57 haunted destinations cataloged across Montana, spanning 26 counties. The collection features museum, haunted hotel, and haunted dining — every listing verified with family ratings, accessibility info, and practical visit logistics.
Dillon, MT
Bannack State Park preserves Montana's first territorial capital and one of the West's most intact ghost towns. Founded after the July 28, 1862 gold strike at Grasshopper Creek, Bannack grew to a peak population of approximately 10,000 before declining through the late 19th and 20th centuries. More than 50 historic structures survive along the original main street.
Butte, MT
The Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives occupies the Quartz Street Fire Station, a 1900 brick fire hall on the National Register of Historic Places. The building served as an active firehouse from 1900 until the late twentieth century and has housed the city-county archives since 1981.
Butte, MT
The Copper King Mansion was built between 1884 and 1888 by mining magnate and U.S. Senator William A. Clark, one of Montana's three Copper Kings. The 34-room Victorian mansion in Butte operates today as a bed and breakfast and a guided-tour destination, still privately owned by descendants of the family who purchased it in 1953.
Billings, MT
The hotel at 27 North 27th Street in downtown Billings opened in September 1980 as the Sheraton Billings. At 245 feet it is the second-tallest building in the northern Rocky Mountain region and the tallest hotel in Montana. It was renamed the Crowne Plaza Billings in 2006 and the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Billings in 2016. Local lore connects the site to the early-1900s red-light district, though no documented link between the tower and any specific brothel has been established.
Drummond, MT
Garnet was a Montana gold-mining town founded in 1895 in the Garnet Mountains east of Missoula. At its 1898 peak it housed about a thousand residents; a 1912 fire and the exhaustion of accessible gold left it largely empty by 1917, and the Bureau of Land Management has preserved roughly thirty original buildings since 1971.
Dillon, MT
Hotel Meade in Bannack, Montana was constructed in 1875 as the Beaverhead County Courthouse. After Bannack lost the county seat to Dillon in 1881, the building stood vacant until 1890, when it was remodeled into the Hotel Meade. The hotel operated intermittently into the 1940s. Bannack became a Montana state park on August 15, 1954, and the Hotel Meade is preserved as part of the larger ghost-town complex.
Butte, MT
The Berkeley Pit is a former open-pit copper mine operated by the Anaconda Company from 1955 until 1982, when Atlantic Richfield closed the Berkeley mine operations and pumps were shut off, allowing groundwater to flood the pit. It now holds roughly 50 billion gallons of toxic, acidic water at a pH of about 2.5 — and sits on the National Priorities List as one of the nation's most expensive Superfund cleanup sites.
Butte, MT
On June 8, 1917, a fire broke out 2,500 feet underground in the Granite Mountain–Speculator Mine in Butte, Montana. The blaze and the carbon monoxide it produced killed 168 men — the single deadliest hard-rock mining disaster in U.S. history. The fire's cause was never definitively established. The 1996 outdoor memorial preserves reproductions of notes written by trapped miners in their final hours.
Butte, MT
The Sisters of Charity founded St. James Hospital in Butte, Montana in 1881, establishing a sanctuary for miners, migrants, and the poor in what was then a raw mining boomtown. The facility expanded in 1889, 1896, 1906, and 1915 to serve a rapidly growing population, and added a nursing school in 1906. The hospital shifted operations to Butte Memorial Hospital in 1962, after which the old building served various functions before becoming a paranormal investigation venue.
Butte, MT
The Orphan Girl Mine began operations in 1875 and continued producing silver, zinc, and other metals until 1956, making it one of the longest-running operations in Butte's Silver Bow Mining District. Forty-three men died at the Orphan Girl during its operational life, within a district that logged over 2,500 total mining fatalities. The site is now the World Museum of Mining, offering underground tours in the original shaft.
Butte, MT
The Butte-Silver Bow Courthouse, a Beaux Arts building, opened in July 1912. It sits on the site of an earlier county building where Miles Fuller was hanged in 1906 for the 1904 murder of placer miner Henry Gallahan.
Butte, MT
The Clark Chateau is a French-chateau-style mansion in Uptown Butte, begun in 1898 for Charles W. Clark, son of copper magnate William A. Clark. It now operates as a city-affiliated arts and humanities museum.
Butte, MT
The Dumas operated as a brothel from 1890 to 1982, said to be the longest continuously operating brothel in the United States. It is now a museum of Butte's red-light district.
