Virginia City Historic District

Virginia City Historic District is a National Historic Landmark in Montana containing over 200 nineteenth-century buildings, mostly wood-frame structures with traditional false front facades characteristic of mining towns. The district preserves the original layout and buildings from the territorial period when the settlement served as a center of regional commerce and governance.

Gold was discovered in Alder Gulch in 1859, which sparked rapid growth and made the settlement an important territorial capital from 1865 to 1875. This period of political significance shaped the buildings and institutions that still stand today.

The courthouse at the center reflects how law and order mattered in a remote mining settlement. The layout of buildings and streets shows how people organized their daily lives around mining and commerce.

You can walk through the streets and access many original buildings to experience how people lived during the territorial period. The site is walkable and spread out, so plan to spend several hours exploring at a comfortable pace.

Charles and Sue Bovey started restoring abandoned buildings in the 1940s and gradually turned the town into an open-air mining museum. Their work saved numerous structures from decay and created one of the few remaining complete views of a nineteenth-century mining settlement.