QUIZ: How Well Do You Know Henry Plummer and the Vigilantes?

Henry Plummer was elected sheriff of Bannack in May 1863. Eight months later the vigilantes hanged him on a cold January Sunday. Here are ten tough questions about Montana's most notorious winter. Play and you're entered to win a year of Distinctly Montana and a $50 gift card to Distinctly Montana Marketplace.

The stories behind the answers

Spoiler alert: take the quiz first.

1. Nevada City, California. Plummer, born in Addison, Maine, around 1832, was elected town marshal of Nevada City in 1856. A year later he shot John Vedder, was convicted of second-degree murder and went to San Quentin. He was pardoned in 1859.
2. Idaho Territory. When Bannack's miners elected Plummer sheriff in May 1863, Bannack sat in Idaho Territory, which had been created that March. Montana Territory didn't exist until May 1864, four months after Plummer was hanged.
3. Nicholas Tiebolt. George Ives was tried for the murder of Nicholas Tiebolt, a young Dutch immigrant. The miners' court ran three days, December 19 to 21, 1863, outdoors on the street in Nevada City, Montana, with a 24-man jury. Ives was hanged the evening the verdict came in.
4. Wilbur Fisk Sanders. Sanders prosecuted Ives and, two days later, was one of the five men who formed the Vigilance Committee. He went on to serve as one of Montana's first two U.S. senators, from 1890 to 1893, and Sanders County carries his name.
5. Buck Stinson and Ned Ray. Plummer's two deputies were hanged beside him in Bannack on January 10, 1864.
6. Jack Slade. The five men hanged together on January 14, 1864, were Frank Parish, Boone Helm, Jack Gallagher, Haze Lyons and "Club Foot" George Lane, from a beam in the unfinished building now called the Hangman's Building. They're buried on Boot Hill above Virginia City. Slade's turn came two months later.
7. Mark Twain. Twain met Slade on the Overland stage line and gave him two chapters, 10 and 11, of Roughing It (1872). Slade was hanged in Virginia City on March 10, 1864, after one drunken spree too many: the charge was disturbing the peace.
8. Thomas Dimsdale. Dimsdale's The Vigilantes of Montana, printed in Virginia City in 1866 from his articles in the Montana Post, is widely called the first book published in Montana. Nathaniel Langford's Vigilante Days and Ways came along in 1890.
9. The 1950s. The Montana Highway Patrol, created in 1935, adopted 3-7-77 in 1956 under superintendent Alex Stephenson. Nobody agrees on what the numbers meant; our story on 3-7-77 runs through the theories.
10. A hung jury, 6 to 6. On May 7, 1993, students from the Twin Bridges schools staged Plummer's trial in Virginia City, with Judge Barbara Brook and twelve Madison County voters on the jury. They split down the middle, so officially the case is still open.

Read more in Distinctly Montana

• "Give me a high drop, boys": Frontier Justice and the Ghost of Henry Plummer
• 3-7-77: A History of Montana's Most Ominous Numbers
• Bound in Blood: The Freemasons and the Vigilantes
• Bannack: Montana's Best Preserved Ghost Town