Butte, MT
Swiss-born tinsmith Antone Canonica built this Uptown Butte building between 1915 and 1920, naming it for his wife, Myra. During Prohibition, part of the upper floor was leased as furnished rooms that operated as a brothel.
Butte, MT
Butte's old city hall on East Broadway housed the municipal jail in its basement from 1890 to 1971. Known as the Butte Bastille, the jail held the city's most serious offenders and developed a reputation for harsh conditions before a 1971 federal review forced its closure.
Butte, MT
The Cabbage Patch was a dense slum in Uptown Butte that grew between roughly 1880 and 1940. A long, unresolved dispute over the land left it without a clear landlord, and it filled with squatters, immigrants, bootleggers, and the city's poorest residents before being cleared in 1940.
Butte, MT
The Vu Villa bar and pizza occupies the Campana Building at 521 W Park St in Butte, built in 1894. The structure once served as a mercantile and a residence for the Campana family and is among the oldest buildings in the city.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPHelena, MT
Broadwater Elementary School is an active educational institution in Montana. The school serves the local community providing primary education to elementary-age students.
Helena, MT
Benton Avenue Cemetery in Helena was established by the Lewis and Clark County commissioners in 1870, making it one of Montana's oldest cemeteries. It holds hundreds of graves that predate Montana statehood, including those of early Helena civic figures and victims of the 1885 diphtheria epidemic.
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Helena, MT
Grandstreet Theatre occupies a granite Romanesque building in downtown Helena that opened in 1901 as a Unitarian church. It served as the Helena Public Library from 1933 to 1976, then became home to Grandstreet Theatre, a community theater. The building holds a Louis Comfort Tiffany memorial window.
Helena, MT
A ponderosa pine at the head of Dry Gulch served as Helena's hanging tree during the gold-rush years. At least ten men were executed there between 1865 and 1870, most by vigilante action rather than formal court order. The tree was cut down in 1875.
Helena, MT
Reeder's Alley is a preserved block of 1870s brick-and-stone buildings at the base of Mount Helena, originally housing miners and tradesmen during the Last Chance Gulch gold rush. It is a National Register historic district owned by the Montana Heritage Commission since 2000.
Helena, MT
The Windbag Saloon and Grill occupies an 1882 building on Helena's Last Chance Gulch. The site has long been a focal point of local nightlife and is associated with the city's red-light district and the well-known Helena madam Dorothy Baker, called 'Big Dorothy.'
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPBillings, MT
The building at 2223 Montana Avenue in Billings is a 1920s commercial structure historically known as the Sawyer Stores building. On December 8, 1945, a C-47 military transport carrying soldiers home from World War II crashed in a blizzard near present-day Veterans Park, killing two crew and seventeen of nineteen soldiers aboard. With the county morgue overwhelmed, thirteen of the bodies were stored in the refrigerated warehouse of the grocery business then at this address. The building later housed the Spaghetti Depot and Depot Antique Mall and, since a 2016 renovation, offices and a distillery.
Billings, MT
Moss Mansion in Billings, Montana was designed by New York architect Henry Janeway Hardenbergh and completed in 1903 for banker Preston Boyd Moss. Hardenbergh is best known for designing the Plaza Hotel and Waldorf-Astoria in New York City. The mansion has been operated as a house museum since the 1980s.
Billings, MT
The Alberta Bair Theater in downtown Billings opened in 1931 as the Fox Theater, a movie palace built by 20th Century Fox. It was later renamed for benefactor Alberta Bair, who died in 1993, and operates today as a restored performing-arts center.
Billings, MT
The Dude Rancher Lodge opened December 17, 1950, built by Percival 'Percy' and Annabel Goan as a Western-themed motor lodge in downtown Billings. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2010 and still operates as a hotel.
Billings, MT
The building opened in 1901 as the Parmly Billings Memorial Library, given to the city by railroad figure Frederick Billings in memory of his son Parmly. The library moved out in 1969, and the Western Heritage Center opened in the building in 1971 as a regional history museum.
Virginia City, MT
The Fairweather Inn occupies a lot on Wallace Street in Virginia City, Montana, deeded in September 1863, weeks after Bill Fairweather's gold discovery at Alder Gulch turned the area into one of the most chaotic boomtowns in the American West. The building began as a meat market, became a hotel and saloon in the 1880s under Frank McKeen's Anaconda Hotel, and was renamed and restored by the Bovey family after their purchase in 1946.
