USA > Montana > Yellowstone County > An illustrated history of the Yellowstone Valley : embracing the counties of Park, Sweet Grass, Carbon, Yellowstone, Rosebud, Custer and Dawson, state of Montana > Part 17
USA > Montana > Park County > An illustrated history of the Yellowstone Valley : embracing the counties of Park, Sweet Grass, Carbon, Yellowstone, Rosebud, Custer and Dawson, state of Montana > Part 17
USA > Montana > Dawson County > An illustrated history of the Yellowstone Valley : embracing the counties of Park, Sweet Grass, Carbon, Yellowstone, Rosebud, Custer and Dawson, state of Montana > Part 17
USA > Montana > Rosebud County > An illustrated history of the Yellowstone Valley : embracing the counties of Park, Sweet Grass, Carbon, Yellowstone, Rosebud, Custer and Dawson, state of Montana > Part 17
USA > Montana > Custer County > An illustrated history of the Yellowstone Valley : embracing the counties of Park, Sweet Grass, Carbon, Yellowstone, Rosebud, Custer and Dawson, state of Montana > Part 17
USA > Montana > Sweet Grass County > An illustrated history of the Yellowstone Valley : embracing the counties of Park, Sweet Grass, Carbon, Yellowstone, Rosebud, Custer and Dawson, state of Montana > Part 17
USA > Montana > Carbon County > An illustrated history of the Yellowstone Valley : embracing the counties of Park, Sweet Grass, Carbon, Yellowstone, Rosebud, Custer and Dawson, state of Montana > Part 17
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It has been estimated that during the first twenty years of Montana's placer mining his- tory fully $150,000,000 was taken from the
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ground, and the stories of the handling of some of the large finds are highly interesting. Old residents of Helena still love to relate that on the morning of the 18th of August, 1866, two wagons loaded with a half ton each of gold, guarded by an escort of 15 men, depos- ited their freight at Hershfield & Co.'s bank on Bridge street, this treasure having been taken from Montana bar and Confederate gulch in less than four months by two men and their assistants. And Helena bankers are still pleased to mention that in the autumn of 1866 a four-mule team drew two and one-half tons of gold from Helena to Fort Benton, for transportation down the Missouri river, most of which came from those celebrated mines in one season, and the value of which freight was $1,500,000. The treasure belonged to John Shineman, A. Campbell, C. J. Friedrichs and T. Judson.
During the early days the "dust," as it was called, was the only money in circulation, and it was passed currently at eighteen dollars an ounce without regard to quality. Every busi- ness house, hotel, saloon and office was pro- vided with scales for weighing it. In 1879 the United States assay office was opened in Helena, where gold and silver bullion was re- ceived on deposit. This proved a relief to the miners, who had before been forced to send their bullion east at exorbitant charges.
Many are the stories told of the richness of some of the claims staked by fortunate min- ers, and nearly every claim had its famous nug- get. In Brown gulch, five miles from Vir- ginia City, the gold was coarse and nuggets of ten ounces or more were not uncommon. In 1867 a miner named Yager found in Fair- weather gulch, on J. McEvily's claim, a piece of gold oblong in shape, with a shoulder at one end and worn smooth, weighing fifteen pounds, two ounces. One nugget was found in a tributary of Snowshoe gulch in 1865 which weighed 178 ounces troy, and was worth $3,200. In July, 1865, a nugget was found in
the claim of Maxwell, Rollins & Co., in Nel- son's gulch, which was worth $2,073. In the same gulch, from J. H. Roger's claim, one worth $1,650 was found. From Deitrick & Brother's claim in Rocker gulch, in 1867, a piece of gold worth $1,800 was found. Three valuable nuggets were taken from the claim of Captain Tandy on Scratch Gravel in 1875 and 1876, weighing $375, $475 and $550. From McClellan's gulch on the Blackfoot river, $30,- 000 was taken from one claim in eleven days by five men. From a claim, No. 8, below Dis- covery claim, on the same gulch, $12,584 was taken out in five days. The dirt back of Black- foot City paid from twenty cents to one hun- dred forty dollars to the pan.
