USA > Montana > Then and now; or, Thirty-six years in the Rockies. Personal reminiscences of some of the first pioneers of the state of Montana. Indians and Indian wars. The past and present of the Rocky mountain country. 1864-1900 > Part 29
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THEN AND NOW;
After writing the foregoing I sent it to Mr. Stuart for cor- rection and in reply he sent me the following :
Robert Vaughn, Esq., Great Falls, Mont .:
Dear Sir-Your manuscript about the early discoveries of gold in what is now Montana, and your request that I correct any mistakes therein, received. In the interest of true history, I will gladly do so.
What I wrote in 1865, as quoted by you, is an absolutely correct account of the discovery and first working of gold mines in what is now Montana, except that it does not tell of the mining done on Gold creek by Henry Thomas, known as "Gold Tom," and which I contributed to the first volume of the Historical Society of Montana in 1875, and which is referred to by Lieutenant Bradly.
Upon learning of Bradly's statement about Silverthorne's gold and which was a surprise to a considerable number of old timers, myself included, who were intimately acquainted with him (Silverthorne), I took steps to ascertain where that gold came from and the late W. F. Wheeler and myself found in the journals kept by John Owen at Fort Owen in the Bitter Root valley since the year 1852 the evidence that John Owen brought that gold dust up from the Dalles in Oregon, and sent Silverthorne over to Fort Benton to buy goods with it to trade with the Flathead Indians, and besides all the old timers knew that "Silver," as we used to call him, never owned that amount of gold in his whole life (he's dead now, rest his soul), and never knew of nor worked any secret mines because there never were any in Montana, and we who well knew "Silver" could readily imagine the pleasure it gave him to stuff the American Fur Company's men at Fort Benton (none of whom knew anything about mining) with his yarn about his secret mines, etc., etc.
Very truly yours,
GRANVILLE STUART.
455
THIRTY-SIX YEARS IN THE ROCKIES;
Mr. Stuart is one of the self-made men of Montana, and no other man has done more to make Montana what it is than he. He was elected to the council from Deer Lodge County for the session of 1871-2, and to the house session 1873-4, and to the house from Lewis and Clarke County, session of 1878-9, and extra session of 1879, and from Fergus County to the council, session of 1882-3 and was president of this session. In Feb- ruary, 1894, he was appointed Envoy Extraordinary and Min- ister Plenipotentiary to Paraguay and Uruguay by President Cleveland, and he served until December, 1897. Mr. Stuart is now in business in Butte, Mont.
Alder gulch, or Alder creek, as Mr. Stuart called it, was discovered in the spring of 1863 and soon became the Mecca of restless prospectors. It was not many months afterwards before Bevan, Last Chance, Nelson, Confederate, Highland, Lin- coln, McClellan, and a score of other gulches were swarmed with miners who were taking out gold in great quantities. And thus the history of the mines of Montana began.
Since 1862 her mines and gulches have made rich contribu- tions to the world's treasure. For many years gold was in the lead as the chief production, but after the richest placer mines of the bars and gulches had been worked out, the gold produc- tion rapidly declined, and the new era in mining began by giv- ing attention to quartz veins. It was not long before quartz mills and smelters were in operation, and, the consequences were that silver took the lead, but it did not hold the position very long before the base metals took the lead over the two precious metals. And now copper is king over all other metals put together, as can be seen by the following table which I received some time ago from Hon. Eugene Braden, United States assayer, at Helena, to whom I had written for the infor- mation. He says :
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THEN AND NOW;
QUARTZ MINING AT NIEHART, MONTANA ..
"The production of gold, silver, copper and lead in the state of Montana from 1862, the year of discovery of gold, until the end of the year 1898 is as follows :
1862 to 1897 (inclusive).
1898 (estimated).
Gold
$257,533,727
$5,167,958.66
Silver
273,033,393
20,040,407.03
Copper
217,487,224
27,669,000.00
Lead
9,817,112
793,800.00
$757,871,456
$53,671,165.69."
The regular annual report of Mr. Braden for the year 1899 has just been made public. The value of the minerals mined during the year was $68,457,307.54, an increase of $17,138,240 over the preceding year. The output of the state was as fol- lows :
457
THIRTY-SIX YEARS IN THE ROCKIES.
Copper, fine pounds 245,602,214
Silver, fine ounces
16,850,764
Gold, fine ounces
233,126
Lead, fine pounds
20,344,750
Their value is given as follows:
Copper, at $16.75 per cwt. $40.941,905.74
Silver (coinage value) 21,786,834.52
Gold 4,819,156.95
Lead at $4.75 per cwt.
909,410.33
Total $68,457,307.54
The gain is more than 33 1-3 per cent in the value of the production over 1898. There was an increase of nearly 28,- 500,000 pounds in the production of copper, and this means a gain of $15,000,000 in this metal alone.
Copper is the paramount feature of the mining industry in Montana. More than 80 per cent of the total values won in the state during 1899 came from the mines at Butte in the shape of gold, silver and copper.
Like the story of the "Mustard seed," is the story of the mines of Montana. From the prospector's hole on Gold creek, in 1862, only a few miles away "now" is Butte City, which is today the greatest mining camp on earth, its population be- ing between forty-five and fifty thousand. Though the ore is principally copper, yet as can be seen, it carries much gold and silver and is separated in the refineries at Butte, Anaconda and Great Falls. A writer in the Anaconda Standard, January, 1899, gives an interesting account, in a manner, so that the reader can comprehend the magnitude of this great camp. He says :
"Ten miles of mining shafts have been operating in Butte during the past year. This does not include the old and aban- doned shafts on which work has been stopped, but of shafts on
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THEN AND NOW;
which work has been actually done during the year. It in- cludes work done on mines which have been leased or are worked by small owners and not by the companies. The total depth of shafts operated by the regular mining companies amounts to 49,075 feet. Adding to this the depth of mines operated by leasers and operated by small owners, and the total will exceed 52,800 feet, or ten miles of shaft depth.
