Cedar Creek Stampede – 100 Sluices – 1000 ounces of gold per week
Cedar Creek (Superior) – 100 Sluices – 800 to 1000 ounces of gold weekly
The Cedar Creek Country.
As it may take a week or two to write up the Cedar Creek camps in detail, and the question “What do you think of Cedar?” is asked with considerable interest by nearly every one, we will make a brief general statement of facts and opinion.
The population of the gulch is about 2,000. From 1000 to 1200 men are mining, some 500 of whom are working on the 100 sluices now running, the remainder opening claims. The gulch is yielding from $3 to $40 per day to the hand. The claims already opened will probably average wages or a little over. The ground so far opened is principally the shallow canyons, some of it is very poor. The deep ground is the reliance of the camp. Every deep claim yet opened to bedrock is paying well. Nearly every company from below Kiyus[1] Bar to far above Forest City is working – probably on eight miles of gulch. No companies are lying back waiting for others. The work is earnest and systematic in the deep ground, and all have full confidence they will strike it rich. Not a day’s work is wasted, being in drain ditches, shafts and side ditches for permanent work. There is scarce an idle man in the gulch, and there are fewer men in the streets of Louiseville than Deer Lodge. The entire community is at work. We believe the deep ground of Cedar is good, basing the belief on the actual developments so far as made. If it is, it will be next year, the best camp in Montana. The bars, too, prospect and yield well. The times are fearfully dull. The saloon and store business is overdone. Everybody nearly who went to Cedar was broke. They have been living eight months on credit. Every dollar taken out of nine-tenths of the claims is to pay those debts, and the disposition to pay them before spending any money but for necessities makes dull times. So, although a great deal of money is being taken out, and from 800 to 1000 ounces of dust is being sold in Louisville every Sunday, and more is carried West for coinage, there is a general scarcity of money in the camp. In two or three months the deep ground will be opened. If good it will employ more men than are now at work in the gulch. Old debts will be by that time cancelled, free money will be in circulation and “good times in Cedar” be the word. If the deep ground and bars do not pay, the camp is of but little account, and will be worked down to a 300 or 400 man camp by winter. Until demonstrated to the contrary, our opinion is it will employ profitably in 1871 more men than any other camp in Montana.
The above article appeared in The New North-West (Deer Lodge, Montana) newspaper on July 29, 1870.
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A Trip To Cedar Creek.
Everybody goes to Cedar. So, on Monday, July 18, we mounted the box with Charley Brown, on one of Huntley’s coaches, and with “Black Jack” handling the reins on Gilmer and Saulsbury’s[2] “opposition” went spinning joyously in consort down the valley. Perkins’ – 25 miles – was reached in two hours; supper there, and away again over Flint Creek hills, and into the timber flats below Charley McCarty’s by dusk. And here, as a suggestion of quarantining us has been made, it is proper to state that after listening with ghastly horror to the small pox story of the said McCarty, sanitary measures were immediately resorted to, Lane & Emerson having with due regard for contingencies, furnished a liberal supply of the antidote for all ills that the flesh is heir to[3] – on a stage coach. Newman’s by midnight; Missoula for a daylight breakfast; Frenchtown for fresh horses, and Petty’s[4] for dinner, and here begins
The Grand Drive of Montana.
The road[5] from Deer Lodge to Cedar follows the river, in no place leaving it more than a mile or two – usually winding along its banks, and, until it reaches Petty’s, along level valley or over gentle hills. Just below Petty’s – a splendid dinner station – the high mountains close to the river, with rugged precipices, impracticable at moderate cost for the construction of a wagon road, extending up several hundred feet, and compelling ascent far above. Winding in and out of canyons on a heavy up grade, the coaches in two places pass along the mountain points at an altitude of probably 1,000 or 1,200 feet above the river running so close under the road that we could apparently throw a stone into the slender current far below, but which a pistol shot would scarce reach. Around these points on the down grade, where a fractious horse or a broken wheel would send horses, coach and passengers to a 1,200 foot eternity in twenty seconds. “Opposition” staging has developed a speed that is not good for weak nerves, by about twelve miles an hour. But if you enjoy a rattling pace, a thrill of excitement, mountain air spread out thin, a kind of balloon view of valley, hill and river, with the great snow covered Cedar Mountains as a background to the picture, try a coach ride from Petty’s over “the big grades” with a top load, Johnny Davis holding the reins and the “opposition” on.