Virginia City, MT
Virginia City was founded in 1863 after Bill Fairweather and Henry Edgar discovered gold at Alder Gulch. It served as Montana's territorial capital from 1865 to 1875 and was designated a National Historic Landmark District in 1961. The Montana Heritage Commission has managed the town as a living-history site since the state purchased the Bovey family preservation holdings in 1997.
Virginia City, MT
The Bale of Hay Saloon occupies one of Virginia City's oldest buildings, dating to 1863, and is often called Montana's oldest bar. The space served as a grocery and liquor business from around 1869 before becoming a full saloon under businessmen Smith and Boyd in the 1890s, who named it for the hay bales stacked outside for horses at the neighboring stable.
Virginia City, MT
The Bonanza Inn was built in 1866 and served as the Madison County courthouse while Virginia City was Montana's territorial capital. In 1876 three Catholic Sisters of Charity from Leavenworth, Kansas converted it into St. Mary's Hospital for miners. The hospital closed when the placer gold gave out, and Charles Bovey remodeled the interior as a hotel in 1940.
Virginia City, MT
German-born banker Henry Elling built this stone mansion in Virginia City in 1876. When he died in 1900, he left a large fortune to his widow, Mary Elling, who funded a new Episcopal church and nearly doubled the size of the house, adding a grand ballroom and other rooms. Mary died on Christmas Eve 1924. The building now operates as an inn and arts and humanities center.
Bozeman, MT
The Bozeman Hotel opened in March 1891 as the city's first-class hotel at Main Street and Rouse Avenue. Designed by George Hancock in a vernacular Romanesque style, the 136-room building cost about $120,000. It is now a downtown commercial block of offices and ground-floor businesses.
Bozeman, MT
Built in 1911 as the Gallatin County Jail and designed by architect Fred Fielding Willson, the building is on the National Register of Historic Places and now houses the Gallatin History Museum. Its entry displays the gallows used in the 1924 execution of Seth Danner, the only legal hanging carried out in the jail.
Bozeman, MT
The building at 10 W Main Street was erected in 1908 as a storefront and U.S. Post Office and became the Rialto Theater in 1924. After years dark, it was fully renovated and reopened as a 400-capacity theater, bar, and event space overlooking Bozeman's Main Street.
Bozeman, MT
The Ellen Theatre opened in December 1919 as the first building in Bozeman constructed expressly as a theater. It was built by Nelson Story Jr. and T. Byron Story, sons of cattle baron Nelson Story, and named for their mother, Ellen Trent Story.
Deer Lodge, MT
Old Montana Prison operated as the Montana Territorial Prison from 1870 and the Montana State Prison from 1889 until 1979, when inmates were transferred to a new facility west of Deer Lodge. The 1959 inmate riot lasted 36 hours, included the murder of the deputy warden, and ended with the deployment of the Montana National Guard. The prison is now operated as a museum by the Powell County Museum and Arts Foundation.
Deer Lodge, MT
The Montana Territorial Prison in Deer Lodge received its first inmate on July 2, 1871. The cornerstone was laid June 2, 1870, after the territorial government selected Deer Lodge as the site in 1867. The prison served as Montana's primary penal institution from its 1871 opening through 1979, when a new facility replaced it. A 1959 riot held the prison and surrounding town under inmate control for 36 hours, killing three people. The facility was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.
Deer Lodge, MT
Grant-Kohrs Ranch preserves a 19th-century open-range cattle operation near Deer Lodge, Montana. Johnny Grant established the ranch in 1862; Conrad Kohrs bought it in 1866 and built it into one of the largest cattle enterprises in the West before it became a National Historic Site in 1972.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPGreat Falls, MT
Black Horse Lake is a shallow, seasonal 576-acre lake bed in Cascade County, Montana, just northeast of Great Falls along the corridor of US Highway 87 toward Fort Benton. The lake is usually dry except in spring and early summer. The surrounding prairie has long been associated with travel routes across north-central Montana, and the highway here is the setting for one of the state's best-known road legends.
Great Falls, MT
The building at 518 Central Avenue in downtown Great Falls was built in 1914 by J.G. Anthony as the Davenport Hotel. Over the following century the upper floors operated as a hotel and, by local account, as a speakeasy and brothel during Prohibition; the building later housed the Jockey Club and the Lobby Bar, and in recent years has operated as The Wild Hare. A fire in November 1925 damaged part of the hotel and, according to local tradition, claimed at least one life.
