On January 14, 1864, the Vigilantes used the heavy center support beam of this building, then under construction, to hang five of Henry Plummer’s road agents: Frank Parish, Boone Helm, Jack Gallagher, Haze Lyons, and Club Foot George Lane. Druggists Clayton, Hale, and then Morris occupied this completed building until the 1880s when the U.S. Post Office was located here. In 1903, the Virginia City Water Company, owned and operated by Sarah Bickford, purchased the property and maintained offices here until her death in 1939. Bickford was perhaps the only black woman in state history to own a utility, a remarkable achievement in turn-of-the-twentieth-century Montana.
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