So far we have spoken only of the placer mines, although the discovery of quartz ledges and the mining of quartz was contemporan- eous with that of the Bannack placers of 1862. Because of the richness of the placer mines very little was done in the direction of quartz mining in the early days, and almost without exception dismal failures resulted from at- tempts in that direction prior to 1870. People were not content to await slower returns that come from quartz mining, when the gold could be picked from the ground with comparative little expense. An authority on the mines of Montana has stated that a few thousand dol- lars would have been sufficient to buy all the great bonanzas of Butte even as late as 1870. In August, 1864, however, there were fourteen gold mills in operation in the territory, of which ten were steam mills. The number of stamps employed at that time was 195, with several arrastras, all valued at a half million dollars. Some idea of the condition of quartz mining in the early days may be gleaned from the report of A. K. Eaton, made in 1867, as follows :
A large number of mills for the working of gold ores have been erected in the territory, and few of them with more than partial success. The reason is obvious and in their partial failure, mining history only
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repeats itself. Some of them are to that untried char- acter of which it may be said that whilst they show in construction some new features and some good ones, unfortunately the new things are not good and the good points are not new. Novel inventions, even if capable of success, are inevitably destined to failure in a new country. The principal difficulty, however, has been in the imperfect management of these differ- ent enterprises, arising sometimes from the incapacity of agents, but more frequently from the impossibility of anticipating in a country new and undeveloped, the exact requirements of the case. One great error has been made by almost all. It has arisen from the over- sanguine belief that quartz could be mined in quantity without preliminary expense in development. The mills are erected, the money and patience of the proprietors exhausted, and with untold wealth the machinery is left to rust and rot for want of ore. Today nearly every mill in the territory could be worked most profit- ably by the expenditure of a few thousand dollars in the thorough opening of the mines belonging to them.
So early as 1861 there was published in the San Francisco Bulletin (August 28th) the testimony of an old California miner who had prospected in the Rocky mountain region to the effect that he had counted seven quartz lodes in one mountain.
The first lode worked was the Dakota, bearing gold quartz, which was discovered near Bannack and located November 12, 1862. The Dakota was a large, irregular shaped vein, carrying free gold, varying from three to eight feet in thickness. The decomposed quartz from the surface of the vein was packed down from the bald hill on which it was sit- uated to the creek, where the gold was panned out. A mill to crush the quartz was begun by William Arnold in the winter of 1862 and was finished by J. F. Allen the following spring, the motive power for the mill being water. The mill was erected out of such material as was at hand. The stamp stems, four in number, were made of wood; the shoes and dies of old wagon tires welded together. Nearly all the material that went into the mill was furnished by the wagons abandoned at this point by the Salmon river emigrants. Out of the wagon tires, in a common blacksmith shop, were fash- ioned the stamps, weighing four hundred
pounds each. Out of this simple and econom -. ical contrivance more gold was extracted than from some mills that were erected later that cost ten times as much. This primative affair was followed in 1863 by the erection of other mills which had been transported from Color- ado and the east and from that time on the gold quartz near Bannack gave employment to sev- eral mills. The first steam quartz mill was put up in Bannack by Hunkins. Walter C. Hopkins placed a steam mill on No. 6 Dakota in August, 1866. The Bullion Mining company owned a mill in 1866, having three Bullock crushers. This mill was placed on New York ledge. The East Bannack Gold and Silver Mining com- pany owned a mill in 1866, which was oper- ated on the Shober ledge, and of which David Worden was manager. The Butterfield mill and the Kirby and Clark mill were also in oper- ation near Bannack in 1866. During the same year N. E. Wood placed a Bullock patent crusher on Dakota No. 12 for the New Jersey company.
