Russell exhibited specimens of the gold taken from the “Grasshopper diggings,” to his friends in Colorado. The excitement it occasioned was intense, and when the Spring of 1863 opened, large numbers left for the new and promising El Dorado.
In the Fall of 1862 there stood, on the bank at the confluence of Rattlesnake Creek and the Beaverhead River, a sign-post with a rough-hewn board nailed across the top, with the following intelligence daubed with wagon-tar thereon:
Tu grass Hop Per digins
30 myle
☞ kepe the Trale nex the bluffe
On the other side of the board was the following:
Tu jonni grants
one Hunred & twenti myle
The “grass Hop Per digins” are at the town of Bannack; and the city of Deer Lodge is built on “jonni grants” ranche.