummer used his newfound authority — and old criminal ties — to exact a reign of terror on Bannack and its residents. He headed an outlaw gang known as the Innocents, who, in the course of eight months, allegedly committed numerous robberies and 102 murders. Plummer's gang of road agents struck miners on their way to and from Bannack.

"There were gun fights that broke out in Skinner's Saloon," said Sara Parks, an AmeriCorps volunteer working in Bannack for the winter. "Cyrus Skinner was believed to be working for the Road Agents. He would get people drunk and get information from them on where they were headed."

The Innocents' outlaw ways didn't last long. On Dec. 23, 1863, the first Vigilance Committee was organized to restore order. Citizens from nearby Virginia City and Nevada City, and burgeoning Alder Gulch, joined with the fair people of Bannack to rid themselves of the Road Agents' scourge.

The saloon in Bannack State Park is empty during a winter visit to the ghost town.

On Jan. 10, 1864, vigilantes tracked down Plummer and two other members of his gang. Plummer and the other men were hanged at a gallows just north of town. Plummer pleaded innocence, but in the end begged the vigilantes to "please give me a good drop."

Skinner, a San Quentin contemporary of Plummer's, must have felt the heat coming. He left Bannack sometime in the latter half of 1863 and opened a new saloon in Hellgate near present-day Missoula. The vigilantes tracked him down and hanged him for his alleged association with the Road Agents.

After relative order was restored to Bannack, the town blossomed. A Masonic lodge, school and Methodist church were built between 1871-1877. Bannack's most iconic building, the Hotel Meade, was constructed in 1875 as the original Beaverhead County Courthouse.

The Meade Hotel is still standing in Bannack State Park.

Times changed for Bannack with the coming of the Utah and Northern Railroad in 1880. The railroad terminated in the nearby settlement of Dillon. With an emphasis on agriculture and freighting, and a downturn in mining, Dillon supplanted Bannack as the economic center of Beaverhead County. In February 1881, by a vote of 665-495, Dillon was chosen the Beaverhead County seat, making it the political center as well.

Bannack hung on, with the Hotel Meade serving fine food and offering rooms on and off through the 1940s. The onset of World War II, and an accompanying ban on all nonessential mining, effectively ended Bannack's existence as a viable community. The Bannack Post Office had closed in 1938 and the school shuttered its doors in the early '50s. There was no doctor and no place to buy groceries.

Bannack is near Dillon

Though Bannack was largely abandoned, the community of Beaverhead County recognized the strong role the town had played in the region's history. When I.B. Mining Co. property was put to auction, longtime Bannack resident Chan Stallings cast the winning bid. Stallings sold the property to the Beaverhead Country Museum Association, which transferred the property to the state of Montana on Jan. 23, 1954.

Today, Bannack is one of the crown jewels of the Montana State Parks system. On July 17, 2013, when the town was struck by an historic flash flood that knocked down the assay office and drug store just prior to Bannack Days, scores of volunteers turned out to help.

"The flood came down Hangman's Gulch," Parks said. "Mud raised the level of the buildings by 6 inches. There was a huge effort to restore everything. They came in with shovels and waders to clear the debris out of the buildings."

Unearthed by the flood were numerous bottles, a large boiler and other artifacts that had long been buried — mysteries that offer a new glimpse into Bannack's past.

Gov. Steve Bullock attended the reopening of the park in September 2013 and commended the community's efforts to preserve Bannack.

"This is our first territorial capital, and this place means so much to Montana's past and Montana's future," Bullock said.