GOLD IN MONTANA.
[Sidenote: FIRST GOLD IN MONTANA.]
If the Civil War operated to drive commerce from the lower Missouri
River, other forces were at work at the head waters of that stream
to multiply it many fold. At the time when the attention of the
nation and of the world was centered on the tempest that had burst
over the eastern portion of the Republic, a few hardy miners were
prospecting the country around the upper tributaries of the Missouri
in their ever-restless search for gold. It is a singular fact that
the gold-bearing regions of western Montana, the very first in the
mountain country to be extensively frequented by white men, should
have been the last to give up the secret of their hidden wealth. For
nearly twenty years emigration had been pouring into the West. The
Mormons had settled a few hundred miles to the south. Settlement had
gained a permanent foothold on the Pacific Coast from Mexico to the
British line. The Pike’s Peak gold discoveries were rapidly filling
up Colorado. The reflex wave of emigration was rolling back from the
Pacific Coast across the Sierras and the Cascades into Nevada, eastern
Oregon, and Idaho. But as yet there were no settlers to speak of in the
mountains of Montana, and that country was still practically unknown to
the general public. It is a remarkable fact that a section of country
in that neighborhood, which is now considered the most wonderful in the
world, was the very last of all the national domain to be discovered
and explored.
[Sidenote: FIRST SALE OF GOLD DUST.]
The wave of gold discovery in the Northwest moved from the west toward
the east. In 1860–61 it made known the rich deposits in Idaho on the
Salmon and Clearwater rivers. Next came the findings just west of the
Continental Divide, and then the rich discoveries on the head waters of
the Missouri. The existence of placer deposits within the limits of the
present State of Montana had been asserted as early as 1852. A Canadian
half-breed of the name of Beneetse is said to have found pay dirt in
that year on a small tributary of Deer Lodge River, one of the sources
of the Columbia. The stream has since been known as Gold Creek, and the
place of discovery is about fifty miles northwest of the modern city of
Butte. Four years later, 1856, the discovery was confirmed by a party
who were traveling from Great Salt Lake to the Bitter Root Valley. In
the same year a man turned up at Fort Benton with what he asserted
was golddust. He came from the mountains in the Southwest, most likely
from the Deer Lodge Valley. None of the people at the post were gold
experts, and they hesitated about receiving the dust; but Culbertson
finally took it on his own responsibility, giving for it a thousand
dollars’ worth of merchandise. Next year he sent it down the river, and
it was found to be pure gold, worth fifteen hundred dollars. This was
the first exchange of golddust in Montana.
The next step in the progress of discovery must be credited to James
and Granville Stuart, two of Montana’s most distinguished pioneers.
They had been spending the winter of 1857–58, with a number of other
people, in the valley of the Bighole River, a tributary of the
Missouri, and in the spring of 1858 went over to the Deer Lodge Valley
to investigate the reported findings on Gold Creek. They remained there
for a time and found paying prospects, but were so harassed by the
Blackfeet Indians that they were compelled to leave. They moved to a
safer locality, but here James Stuart met with an accident which came
near proving fatal, and the two brothers left the country and went to
Fort Bridger. Although they had made no great discovery, their report
was considered as confirming those already made of the existence of
gold in the Deer Lodge Valley.
Before these prospects were any further developed attention was wholly
diverted to the important discoveries in Idaho already referred to. A
great stampede to the Salmon and Clearwater rivers began. Emigrants
poured in both by way of Salt Lake and the Missouri River, and an even
larger inflow came from the Pacific Coast. But before the rush from the
East had gathered full force discoveries in Montana arrested its course
and held it permanently in a new and greater Eldorado.
[Sidenote: BEGINNING OF MINING IN MONTANA.]
In the winter of 1861–62 a considerable floating population, among them
the Stuart brothers, remained in the Deer Lodge Valley. The Stuarts
commenced sluicing in a systematic way on Gold Creek, and their work
was the beginning of the gold-mining industry in Montana. Although
nothing particularly remarkable was found, it was enough to attract
attention, and reports soon got abroad that the findings were very
rich. The greater part of the emigration from the East in the year 1862
was bound for the Idaho mines, but did not get beyond the Deer Lodge
Valley, or other points in western Montana. Among these parties was one
from Colorado, including J. M. Bozeman, for whom the town of Bozeman,
in the beautiful Gallatin Valley, is named. The newcomers made a rich
discovery on a branch of Gold Creek, which was named, from the place
whence the party came, Pike’s Peak Gulch.
