There were three hotels, three bakeries, three blacksmith shops, two stables, two meat markets, a grocery store, a restaurant, a brewery, a billiard hall, and four saloons.

Among the town's founders was Dr. Erasmus Darwin Leavitt, a physician born in Cornish, New Hampshire, who gave up medicine for a time to become a gold miner.

"Though some success crowned his labors," according to a history of Montana by Joaquin Miller, "he soon found that he had more reputation as a physician than as a miner, and that there was greater profit in allowing someone else to wield his pick and shovel while he attended to his profession."

Subsequently, Dr. Leavitt moved on to Butte, Montana, where he devoted the rest of his life to his medical practice [4] Bannack's sheriff, Henry Plummer, was accused by some of secretly leading a ruthless band of road agents, with early accounts claiming that this gang was responsible for over a hundred murders in the Virginia City and Bannack gold fields and trails to Salt Lake City.

[6] A number of mining camps dotted the banks of Grasshopper Creek during the gold booms, starting at Bannack downstream almost to where the stream joins Beaverhead River.

An authentic, old-fashioned breakfast is served in the old Hotel Meade, a well-preserved brick building which was for many years the seat of Beaverhead County, before it became Dillon, Montana.

[18] The mines surrounding Bannack are located on both sides of Grasshopper Creek, which flows southeastward through the district and into the Beaverhead River about 12 miles (19 km) downstream.