The town was founded back in 1862 with a major gold discovery in that year. One of the city founders was Dr. Erasmus Darwin Leavitt, a physician who gave up medicine for a time to become a gold miner. Although when he started gold mining and practicing medicine, he soon found out that he had more reputation as a physician than as a miner and that there was greater profit in allowing someone else to wield his pick and shovel while he attended to his profession. Subsequently, he moved elsewhere to devote the rest of his life to his medical practice. At the town's peak, Bannock had a total population of around 10,000 residents with the last residents leaving in the 1970s. 60 structures still remain in the abandoned city, many well-preserved and can be explored by visitors.