Alder Gulch

Six prospectors camped at Alder Gulch on May 26, 1863, and their first pan turned up $2.40. At its peak 10,000 people lived along the string of camps called Fourteen-mile City. A year later, in May 1864, Montana Territory was carved out of Idaho Territory, and Virginia City became its capital in 1865. A new strike at Last Chance Gulch in summer 1864 started Helena, which took the capital in 1875 and is still Montana's capital today. Virginia City shrank to a few hundred people in the early 1870s but survives as the best-preserved placer mining camp of its kind, a rare chance to stand in an original boom-town street.