The Last American Frontier

by Frederic L. Paxson

In 1860 the territories of Washington and Nebraska had met along a common boundary at the top of the Rocky Mountains. Before Washington was divided in 1863, Nebraska had changed its shape under the pressure of a small but active population north of its seat of government. The centres of population in Nebraska north of the Platte River represented chiefly overflows from Iowa and Minnesota. Emigrating from these states farmers had by 1860 opened the country on the left bank of the Missouri, in the region of the Yankton Sioux. The Missouri traffic had developed both shores of the river past Fort Pierre and Fort Union to Fort Benton, by 1859. To meet the needs of the scattered people here Nebraska had been partitioned in 1861 along the line of the Missouri and the forty-third parallel. Dakota had been created out of the country thus cut loose and in two years more shared in the fate of eastern Washington. Idaho was established in 1863 to provide home rule for the miners of the new mineral region. It included a great rectangle, on both sides of the Rockies, reaching south to Utah and Nebraska, west to its present western boundary at Oregon and 117°, east to 104°, the present eastern line of Montana and Wyoming. Dakota and Washington were cut down for its sake.

It seemed, in 1862 and 1863, as though every little rivulet in the whole mountain country possessed its treasures to be given up to the first prospector with the hardihood to tickle its soil. Four important districts along the upper course of the Snake, not to mention hundreds of minor ones, lent substance to this appearance. Almost before Idaho could be organized its area of settlement had broadened enough to make its own division in the near future a certainty. East of the Bitter Root Mountains, in the head waters of the Missouri tributaries, came a long series of new booms.

When the American Fur Company pushed its little steamer Chippewa up to the vicinity of Fort Benton in 1859, none realized that a new era for the upper Missouri had nearly arrived. For half a century the fur trade had been followed in this region and had dotted the country with tiny forts and palisades, but there had been no immigration, and no reason for any. The Mullan road, which Congress had authorized in 1855, was in course of construction from Fort Benton to Walla Walla, but as yet there were few immigrants to follow the new route. Considerably before the territory of Idaho was created, however, the active prospectors of the Snake Valley had crossed the range and inspected most of the Blackfoot country in the direction of Fort Benton. They had organized for themselves a Missoula County, Washington territory, in July, 1862, an act which may be taken as the beginning of an entirely new movement.

Two brothers, James and Granville Stuart, were the leaders in developing new mineral areas east of the main range. After experience in California and several years of life along the trails, they settled down in the Deer Lodge Valley, and began to open up their mines in 1861. They accomplished little this year since the steamboat to Fort Benton, carrying supplies, was burned, and their trip to Walla Walla for shovels and picks took up the rest of the season. But early in 1862 they were hard and successfully at work. Reënforcements, destined for the Salmon River mines farther west, came to them in June; one party from Fort Benton, the other from the Colorado diggings, and both were easily persuaded to stay and join in organizing Missoula County. Bannack City became the centre of their operations.

Alder Gulch and Virginia City were, in 1863, a second focus for the mines of eastern Idaho. Their deposits had been found by accident by a prospecting party which was returning to Bannack City after an unsuccessful trip. The party, which had been investigating the Big Horn Mountains, discovered Alder Gulch between the Beaver Head and Madison rivers, early in June. With an accurate knowledge of the mining population, the discoverers organized the mining district and registered their own claims before revealing the location of the new diggings. Then came a stampede from Bannack City which gave to Virginia City a population of 10,000 by 1864.

Another mining district, in Last Chance Gulch, gave rise in 1864 to Helena, the last of the great boom towns of this period. Its situation as well as its resources aided in the growth of Helena, which lay a little west of the Madison fork of the Missouri, and in the direct line from Bannack and Virginia City to Fort Benton. Only 142 miles of easy staging above the head of Missouri River navigation, it was a natural post on the main line of travel to the northwest fields.

The excitement over Bannack and Virginia and Helena overlapped in years the period of similar boom in Idaho. It had begun even before Idaho had been created. When this was once organized, the same inconveniences which had justified it, justified as well its division to provide home rule for the miners east of the Bitter Root range. An act of 1864 created Montana territory with the boundaries which the state possesses to-day, while that part of Idaho south of Montana, now Wyoming, was temporarily reattached to Dakota. Idaho assumed its present form. The simultaneous development in all portions of the great West of rich mining camps did much to attract public attention as well as population.

In 1863 nearly all of the camps were flourishing. The mountains were occupied for the whole distance from Mexico to Canada, while the trails were crowded with emigrants hunting for fortune. The old trails bore much of the burden of migration as usual, but new spurs were opened to meet new needs. In the north, the Mullan road had made easy travel from Fort Benton to Walla Walla, and had been completed since 1862. Congress authorized in 1864 a new road from eastern Nebraska, which should run north of the Platte trail, and the war department had sent out personally conducted parties of emigrants from the vicinity of St. Paul. The Idaho and Montana mines were accessible from Fort Hall, the former by the old emigrant road, the latter by a new northeast road to Virginia City. The Carson mines were on the main line of the California road. The Arizona fields were commonly reached from California, by way of Fort Yuma.

The shifting population which inhabited the new territories invites and at the same time defies description. It was made up chiefly of young men. Respectable women were not unknown, but were so few in number as to have little measurable influence upon social life. In many towns they were in the minority, even among their sex, since the easily won wealth of the camps attracted dissolute women who cannot be numbered but who must be imagined. The social tone of the various camps was determined by the preponderance of men, the absence of regular labor, and the speculative fever which was the justification of their existence. The political tone was determined by the nature of the population, the character of the industry, and the remoteness from a seat of government. Combined, these factors produced a type of life the like of which America had never known, and whose picturesque qualities have blinded the thoughtless into believing that it was romantic. It was at best a hard bitter struggle with the dark places only accentuated by the tinsel of gambling and adventure.

A single street meandering along a valley, with one-story huts flanking it in irregular rows, was the typical mining camp. The saloon and the general store, sometimes combined, were its representative institutions. Deep ruts along the street bore witness to the heavy wheels of the freighters, while horses loosely tied to all available posts at once revealed the regular means of locomotion, and by the careless way they were left about showed that this sort of property was not likely to be stolen. The mining population centring here lived a life of contrasts. The desolation and loneliness of prospecting and working claims alternated with the excitement of coming to town. Few decent beings habitually lived in the towns. The resident population expected to live off the miners, either in way of trade, or worse. The bar, the gambling-house, the dance-hall have been made too common in description to need further account. In the reaction against loneliness, the extremes of drunkenness, debauchery, and murder were only too frequent in these places of amusement.