Montana · Ghost town
Bannack
Montana's first territorial capital, founded on Grasshopper Creek in 1862, now a state park with sixty buildings and nobody in them.
Position Beaverhead County, Montana · 45.1611, -112.9956
Bannack was founded in 1862 after gold was found on Grasshopper Creek, about eleven miles upstream of where it meets the Beaverhead River south of Dillon. It briefly served as the first capital of Montana Territory.
It is a National Historic Landmark and is managed by the state as Bannack State Park. Around sixty structures survive, and unlike most preserved sites they are open: you can walk into the hotel, the school, the Masonic lodge and the jail rather than viewing them through glass.
There is no commerce on site. No shops, no restaurants, no costumed staff. That absence is the point and it makes Bannack quieter and stranger than the towns that monetised themselves.
The road in is unpaved for the last stretch and the park is at altitude, so check conditions outside summer.
Facts checked against the Wikipedia article Bannack, Montana. The words above are ours.