Bannack grew out of Montana’s first major gold rush after prospectors John White and company made a strike on July 28, 1862, drawing miners from Idaho’s crowded Salmon River diggings across the Continental Divide and building the population to 3,000 by spring 1863. The town became known for the rough conditions of an early gold camp, including six vigilante hangings and the execution of Sheriff Henry Plummer. It briefly served as capital of the new Montana Territory in 1864, when the first legislature met there in a crude log cabin. Although later gold strikes drew away its first wave of residents, Bannack revived in the 1870s and remained the Beaverhead County seat until 1881, a period reflected in the Masonic Lodge Hall/School, Methodist Church, and Hotel Meade, which was built as the county courthouse. Mining continued to shape the area through placer, hydraulic, dredge, quartz, and hard rock operations, with stamp mills appearing soon after 1862 and electrification of the mines in 1930 bringing electricity to the town. The community endured through cycles of boom and bust as local mills operated sporadically until World War II, and after the State of Montana acquired most of the town in 1954, a few residents stayed until the early 1970s. Bannack preserves buildings from the primitive 1860s, the more urbanized 1870s and 1880s, and the early twentieth century, and it became a National Historic Landmark in 1961.