Est. 1863 · Montana Gold Rush · Montana Vigilantes History · Virginia City Historic District · State-Preserved Gold Rush Townscape
The lot at 305 W Wallace Street was deeded in September 1863 — just four months after Bill Fairweather and Henry Edgar struck gold at Alder Gulch in May 1863 and triggered the stampede that built Virginia City from nothing. Within weeks of Fairweather's discovery, ten thousand prospectors poured into the valley. Within months, Virginia City functioned as the effective capital of Montana Territory, with all the violence and improvised governance that implied.
Sheriff Henry Plummer presided over what appeared to be law enforcement while simultaneously running a gang of road agents called the Innocents, who robbed and killed more than a hundred men traveling the roads into and out of the goldfields. Citizens organized the Montana Vigilantes in late 1863 and executed 24 men in a six-week campaign. Five were hanged simultaneously from a beam in an unfinished building on Wallace Street, within sight of the current hotel lot.
The building began as a meat market before being converted to a hotel and saloon in the 1880s, when Frank McKeen renamed it the Anaconda Hotel. Charles and Sue Ford Bovey purchased the property in 1946 as part of their larger campaign to preserve Virginia City's surviving 19th-century commercial district. They remodeled the hotel, gave it its current name in honor of gold discoverer Bill Fairweather, and incorporated it into what eventually became a state-operated historic site.
Virginia City is one of only two surviving gold rush townscapes in Montana preserved substantially intact. The Montana State Department of Commerce acquired the Bovey properties in 1998.
Sources
- https://www.hauntedrooms.com/montana/ghost-hunts/fairweather-inn
- https://usghostadventures.com/haunted-places/the-fairweather-inn/
- https://spirittripping.wordpress.com/2014/07/17/ghostly-guests-of-the-fairweather-inn-virginia-city-montana/
ApparitionsPhantom soundsPhantom footstepsEMF anomalies
Room 10 is the standard point of reference for investigators at the Fairweather Inn. Guests and investigators returning from the room report activity that is more frequent and more physical than elsewhere in the building — unexplained sounds, equipment responses, and the sense of a presence that Haunted Rooms America describes as 'the building's most active paranormal hotspot.'
On the first floor, guests have described the impression of children — voices, movement, a sense of small presences near doorways and in corridors. On the upper floor, multiple independent guests have reported a figure in a long dress moving along the hallway. The description is consistent across reports with no obvious common source: a woman, period clothing, unhurried pace.
Virginia City's history provides the interpretive frame. The street outside saw organized executions. The gold rush years brought sudden, violent death to the valley at a scale that made burial improvised and records sparse. Boot Hill, the informal cemetery above town, holds the graves of five of the Plummer gang's victims alongside those of the hanged road agents — a compact of violence and consequence within walking distance of the hotel.
Several guests at the Fairweather Inn have reportedly left mid-night without explanation. The hotel's operators note this without apparent concern. Whether the activity represents residual patterns from the building's various occupants or something connected to the broader history of the street, investigations have documented consistent responses in Room 10 across multiple visits.
Notable Entities
Child spirits (unnamed)Figure in long dress (unnamed)