After the Bannack discoveries the next quartz locations were made in the vicinity of Helena, where on September 27, 1864, James W. Whitlatch discovered the famous Union lode. Concerning this discovery and the early working of quartz mines in the Helena neigh- borhood we quote from the history of Montana by H. H. Bancroft :
In September, 1864. James W. Whitlatch, not much cultured in book learning, but with great shrewdness and an indomitable will, who had become acquainted with mining and milling ores in Nevada and Colorado, was looking for a quartz location, having prospected in several districts before he came to Prickly Pear, where he tried working some silver bearing galena ores which proved intractable from the presence of copper and antimony. The expenditure in the country of high prices reduced his exchequer to naught, and he sought Last Chance gulch, there to encamp for the winter with eight companions. The placers were paying enormously, and believing that quartz is the mother of placer gold, he began searching for the veins. In this search he was assisted by his eight messmates, who, having less faith, and desiring to test their for- tunes in the placer diggings, bound him to an agree-
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ment to give up the pursuit if at the close of a cer- tain day of the month he had not found his bonanza. The day was drawing to a close and his companions had returned to camp when Whitlatch caught sight of a fragment of quartz, which on being broken open by his pick showed free gold. It was with a quickened pulse that he struck it in to the earth and uncovered the long sought lode.
This was the famous Whitlatch mine. In order to work it a company was formed of succeeding claimants, called the Whitlatch Union Mining Company. In 1864- 65 there was taken out a good quantity of ore worth on an average of $40 per ton, and in September, 1866, the mill of the National Mining and Exploring Com- pany commenced crushing it, followed by several others which were erected in this and the following year. These were the Turnley, Hendie, Sensenfelder & Whit- latch and Ricker & Price mills, the first two erected in 1866. Over 32,000 tons were worked before the close of 1867, yielding $1,001,500. The cost of mining and milling ores in Montana at this period was enormous. being $7 per ton to get out the ore and from $15 to $18 for crushing it, in gold, when gold was worth a pre- mium of 100 per cent. The profit was, therefore, small, but such as it was, Whitlatch, with the true enterprise of a pioneer, devoted himself to the further development of his own and neighboring mines. IXL, owned by J. C. Ricker and M. A. Price. was claim No. I west from Whitlatch discovery claim. Whitlatch & Sen- senfelder was claim No. 3 east and claim No. 3 west on the lode, from discovery, a half interest in which was sold to Sensenfelder in June, 1869, and a thirty stamp mill erected thereon. The property was resold to a Philadelphia company under the name of the Columbia Mining Company of Montana, managed by B. H. Tatem. Claim No. 4 east was owned equally by this company and E. Mansfield & Co. Claim No. 2 east was owned by Mansfield and E. Hodson. The westward extension on the Union lode was called the Parkinson and was owned by J. W. Whitlatch, J. Park- inson and C. McClure. On the extension the Essex Mining company. composed of Thomas Parkinson, W. Parkinson, Thomas Argyle and C. McClure, owned 1800 feet. They received a patent for the ground from the United States, the first granted in Montana under a law of Congress concerning quartz claims. The mill site included ten acres on Grizzly gulch, one-quarter mile from the mine. More fortunate than many other men of his class, he secured a fortune for his own uses.
