When the richest placer gold strike ever made in Montana, some say in the United States, took place on May 26, 1863, in Alder Gulch—fifteen miles of mountain gulch and streambed situated on the west side of the Madison and Jefferson River divide in southwestern Montana—it was only a matter of time before the surrounding terrain would receive the same kind of frenzied attention. The extraordinary values extracted from Alder Gulch, an estimated $30 to $40 million in 1863–1864, produced a stampede of thousands of gold hunters who, in the words of one observer, were so plentiful—...

The Hot Spring Mining District lies in the northeast corner of Madison County, Montana. The districtʹs epicenter, todayʹs tiny settlement of Norris, lies thirty-five miles equidistant from Virginia City, to the southwest, and Bozeman, to the east. Roughly speaking, the district is approximately fourteen miles in length, varying from fourteen to twenty miles in width. On the east an undulating plateau ends abruptly at steep bluffs overlooking the deeply cut canyon of the northward-flowing Madison River. On the south the district looks down a thousand feet to the broad valley of the upper Madison River. The south boundary of the...

As two contemporary analysts of the territoryʹs early mining history remembered it, ʺThe Spring of 1865 … broke upon Montana as the dazzling brightness of an almost unexampled prosperity.ʺ¹ Not only were Alder Gulchʹs renowned placers still going strong, but numerous other gulches had been developed with gratifying results during the fall and winter of 1864–1865. The most important of these was Last Chance Gulch, located within present-day Helena. Confederate Gulch, up the Missouri River from Helena, was also attracting much attention. Over the Continental Divide important discoveries had been made at Silver Bow and in German gulch, both...

William Judson Clark and Major Gad Ely Upson were natives of Southington and Marion, Connecticut, respectively, two towns located fifteen to twenty miles south of Hartford. Hartford was Connecticutʹs capital and a national insurance center. Thriving iron and armament works braced a vigorous and growing economy. Lucrative government contracts secured during the war had added substantially to the cityʹs prosperity. With a population of about 35,000, Hartford ranked second only to New Haven as the stateʹs largest city.

The incentive for establishing the Clark and Upson Mining Company for a Montana quartz milling venture came from Gad Upson, who had...

Although construction of the Hartford and New York quartz mills in the Hot Spring District was slowed down by the winter of 1865–1866, the development of a town to support them was not. Where the name Sterling came from is uncertain, but the camp was clearly in the making by November 1865 when the Clark and Upson and the New York and Montana Mining and Discovery (NY&MM&D) companies arrived in the area.¹

Located on the first-level ground below where Hot Spring Creek breaks out of its rugged canyon into the rolling plains below, Sterling was a logical place for...

Despite the setback in George Copeʹs operation, William Clarkʹs difficulty getting adequate results from his mill at Sterling, the postponement of Andrew Hall and Don Spauldingʹs aspirations, and the late start of the New York and Montana Mining and Discovery (NY&MM&D) Companyʹs water-diversion project, interest and investment in Hot Spring gold continued at an extremely high level. One reason for this was the ʺdiscoveryʺ in the summer of 1866 of the Lower Hot Spring Mining District.

Why the Lower Hot Spring District had not found favor prior to 1866 is hard to determine. In 1865, Asahel Eaton had looked it...

For at least two months before departing from Midasburg for San Francisco, even before having received permission to acquire his new quartz mill, Henry Ward had given considerable thought to the route the machinery should take from California to Montana. Three routes were available to him. He could ship the mill directly east over the Sierra Nevada and the western Utah mountains, he could have it shipped south to Los Angeles and then up the Old Spanish Trail to Salt Lake City, or he could have it shipped south around the Baja Peninsula and up the Gulf of California and...

Henry Wardʹs and Samuel Seldenʹs new sense of optimism might have been tempered a bit had they known another competitor was about to locate in the very place on which they had begun to refocus their interest—the Lower Hot Spring District. That competitor was McAndrew and Wann of New York City, a company that would mount a strong and disharmonious challenge to the Rochester enterprise.

Alexander McAndrew and Samuel Wann were British-born naturalized citizens occupying offices in lower Manhattan as importers and as agents for the British-capitalized Atlantic and Great Western Railway. McAndrew, born in Scotland, settled in the...

In mid-July 1867, Hot Spring District quartz lode discoveries went into an abrupt decline. Up to that point rates of discovery had been good. With the breaking of winter in early April, many miners had come out of hibernation or left the employ of their companies for the customary rush into the hills and gulches. After April 6, claimants on new discoveries in the Hot Spring District appeared before the Madison County recorder on a regular basis, more than one every other day. Between that date and July 19, fifty-eight discoveries were recorded—the large majority for leads in the...

Henry Ward was always quick to point out to his directors that mining was unpredictable. Yet his and Samuel Seldenʹs strategies on how to pursue success in the field were often as unpredictable as mining itself. One matter the two vacillated on for months was the issue of deep digging. In early 1867 both had been of a mind that deep digging in Montana, as it had evolved in California and Nevada, would produce values considerably superior to those on the surface. However, when Hot Springʹs deeper veins showed much pinching and capping and expert opinion seemed to corroborate their...

In contrast to placer mining, which continued at the Washington Bar and Norwegian sites throughout the late nineteenth century and beyond, Hot Spring quartz lode mining, as well as hard-rock mining throughout Madison County, did not fare well in the 1870s and early 1880s and was only revitalized when the recovery of gold from low-grade ores and inefficiently milled tailings was made possible by the arrival of railroads and the application of chemical solutions—in this case, cyanide. During the 1890s the Hot Spring District attracted much attention. Most of the work was concentrated up on Revenue Flats (formerly called...