[Sidenote: BANNOCK CITY.]
Another party from Colorado, bound for the Idaho mines, were deflected
north by the difficulty of getting through the Lemhi Mountains and
by favorable reports from the Deer Lodge Valley. Two of their number
discovered gold on Grasshopper Creek, in the southwestern corner of
the present State of Montana. They carried the news to the main party,
who had gone on to the Deer Lodge, and all returned to investigate
the discovery. The report of the two men was found to be true, and
prospecting in that part of the country was carried on extensively.
This work resulted in the finding of a very rich deposit by a party
under one White, for whom the spot was named White’s Bar. Here the
town of Bannock sprang up, and before the end of the year boasted a
population of five hundred souls. Other rich discoveries were made in
that vicinity, while far to the north the deposits on the Big Prickly
Pear Creek were found. It was now apparent that the whole country on
the head waters of the Missouri abounded in gold, and the work of
prospecting assumed enormous proportions.
[Sidenote: NORTHERN OVERLAND EXPEDITION.]
Two other important expeditions came from the East this season, bound
for the Idaho mines, but were stopped in their course, like that
from Colorado, by the new discoveries in Montana. One of these was
the firm of La Barge, Harkness & Co. of St. Louis, and the other was
a body of emigrants who accompanied what was known in its day as
the Northern Overland Expedition from St. Paul. This expedition was
of a semi-official character, under a Federal appropriation of five
thousand dollars, and its ostensible object was to open a wagon road
from St. Paul to Fort Benton. It was under the command of Captain James
L. Fisk, who, a private soldier in the 3d Minnesota Volunteers, was
appointed Captain and Quartermaster and placed in charge. About 125
emigrants accompanied the expedition. The journey was made in safety,
and was full of interesting happenings. It contributed one of the most
important additions ever made to population of the rising State.[47]
The spring of 1863 was marked by one of the most noted gold discoveries
ever made. During the previous winter a considerable party, under the
leadership of James Stuart, was organized at Bannock City, to explore
and prospect the country on the sources of the Yellowstone. A portion
of this party, including William Fairweather and Henry Edgar, went by
the way of Deer Lodge Valley to secure horses, having fixed on the
mouth of the Beaverhead River as the place of joining the main party.
Through some unavoidable delay the smaller party did not arrive on
time and Stuart went on without them. The Fairweather party discovered
Stuart’s trail and made forced marches to overtake him. The route
lay up the Gallatin Valley and across the divide to the Yellowstone,
and thence down the valley of that stream. Soon after reaching the
Yellowstone the smaller party were plundered by a band of Crows of
everything except their guns and mining tools. The Indians had the
generosity to give them in exchange for their mounts old broken-down
horses of their own.
[Sidenote: ALDER GULCH.]
The party gave up their pursuit of Stuart and started back for Bannock
City. On the 26th of May they stopped for noon on Alder Creek, a
little branch of one of the main tributaries of Jefferson Fork of the
Missouri. Here, as a result of a chance examination of a bar by two
men, Fairweather and Edgar, the famous Alder Gulch discovery was made,
and the richest placer deposit in the history of gold mining came to
the knowledge of the world. The news of this wonderful discovery drew
to the spot a large part of the population of the Territory, and the
town of Virginia City sprang up as if in a night. For several years it
was the principal town in the Territory and became its first capital.
In less than two years it had grown to a city of ten thousand souls.
[Sidenote: LAST CHANCE GULCH.]
The next important discovery was made in the fall of 1864, in what
was named at the time Last Chance Gulch. The deposits were very rich,
and the history of Alder Gulch was re-enacted here. The town which
arose on the spot was named Helena, and soon outgrew its sister to the
south. It became, and for many years remained, the principal town of
the Territory. In 1874 it was made the Territorial capital, and after
Montana was admitted to the Union, it was made the permanent capital of
the State.
