Old Missoula

9/11/2018 – Along with my son, Ben, I just spent a day at Florence, Idaho, the site of fantastic gold prospecting activity in the early 1860’s. It is now an overgrown, forlorn landscape, submitting inexorably to nature’s power.  Many who came to Bannack, Virginia City, and Alder Gulch (Mt. Territory) either originally intended to go to Florence, Idaho, or actually did, and then came to Montana. The Florence stampede occurred about one year before Bannack, Mt. was discovered. Thousands went to Florence, but none stayed. My Great Grandfather, Owen Kelley, mined there (as well as in California, Boise Basin, Last Chance-Helena and Cedar Creek) – hence my interest. Several other Missoula people went to Florence also, including William Kennedy, C. W. Berry (Jeannette Rankin’s uncle), Tom McNamara, Levi Keim, A. J. Urlin, Ed Miller and William Kelly. It sits over 30 miles up in the mountains of central Idaho, South of Grangeville, and must have been very difficult to reach back then. No Roads led the miners there and the Nez Perce were not happy that foreigners were invading their territory. They tried unsuccessfully to stop the miners but treaties be damned, the miners kept coming. It would have taken a very big heart to forgive the hoards of miners invading their homelands.