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6/13
In spite of the heavy clouds, we head for Bannack State Park about 30 miles from here. After leaving I15 we were driving through a flat valley with high desert brush & grasses that had a number of large cattle ranches and some small settlements as we slowly ascended into foothills that became mountains before too long. All deliciously green. Ghostly Bannack State Park is the remains of the townsite of Bannack, named for the Bannock Indians who lived nearby. It was founded in 1862 when John White & a group of fellow Colorado folks discovered gold in Willards Creek. Not knowing that Lewis & Clark had named that creek, John named it Grasshopper Creek, a name it is still known by today. He filed one of the first mining claims in the Territory of Montana. 400 folks called Bannack home by the fall and in the spring 3,000 people were living there. Bannack eventually became the capital of the Territory. Its existence depended on the gold pulled out of the placer deposits. As time passed there was a decline in mining & people had to go elsewhere to look for work. In the late forties the majority of the population had moved to other areas. The post office left in 1938 & the school was closed in the 1950s. There was no doctor & no grocery store. Through a series of actions taken by locals & people in Dillon, the land was eventually donated to the state in 1954, with the stipulation that Bannack was not to made into a tourist town to compete with Virginia City, then & now a very popular tourist attraction about 60 miles away. The ghost town atmosphere was to be preserved. The state made additional land purchases to complete the townsite. A boardwalk takes you from building to building. Most are open for your enjoyment. We went on a bad weather day on a Monday so the Park was virtually deserted. As we walked the boardwalk, looking at the empty buildings with the mountains framing them, it did feel ghostly. I expected to have people emerge from the nearby trees to continue on with the life that must have been. This is a town with a sheriff who had done time in San Quentin for manslaughter. He would later lead a group known as ‘The Innocents’, who were in fact criminals. Their supposed crimes were many & included murder. The vigilante group in Bannack, formed to be the law after tiring of the sheriff & his merry men’s antics, arranged hangings for some of the men they could catch. Virginia City had also formed a vigilante group, which managed to capture more of ‘The Innocents’ & with some rope & beam, took care of them. The high drama wasn’t the only thing happening in Bannock. They had social events such as balls. The ratio of women to men was 1- to 10, so the gals got to dance their legs off. There was a baseball team considered to be very good They would play teams from nearby towns. We did enjoy this very much. It was a cold day with intermittent rain. We dodged the rain & ate our picnic lunch in the truck with the heater going. After warming up we went back out to complete our tour. Stabilization of the buildings is ongoing as they preserve what is there, not restore.
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