The discovery of the Whitlatch lode led to a quartz excitement, not only about Helena, but in every other part of Montana. The Cliff was a promising lode at Helena. discovered by Worden & Hall, on which eigh- teen claims were located, nine of which were consoli- dated in one company known as the Croesus Mining company. The crevice of the Cliff was from 20 to 200 feet wide, and it rose in many places 30 feet above the surface. It formed a dividing line between the slate
and granite formations. It crossed the gulches in the vicinity of Helena, all of which paid well below it, and none paid above it, from which it would appear that it must have been the source of their riches. The Owyhee Park mines also were famous in 1866. Prof. Hodge was agent of the National Mining and Exploring com- pany of New York, which owned them. Turnley's mill commenced running on the ores in the latter part of August, 1866. The Bullion Mining company, of Nilson's gulch, commenced crushing their ores in No- vember, 1866. The Sultana, at the head of Grizzly gulch, had a ten stamp mill erected by J. Gormley & Co. at work in November also. It was erected by Richard Fisher. His partner, Clifford, was superintendent for a New York company which owned five mills in Georgia before the rebellion. The property being con- fiscated, Clifford migrated to Colorado and mined there five years before coming to Montana. Among other mines partially opened in 1865 near Helena was the Uncle Sam, owned by a miner from Scotland named Brown, who had formerly worked on the Gould and Curry lode of Nevada. This mine was said at the pe- riod of its discovery to be the richest in the known world, being a well defined ledge five feet wide, three- fourths of which was pure gold, and the remainder principally bismuth. The quartz containing the vein, it was stated, would assay from $500 to $2.000. Making every allowance for over-enthusiasm, the Uncle Sam was undoubtedly a mine of very unusual richness, with one of those bonanzas at the top which have not been altogether unknown in other mines.
While the mills were pounding out the gold in the Bannack and Helena districts, quartz mining was being also carried on in the vicin- ity of Virginia City. In Summit district, five miles south of Virginia City, four mills were soon at work running on ores taken from mines near the capital city. Also in Hot Springs dis- trict, thirty miles north of Virginia City, there was considerable activity and three mills were kept busy. The first mill erected in Madison county was the Idaho, which began pounding ore with twelve stamps in December, 1865. It was not successful and was replaced by another about a year later. The following year Seneca Falls mill, in a large frame struc- ture, with excellent machinery ; Scranton mill. with a Dodge crusher, in a stone building ; and Excelsior mill, with twenty stamps, in a fine large building, were added to the Idaho mill. In a gulch just below Summit was the Forest
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HISTORY OF MONTANA.
mill with twenty-four stamps, which crushed the ore from the Mesler lode. A fifty stamp mill arrived the same year for the Mill creek mines, the owners of which were J. A. Dowdall, Manlius Branham and C. C. Branham. The first run was made on the Lady Suffolk lode. Two mills arrived in Summit in October for Frank Chistnot from Nebraska City. The best known lodes of Summit district were the Yankee Blade, Lucas, Caverone, Oro Cache and Keystone. There was a mill belonging to Raglan, Cope & Naptoon, a custom mill, and one to the Clark & Upson Mining Co., of which company Prof. Eaton was the agent. The mines in the Hot Springs district which were worked at this period were the Cotopaxi, Gold Hill, Esop, Oro Fino, Sebastapol, Buena Vista, Poco Tiempo, Alpha, Cleopatra, Mark Antony, May Reid, Megatherium, Brooklyn and Pony, the last named being the leading mine. There were several other mills running in this vicin- ity in 1867, owned by H. A. Ward, McAn- drews, Warre & Co., Isaac and L. W. Borton. At Pipestone, a few miles north of Hot Springs, a mill was erected in 1866. At Fish creek, a short distance south of Pipestone, the Red Mountain district was opened too late that season for the introduction of mills.
Other important quartz mining districts in the sixties were Trout Creek, Crow Creek, Silver Bow, Blackfoot and McClellan. Again we quote from Bancroft concerning the mines in these districts :
Northeast of and within about fifteen miles of Helena, on the east side of the Missouri, was the Trout Creek district, in which both mills and arrastras were busily at work grinding and pounding out gold from rock of great richness. at a place called New York, on a creek flowing into the Missouri, with a Brooklyn on the opposite side, the two towns having a population of about 400. John A. Gaston, one of the first comers, and an Englishman, was associated with Simpson in a thirty stamp quartz mill. Each stamp weighed 600 pounds and dropped thirty-five times a minute, pound- ing 22 tons in 24 hours. It started up August 28. 1866. A water power mill, with an eleven foot overshot wheel, was located west of the steam mill and carried six
500-pound stamps, crushing a ton a day each. This was the pioneer mill of the Trout Creek district and belonged to Wessel & Wilkes, and started August 25. It was an arastra attached. Another water mill was erected by Cullen, and a twenty stamp steam mill by Hendrie & Cass, during the summer. An arastra be- longing to Rumlay & Watrous consisted of a circular basin twelve feet in diameter, with five mullers, weigh- ing in the aggregate 3,000 pounds. It reduced 1.000 pounds of ore in six hours, and was run by water power for an overshot wheel, eight feet in diameter.