Other discoveries followed those here mentioned, many of them rich and
of permanent value, but none equaling those of Alder and Last Chance
gulches. The Territory at once took rank with California and Colorado
as a gold-producing territory, and has held its high place ever since.
The mighty metamorphosis which, in the space of five years, came over
the country at the headwaters of the Missouri, produced an equally
marvelous change in the commercial business of that stream. The river
gave a sure highway for travel to within one hundred to two hundred
miles of the mines. There was no other route that could compete with
it, for this could carry freight from St. Louis to Fort Benton, in
cargoes of one to five hundred tons, without breaking bulk. The
emigrants themselves went in large numbers by overland routes, but a
great number also by the boats; while nearly all merchandise, including
every necessary of life, and all mining machinery and heavy freight,
came by the river.
[Sidenote: HIGH WATER MARK.]
[Sidenote: AN EXTRAORDINARY SCENE.]
The steamboat trade jumped suddenly to enormous proportions. Prior
to 1864 there had been only six steamboat arrivals at the levee of
Fort Benton. In 1866 and 1867 there were seventy arrivals. The trade
touched high-water mark in 1867, and at this time presented one of
the most extraordinary developments known to the history of commerce.
There were times when thirty or forty steamboats were on the river
between Fort Benton and the mouth of the Yellowstone,[48] where all
the way the river flowed amid scenes of wildness that were in the
strictest sense primeval. To one who could have been set down in the
unbroken wilderness along the banks of the river, where nothing dwelt
except wild animals and wilder men, where the fierce Indian made life
a constant peril, where no civilized habitation greeted the eye, it
would have seemed marvelous and wholly inexplicable to find this river
filled with noble craft, as beautiful as any that ever rode the ocean,
stored with all the necessaries of civilization, and crowded with
passengers as cultured, refined, and well dressed as the cabin list of
an ocean steamer. What could it all mean? Whence came this handful of
civilization and what brought it here? Certainly a most extraordinary
scene, flashed for a moment before the world and then withdrawn forever.
[Sidenote: PERILOUS VOYAGE.]
It was not the steamboat alone, however, that made up the romantic
history of Missouri navigation in these exciting times. There were
every year many men from the mines who wanted to return to the States
because they were weary of the country or wished to carry down the
crude wealth which they had secured. The steamboats came up only in the
spring, and if passengers were not ready to go down it was necessary
to seek other conveyance. The usual resource in such cases was the
mackinaw boat. It was a perfectly comfortable and very cheap mode of
traveling, with only one drawback--danger from the Indians, who, at
this time, were intensely hostile all along the river. It was regarded
as a sort of forlorn hope to go down in an open boat, and yet many
tried it every year. Generally they got through all right, with their
precious freight, but there were some terrible tragedies as the penalty
of such reckless daring.
Some statistics have survived showing the magnitude of the steamboat
business on the Missouri River during these years. In the year 1865,
1000 passengers, 6000 tons of merchandise, and 20 quartz mills went to
Fort Benton. In the year 1867 forty steamboats had passed Sioux City
before June 1 on their way up the river. They carried over 12,000 tons
of freight, most of it for Fort Benton. There was not much downstream
traffic, although all the boats carried golddust. In 1866 one boat,
the _Luella_, had on board $1,250,000 worth of dust.
[Sidenote: FABULOUS PROFITS.]
The profits of a successful voyage were enormous. The reported profits
for some of the trips of 1866 were as follows: The _St. John_, $17,000;
the _Tacony_, $16,000; the _W. J. Lewis_, $40,000; the _Peter Balen_,
$65,000. In 1867 Captain La Barge cleared over $40,000 on the trip of
the _Octavia_.
Freight rates from St. Louis to Fort Benton in 1866 were 12 cents per
pound. Insurance rates were 6 1-2 per cent. in the case of sidewheel
boats and 8 per cent with sternwheel boats. The fare for cabin
passengers was $300. It was not everyone, however, who had a share
in the high prices of those times. The master of the boat received
$200 per month; the clerk $150; the mate and engineer each $125. The
pilot was the only member of the crew who could command what salary he
pleased. So indispensable were his services that as high as $1200 per
month was paid for the best talent.