"More than a mile and a half of shaft depth has been sunk the past year. This is the largest amount of depth ever added to the mining development in the history of Butte. The total depth for the mining companies is 8,512 feet, and the re- turns from the small mines will increase this total. The de- velopment of the past year exceeds anything else in the his- tory of this camp. The total number of men reported employed is 7,548. This includes the big companies only. Individual owners of mines and leasers employ 800 more, which would make the total numbers of miners employed in the camp 8,350.
"Ten miles of shafts-add to that the length of drifts and stopes that lead in all directions beneath the city of Butte, and the figures would be enormous. These drifts form the streets and by-ways of another city underground. Along these sub- terranean highways there moves, day and night, a procession of toilers that reproduce beneath the surface the busy scenes that are enacted upon the streets of the surface city and her suburbs. Night and morning the actors in these busy scenes change places. Those from the surface take their turn in the activity under ground and those whose toil has been in the dimly lighted thoroughfares of the city where the sunlight never enters are relieved.
"The visitor in Butte marvels at the bustle and stir that he witnesses upon her streets. Were he to pause and consider that hundreds of feet below him are thousands of men, moving back and forth, repeating down there beneath the very spot
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THIRTY-SIX YEARS IN THE ROCKIES.
upon which he stands the activity that he sees before him, his amazement would be even greater.
"Ten miles of shafts-hundreds of miles of drifts and work- ings-in these passage ways of the nether city there is life and stir and busy movement that would cause a boom in many a city whose name is in large letters upon the map and yet there is no mention of this underground city upon any chart; its existence is noted in no atlas. Along the dark streets of this city there daily move 8,300 men in the performance of their duty. Here they labor day after day, creating the wealth that gives Butte her proud rank in the sisterhood of cities.
"Of the two Buttes-the surface city and that underground -it is not improbable that the latter possesses more and greater points of interest than the visible town. There are no drones there. The dark city's people are all workers. There are no crimes committed there and vice does not enter. There is no police patrol-none is necessary. The laws that govern this un- derground city are recognized and obeyed without the neces- sity of brass buttons and nickel stars. When a man enters this city he lives under new conditions as long as he remains. He is a member of a well organized community, working under its laws and regulations, and for the time he loses his connec- tion with the municipality upon the surface.
"There are no paving contracts let in this city that is out. of sight. There are no legislative elections there, and the bungstarter's union has no standing in the remarkable com- munity. The boodler is unknown in the business of Under- ground Butte and the Salvation Army has no barracks there. All in all, this second Butte is a wonderful place. Many tales might be told of deeds of heroism performed within her limits, of devotion to duty that surpasses many an act that has been emblazoned upon the scroll of fame. The sturdy, honest toil- ers of this city work on without the inspiration that prompts
.
460
THEN AND NOW;
deeds of valor upon the field of battle. They do their duty be- cause it is their duty. They have made Underground Butte even greater than the greatest mining camp on earth."
For further illustration of the greatness of the mines of Butte I have in my possession the following statement from the Anaconda Company's last year's report. There were brought by rail to the smelters at Anaconda one million four hundred and fifty-nine thousand tons of ore from the Butte mines. This company shipped one hundred and twenty-four million four hundred and eighteen thousand pounds of copper, and paid fourteen thousand dollars express charges, on five mil- lion seventy-four thousand and thirty-six ounces of silver and one hundred and thirty-five thousand two hundred and forty- four ounces of gold. One hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of powder and forty-one thousand seven hundred and sixty-one dollars and forty-nine cents worth of candles, were used in their Butte mines. The pay roll of this company alone amounted to five million three hundred ninety-two thousand three hundred and twenty-three dollars and twenty-three cents. As the above amounts are so large, I put them in words instead of figures, so that the reader will understand that there has been no mistake made, as often occurs in copying figures.
The Boston and Montana, The Butte Reduction Works, The Butte and Boston, The Montana Ore Purchasing Company and other companies that are operating in Butte, I am not familiar with. Acording to Mr. Braden's account for the year 1899, the copper output of the mines of Butte was two hundred and twenty-three million pounds of refined copper.
The monthly pay roll of this "Greatest Mining Camp," in- cluding smelters, is over fifteen hundred thousand dollars, or over eighteen million dollars per year.
The wealth of the copper deposits at Butte was first recog- nized officially by the United States commissioner of mining
461
THIRTY-SIX YEARS IN THE ROCKIES.
statistics, Raymond, in his report of 1870. From that date to the present time the development of the copper deposits has been rapid; and, at this writing the state contains not only the richest copper mines of the world, but also the largest and most modern reduction plants. Thus, in brief, are the footprints of the prospector and the "from the cradle to the throne" of the mines of Montana.
After this faint effort to give an illustration of the "Then and Now," I can but think' of the "Now and Then" thirty-six years hence, and that someone, perhaps, will have this little book in the year 1936 and take up where I have left off and write the "Now and Then." "I wish I were a boy again;" if I were, I would not give my chances to watch the progress that will be made in the valleys and mountains of the West during the next thirty-six years for the pay roll of the "Greatest Mining Camp on Earth" from the time of its first existence until then.
Now I end this series of letters, hoping that the reader will have as much pleasure in reading them as I had when writing. If so, both of us will be satisfied.
Faithfully yours,
ROBERT VAUGHN.
Great Falls, May 30, 1900.
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