The Star of the West was the first ledge developed in this district. Seven tons yielded $387.50 in Wessel & Wilkes' arrastra, at a total expense of $97.50. The Nonpareil, Grizzly, Alta, Excelsior No. 2, Little Giant, Zebra, Chief of Montana, Hidbard, Trout, Keystone, Humbolt, Sampson and Old Dad were more or less worked in 1866. The mines. both placer and quartz, were discovered in January by four hunters returning from an exploring expedition to Sun river. These men were Moore, Price, Ritter and Spivey. The valley of Trout creek was two and one-half by one and one- fourth miles in extent. The stream furnished the famous New York gulches and numerous bars.
In June, 1866, quartz and placer mines were dis- covered on Crow creek, on the west side of the Mis- souri, nearly due west of the south end of the Belt range of mountains, which has furnished so great a number of good mines on the east side. At this place the town of Radersburg was laid out in October, one mile from the road leading from Helena to Gallatin. The first lode found was the Blipp, by J. A. Cooper and George Beard. The Johnny Keating and Blacher, Ironclad, Leviathan, Twilight, Nighthawk, Ohio, Ultramarine. Robert E. Lee and twenty others were located during the summer. The district was a rich one and Radersburg had in 1868 six hundred in- habitants.
In the Silver Bow and Blackfoot regions quartz was being daily discovered. In December, 1865, there had been discovered the Lioness, Rocker, Shamrock, Original, Alhambra, Wild Pat, Mountaineer, Polar Star, Lepley, Dewey, Arctic, Fairmont and a host of others. Quartz was discovered near Mcclellan gulch by Henry Prosser and Charles Melvin, 1.000 feet of which sold for $10,000. This was the Glencoe mine. But there appears to have been no mills introduced west of the Rocky mountains until later.
We have next to consider the silver mining history of Montana. In mining countries the usual succession is first placer mining, then quartz gold mining, and lastly silver quartz mining. But in Montana the discovery of gold and silver quartz was made at almost the same time. The first experiment with silver quartz
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HISTORY OF MONTANA.
was made in the Blue Wing and Rattlesnake districts, a few miles east and northeast of Bannack. The first lodes of the Blue Wing district where the Huron, Wide West, Blue Wing, Arizona and Silver Rose; of the Rattle- snake district, Legal Tender, White Cloud, New World, Watson and Dictator. The ores carried enough galena to make them reducible by the smelting process, furnaces being set up in 1866 by several companies. James A. McKnight, an authority on the mines of Mon- tana, has written concerning the first silver mill erected within the state: "The first silver mill was unquestionably the old Pioneer. The pans for this mill were shipped by wagon all the way from San Francisco, and in crossing the Rio Virgin, in southern Utah, the team sunk in the quicksand and the pans were buried there for several weeks till they could be dug out and raised from the river by derricks."
The first smelter was erected at Marysville by the New York & Montana Mining, Pros- pecting and Discovering company. Their sci- entist was W. K. Eaton, and their general manager, E. Loring Pratt. In 1868 the St. Louis Smelting company erected furnaces at Argenta. The Rocky Mountain Gold and Sil- ver Mining company put up a cupelling fur- nace at Marysville, just east of Bannack. The ore smelted was from the Wide West in Blue Wing district. A blasting furnace was erected by Prof. Eaton; a furnace and a twenty-four stamp mill by Duran & Co .; a cupel furnace in the Rattlesnake district by Professor Augustus Steitz, on Legal Tender lode. The ore yielded 80 per cent lead. The mine was owned by Es- ler and others. The Stapleton and Henry Clay ores were also worked in this furnace. The Huron Silver Mining company also erected furnaces.
