Thirty-eight years ago, Estes traveled with her family from Chicago to Montana. They visited Castle Town ... "We wanted to see a ghost town," she said.

Learn about Castle Town at the Castle Museum in White Sulphur Springs (which is a house museum with a display on the ghost town). Then take Montana Highway 294 to Lennep, itself a neat ghost town.

But the Meagher County ghost town is now a fortress protected not with mottes or baileys but by private property rights. Castle Town, which is nestled in the Castle Mountains in central Montana ...