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Helena
Capital of Montana, born of a gold strike
Helena began in 1864 as "Last Chance Gulch," a gold camp in the mountains of west-central Montana that struck it rich and stuck around. The crooked main street still follows the path of the original placer diggings. Set in a valley at the foot of the Continental Divide, surrounded by the peaks of the northern Rockies, Helena became the territorial capital and then the state capital in 1894 after a famous rivalry with Anaconda.
The gold made Helena briefly one of the wealthiest cities per capita in the country, and the ornate mansions of that era still stand. The city sits high, above 4,000 feet, in the broad Helena Valley with mountains on every side. Government and its mountain setting define a small capital deep in the Rockies.