This beginning created a sort of epidemic of silver mining. The fact that placer mines were not being discovered as rapidly as had been the case during the first few years of the rush to Montana led more people to turn their
attention to quartz mining. In the rich and fertile valleys, where no one dreamed of look- ing for mineral, cropped up legions of silver lodes, notably in the country about the three forks of the Missouri. Silver Bow creek, which had received its name because of the shiny crescent of water which the creek formed, now meant that the crescent was backed by a wall of silver leads. Among the other early silver discoveries were in Jefferson county, notably the Gregory, owned by Axers & Mimmaw.
The activity in mining circles, which had prevailed during the early days, began to wane about 1869, and during the few years follow- ing Montana was in comparative poverty. Large streams of gold were continually pour- ing out of the country, and the population was diminishing, owing to the migration of miners to new discoveries in other parts of the coun- try and the natural desire of many to return to their homes in the east as soon as they had made a "stake." Besides the precious metals and a few hides and furs there were no exports from the territory, always a bad condition for any country. An extravagant system of gov- ernment added to the burdens of the people. This condition of stagnation lasted until about 1873. But this period, however, discouraging, was not lost upon the permanent population, which was paving the way for more prosper- ous times. Those who owned quartz mines and mills, and who had not found them re- munerative by reason of defects in machinery or ignorance of methods, took time to right themselves, or found others willing to take the property off their hands at a discount and make improvements. Those who owned placer claims were driven to construct ditches and flumes whereby the dry gulches and creek beds could be mined.
Strong reaction toward an increased produc- tion of the precious metals did not begin until in 1878. Then the silver yield was in excess of the gold. The most famous silver districts
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HISTORY OF MONTANA.
which were being developed at that time were at Butte, Phillipsburg, Glendale and Jefferson.
Having purposely neglected to make very little mention of the mining history of the dis- trict about Butte, heretofore in this chapter, we shall now confine our attention to that won- derful district, than which there is no greater mining district on the continent, or perhaps in the world, no spot which presents such a pic- ture of human life and endeavor. The country round is entirely barren and desolate. Trees and vegetation of all kinds are an impossibility on account of the presence of the fumes from the smelters and reduction works in the valley, and every particle of timber has been cut down to be used as fuel. Concerning the Butte for- mation James A. McKnight has written :
The vein systems of Butte have been so often de- scribed in scientific terms and so little understood that it may not be amiss to give an idea of them in plain language. The formation is granite, with occasional porphry. The trend of the veins is due east and west ; their dip is generally south and the pitch of the ore shoots almost invariably west. These parallel veins occur at irregular intervals from the Utah & Northern depot to a point a mile north of Walkerville, and can be traced laterally for five miles in length. * * * They are true fissures, like most of the great mines of the world, and each seems to retain its uniformity as to width, depth and general characteristics. The larger veins vary in width from ten to one hundred feet, and seem to extend through the granite like vast channels filled with argentiferous or cupriferous ores, and showing vast spaces where they are merged. The ore, as before stated, occurs in shoots, usually varying in length from 100 to 1,000 feet. These shoots are the bonanza de- posits, and they differ from pockets or kidneys in that they are more lasting. A pocket is very seldom per- manent, and a miner sinking a shaft to strike a pocket is always likely to strike above or below it. Not so with the ore such as occurs at Butte. It often fills the vein from wall to wall. Its dip is uniform, It goes to the deep. No bottom has yet been found to the great ore shoots of the Butte mines. Permanence is their dis- tingnishing feature and the mighty three-compartment shafts which are sunk 400 feet without cross-cutting to the vein afford the best evidence of the confidence of capital in the downward continuity of the veins. There is enough ore in sight in the Butte mines today (1892) to last fifty years, and still not one claim in 20 is being opened. It is not a question of ore, but one of mills and smelters that sometimes agitates the people of
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