Missoula History – “Every one who can get a horse has gone.” – Missoula and The Cedar Creek Stampede
The Cedar Creek Stampede – Near modern day Superior, Montana
Did Montana’s gold rushes affect Missoula? They sure did. Miners and prospectors were everywhere in Montana not long after the fantastic discoveries at Bannack, Virginia City and Helena/Last Chance Gulch. Thousands of them. Beginning in 1862, Montana was on the lips of anyone interested in making their fortune mining gold in the west. Nearby Idaho was experiencing the same thing, starting a year earlier. While Missoula never saw the kind of excitement that had already occurred at Alder Gulch, it would come to be surrounded by rich mining activity at places like Bear Gulch near Drummond, Elk Creek near Potomac, Garnet, Nine Mile Creek and others. Not much farther away were places like Gold Creek and Blackfoot City, near Avon. Missoula businesses, farmers and ranchers were kept busy supplying these mines and the miners with things like mining equipment, lumber, building and camping equipment, stock animals, and food. Miners traveled through Missoula constantly, sometimes spending the winter before resuming their quest for the next Eldorado. The famous Mullan road through Missoula was widely known and encouraged travelers to come to this way. Many Missoulians, including prominent businessmen, kept close watch on these people as they trekked throughout the area, hopefully anticipating the next big blowup. Sometimes they supplied these miners with a ‘grubstake’, hoping to parlay a small investment into what might become a fortune. Grubstake stories abound of the early mining days and they were not always fiction. Read about Montana’s John Caplice for an example of this or read about Noah Kellogg in Idaho for one of the greatest grubstake stories of them all. These ‘excitments’ had occurred often enough that the prospect of another one was not unrealistic. In 1869 Cedar Creek became the next one and it kept Missoula very busy for a while. Included below are two items of correspondence that illustrate the thoughts of two men who had a bird’s-eye view.
Following is an excerpt from ‘Belden, The White Chief’ – edited by Gen. Jamew S. Brisbin – pp 455-57. The introductory comment and two letters quoted here appear in the chapter on Montana in this book:
In the autumn of 1869 rich gold discoveries were made in Missoula County. The new diggings are said to be very extensive, and a large mining camp sprung up there during the winter of 1869-70. A great many people left Helena and other towns on both sides of the range, and the roads leading in the direction of Missoula were dotted with eager gold-seekers bound for speedy fortunes.
As all gold discoveries run about the same course, the following characteristic letters are given relative to these mines:
LETTER TO W.H. TODD
Fish Creek Ferry, Missoula County
Montana Territory, Dec. 4, 1869
“About two weeks since a few Frenchmen passed here, and the report was a ‘big strike’ had been made somewhere near Losa’s Ranche, situated some twenty miles below Frenchtown. Two or three days more and the stampede was up in earnest, men passing at all hours of the day and night. I started at dark and reached Losa’s Ranche at 2 o’clock. Next morning we followed our guide across the Missouri [Missoula] River, thence five miles down, crossed a stream, and followed it up about four miles. Here we left our horses, took a little grub and our blankets, and footed it nine miles up the creek, and were in the diggings. They were discovered last summer by French, who panned out over three hundred dollars in six day’s time, from different places up and down the gulch. One nugget of eighteen dollars was found. I located claim 63 below discovery. Ten cents to the pan has been out of the top gravel for two thousand feet below my ground, and, in one instance, as high as fifty-eight cents was taken out of two pans. It is thought the whole length of the main creek is good; also, the right-hand fork, which is seven or eight miles long, and empties in below discovery.
Respectfully, etc.,
Nelson Cochrane
A Missoula correspondent, writing under the date of December 6, 1869, communicates the following:
“I will now come to another excitement, which, I am sure will be of more interest to the public. I refer to the stampede now going on to the new Eldorado of Montana, and located on the west side of the Missouri [Missoula] River, some seventy-five miles below here, and to which every body has gone or is going as soon as he can. The excitement commenced last week, but little was then thought of it. Last week parties arrived in town from there, when the news spread like fire, and never, since the memorable stampede from Bannack to Alder Gulch, in 1863, have I seen the like. Every one who can get a horse has gone. A creek ten or twelve miles long has been prospected, and the result shows it to be of fabulous richness – even too rich to be told by a newspaper correspondent. Suffice it to say that it bids fair to rival Alder Gulch in its best days. I saw and talked to the discoverer to-day, and others direct from there. The gulch or creek proper was discovered by a Canadian named Louis Bassett [Barrett], and the majority of men in there are Canadians. I have seen some of the gold, and it much resembles that from McClellan Gulch – quite coarse and of good quality. Runners have been sent to the camps in Deer Lodge, and a general stampede from the other country is expected to commence in a few days, as men cannot hold ground unless they are there in person.”
J. N. Ringold
The Cedar Creek excitement certainly did result in several rich placer mines, but it would not rival the wealth extracted at Alder Gulch as the writer above alleged. Missoula County included Cedar Creek and a good deal of Western Montana in 1870, stretching all the way to Idaho. For more on the Cedar Creek Stampede see the link below to an article by Robert Housman. Also, A. B. Stone’s ‘Following Old Trails’ furnished several articles on the topic.
http://journals.lib.washington.edu/index.php/WHQ/article/view/9034
http://archive.org/stream/12yearwildindian00beldrich#page/n5/mode/2up