Vigilante Notice
During Montana’s gold rush days in 1863, the law was sometimes nonexistent in the region that was then part of the Territory of Idaho. However, that was not the case in Virginia City, where a young miner was found murdered. A posse was quickly formed to track the killers, and they soon returned with three suspects, who were tried in a miners’ court in Nevada City, a few miles downstream from Virginia City. Tried in December 1863, one man was convicted and hanged for the crime, but of the other two, one was banished from the territory, and the other set free.
Outraged locals decided the courts were too slow and ineffective, and the Montana Vigilantes were born. Five members were initially sworn in as the Montana Vigilance Committee, patterned after the San Francisco Vigilantes of 1856. Almost immediately, orderly arrests and trial courts became obsolete as a reign of lynching began to take place. By the end of February 1864, 22 men had been lynched.
Henry Plummer
The most famous victim of the Montana Vigilantes was Henry Plummer, who arrived in Montana in 1862 and was elected Sheriff of the Bannack Mining District in May 1863. At the same time, a group of road agents called the Innocents operated in the area, and the vigilantes suspected Plummer of leading the group. On January 10, 1864, Plummer was hanged by a mob at Bannack.
Today, historians disagree on whether these many men who were hanged during Montana’s Vigilante days were genuinely guilty.
In fact, some researchers believe the entire affair was a cover-up for the “so-called” vigilantes who were committing the many crimes occurring in the area.
Random lynchings continued in Montana Territory throughout the 1860s until a backlash against extralegal justice finally took hold around 1870.
©Kathy Alexander/Legends of America, updated October 2026.
Also See:
Henry Plummer – Sheriff Hanged
See Sources.