Great Falls, MT
The building at 1400 1st Avenue North in Great Falls opened in 1896 as the city's first high school. After serving as a school for decades, it was converted into the Paris Gibson Square Museum of Art and is named for the city's founder, Paris Gibson.
Missoula, MT
The Keep occupies the former Greenough mansion, the late-1800s home of railroad and mining figure Thomas Greenough. In 1964 the Victorian house was dismantled and moved to make way for Interstate 90, relocating to Missoula's South Hills. After a 1992 fire, the building was rebuilt and reopened as a restaurant.
Missoula, MT
The Oxford, known locally as the Ox, traces its start to 1883, when its founder ran a chuck wagon on the banks of the Clark Fork in Missoula. The business settled on Higgins Avenue and has occupied the corner of Pine and Higgins since 1955. It has run 24 hours a day for so long that its doors have no keys.
Missoula, MT
The Wilma Theatre opened in 1921, built by William 'Billy' Simons and named for his wife, light-opera singer Edna Wilma. Designed by architect Ole Bakke, it anchored an eight-story complex that was Missoula's first steel-framed high-rise. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979 and operates today as a cinema and concert venue.
Livingston, MT
The Livingston Depot opened in 1902 as the Northern Pacific Railway's station serving the main gateway to Yellowstone National Park. Designed by the architecture firm Reed and Stem in an Italianate style, it now operates as a seasonal museum and events venue.
Livingston, MT
The Murray Hotel opened in 1904 as the Elite Hotel to serve Northern Pacific Railway passengers in Livingston, the gateway to Yellowstone. Later associated with the family of U.S. Senator James E. Murray, it was expanded to four floors in the 1920s and operates today as a restored historic hotel.
Crow Agency, MT
Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument in southeastern Montana preserves the site of the June 25-26, 1876 battle between Lt. Col. George Custer's U.S. 7th Cavalry and a Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho force led by Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and other warriors. Custer and 210 troops were killed. The Indian Memorial was developed beginning in 1996 in partnership with the affected tribes.
Fort Benton, MT
The Grand Union Hotel opened on November 2, 1882 at Fort Benton, then the head of steamboat navigation on the Upper Missouri River. It was promoted as the finest hotel between St. Louis and Seattle, declined with the steamboat trade, and was restored to operation in the 1990s. It is Montana's oldest operating hotel and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Hamilton, MT
The Ravalli County Courthouse in Hamilton, Montana was built in 1900 on land donated by the Anaconda Copper Mining Company, funded by a $20,000 county bond. Designed by Missoula architect A.J. Gibson in Classical Revival and Romanesque styles, the building served as the county courthouse from 1901 to 1974 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. It now operates as the Ravalli County Museum.
Havre, MT
After a 1904 fire destroyed much of downtown Havre, business owners moved their operations into basements and a network of tunnels beneath the streets. The underground housed legitimate shops alongside a vice economy of saloons, an opium den, and a bordello, much of it tied to the developer and saloon operator Christopher 'Shorty' Young.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPLibby, MT
Sportsman's RV Park outside Libby, Montana, occupies the former site of the Riverside Inn, a steak house, gas station, motel, and reportedly a brothel that served construction workers during the late 1960s Libby Dam project. The Inn burned down some years after the dam's completion and was not rebuilt.
Miles City, MT
The Olive Hotel opened in 1898–1899 as the Leighton, built by Joseph Leighton at 501 Main Street in Miles City. His son Alvin later took it over and renamed it the Olive. When the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway reached Miles City in 1908, the building was enlarged with a three-story rear addition and a new front. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on October 13, 1988.
Philipsburg, MT
Prominent businessman Angus A. McDonald built this two-story masonry theater in 1891 to entertain the silver-mining towns of Philipsburg and nearby Granite. It is described as Montana's oldest operating theater. Renamed the Granada Theatre in 1919, it later screened films for decades and continues today as a live performance and movie venue.
Red Lodge, MT
The Pollard Hotel opened in 1893 as the Spofford Hotel, the first brick building in Red Lodge, Montana. Renamed by Thomas F. Pollard in 1902, it served as a frontier crossroads for coal miners and travelers, hosting Buffalo Bill Cody and Calamity Jane during the town's mining boom.
Warm Springs, MT
Montana State Hospital, founded in the 1870s as the state's only public psychiatric facility, operated a eugenics sterilization program that performed 256 forced sterilizations under a 1923 state law — drawing national press attention in 1924. The on-grounds cemetery holds at least 3,260 patients; most metal grave markers have been bent and eroded by weather until the identifying numbers are no longer legible.