History of Early Steamboat Navigation on the Missouri River, Volume 2 (of 2) / Life and Adventures of Joseph La Barge

by Hiram Martin Chittenden

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.

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.

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.

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.