The Parks.
North-West Montana is the great woodland of the Territory. Nowhere have we seen more beautiful timber or finer wild sward than along the Missoula, near Cedar. White and yellow pines predominate, as fine material for timber as ever saw entered, with their dull foliage brightened by the live green pendants of the tamarack. There is but little undergrowth, and the luxurious forest grass, less nutritious than the bunch grass, it is said, is flecked with bright wild flowers on the undulating ground of the valley, while up to the very summits of the mountains the timber is growing wherever there is soil enough to nurture it. If the railroad is located down the Missoula, in that region will be eventually the great lumber yards of Montana, for the timber is inexhaustible in quantity, unapproachable in quality.
The Mouth of Cedar is 165 miles from Deer Lodge. The stages now make the trip in 23 hours. Quite a little village has sprung up here – in fact two villages. The one on the right bank of the stream is known as “Mouth of Cedar,” while that on the opposite bank was on last Saturday christened “Superior City.” The crossing is effected by two ferries – one pay and one free. There were formerly two pay ferries belonging respectively to French and Irish companies, but an alliance was effected under the title of Booth, Bouresau & Co. and M. M. Kennedy, formerly of the Benton road, has recently put in a free ferry. Under ordinary circumstances this latter would have a monopoly, but the pay ferry having the trail to Cedar, over which the toll is the same, whether parties cross on the ferry or not, it is a pretty fair stand off at present. The Free Ferry has however precipitated Booth & Co., into the enterprise of bridging the river. Wiles & Decker have cut the lumber, the timber is being got ready, and the work of construction will be commenced in a few days. At Mouth of Cedar Mr. C. A. Huntley has a well kept Hotel, with Ed. Rafferty doing the agreeable at the desk; Mr. J. P. True, a good store which he is about selling to Mr. Fred Kretzer; Mr. W. M. Whitner, the Palace-Hall and Jas. Alexander, the River House, with excellent buildings for hotel, stable, etc. Here too are located Capt. George McLean, former Register of the Land Office in Helena, who has a large stock ranch in the immediate vicinity of the station, and Mr. A. B. Babcock, of Helena real estate memory, now in the Notary Public business. There are in all some ten or fifteen houses and 75 persons in the village, which is the stopping place of Huntley’s stages, from whence saddle trains carry passengers and baggage to the mines.
Over the river is Superior City. There are in it ten buildings and about fifty people. Its star is in the ascendant, and building is going on lively. On the Cedar side, with a fine plateau of several hundred acres for a town site, and Gilmer & Saulsbury’s station there, the Superiorites think they have the bulge on their over-the-river rivals, and they doubtless will have a good town if the mines open up as anticipated. The Superior House is well kept by Mr. Dan Spangler; Curt Cromwell has the “Snug” and a commodious building in which the stage station and Wells, Fargo & Co’s express office are located, and Booth & Co. have the old original Pioneer Saloon of the region. The location of the town is good, and so are its prospects. It is seven miles from Superior to Cedar Junction, 14 to Louiseville, 17 to Forest City, and nearly 20 to the upper mines. And, as along this route this route there are two thousand men, three towns, ten miles of mining gulch, and some subjects of import to Montanians, we will defer the undertaking until another week.
M. Deer Lodge, July 28, 1870.
The above article appeared in The New North-West (Deer Lodge, Montana) newspaper on July 29, 1870.