The story of Henry Plummer is one of the most compelling in frontier American history. As sheriff of Bannack and a respected figure in territorial society, Plummer was simultaneously alleged to be masterminding a criminal network that robbed and murdered travellers on the road between the goldfields. When the Vigilance Committee moved against the gang in the winter of 1863–64, they eventually hanged 21 men — including the sheriff himself.
The original gallows site and various Vigilante-related locations are marked in Virginia City and nearby Bannack. The Thompson-Hickman Museum provides the most thorough account, including documents from the period. Whether you read Plummer as a guilty outlaw or an innocent man lynched by a vigilante mob depends largely on which historians you trust — both interpretations have serious scholarly advocates. The ambiguity is part of what makes the story so persistently interesting.