The story
Alder Gulch's 1863 strike was among the richest placer discoveries ever — the fourteen-mile 'gulch' held ten thousand people within a year, and Virginia City became Montana's territorial capital and the stage for the vigilante episode that hanged Sheriff Plummer's gang at Bannack and here. Boot Hill still holds five road agents planted in 1864.
Dredges chewed the gulch and the capital moved to Helena, but the town never quite died — and in the 1940s Charles and Sue Bovey began buying and preserving it wholesale, decades before 'historic preservation' was a movement. The state acquired their holdings in 1997: today some 150 residents share nearly 300 protected buildings with summer crowds, a working 1860s main street with the props left real.
What remains today
One of the most complete 1860s streetscapes in the West — stores with original stock, the Montana Post print shop, Boot Hill, and the Alder Gulch dredge country.
Questions from the field
- Is Virginia City, Montana a ghost town or a real town?
- Both — about 150 people live there and it's the Madison County seat, but the preserved boom-era town around them is the genuine article, not a reconstruction.
From the field
The most valuable part of this record is the part only visitors can write.
Stamp your passport
Check in at Virginia City — GPS-verified visits earn an inked stamp.
File a field report
Road conditions, what's still standing, what's gone — your report joins the record.
Add photographs
Credited, dated, and preserved as part of Virginia City's permanent record.
No field reports yet — sign in to file the first.
Sources consulted
- — USGS GNIS feature 778036
- — Montana Heritage Commission — Virginia City
- — Vigilante-era records / Montana Post archives