Hotel Meade

When Dillon won Beaverhead County’s county-seat vote 665 to 495 in 1881, Bannack’s handsome brick courthouse suddenly found itself without a job. Built in 1875 as Montana’s first brick courthouse, it sat empty for nearly a decade as the former gold-rush boomtown began losing residents to places like Virginia City and the fast-growing railroad town of Dillon.

Then, around 1890, Dr. John Singleton Meade bought the abandoned courthouse for $1,250 and gave it an unlikely second act: a hotel. The building was transformed into the Hotel Meade, where guests dined on fine china and white linens, and additions including a large kitchen, dining room, and living quarters helped turn it into one of Bannack’s social centers.

The hotel welcomed guests on and off through the 1940s, outlasting much of the town around it. Bannack’s post office closed in 1938, and its school followed in the early 1950s, leaving the Meade as one of the last reminders of a place that had once expected a much bigger future. Not bad for a courthouse nobody needed anymore.