Helena, Montana

The three great gold discoveries in Montana—at Grasshopper Creek in 1862, Alder Gulch in 1863, and Last Chance Gulch in 1864—caused the population to leapfrog from one place to the next. Miners had no sooner settled at one area when another discovery promised new opportunity. In this way, gold attracted a fickle population. On July 14, 1864, four miners—Reginald (Bob) Stanley of Nuneaton, England; John S. Cowan of Georgia; D. J. Miller of Alabama; and John Crabb of Iowa—were headed back to Virginia City for provisions. Hungry, tired, and down on their luck, the men took one more swing through a gulch they had prospected previously. This time, they made a lucky strike.

The four men, known to posterity erroneously as the “Four Georgians” (probably so named for their mining techniques), found the site so remote that they took their time testing up and down the gulch before two of them went on to Virginia City for supplies. It was a most unusual bonanza because there was no stampede. Rather, these men were so discreet that others only trickled in, in small groups. By fall, there were two hundred residents, and the camp had been formally christened Helena. By January 1865 there were many stores and businesses. The population swelled from one thousand in the spring to three thousand—most of them from Alder Gulch—by midsummer. As in Virginia City, Masons were a prominent group. The first death in the camp was that of Dr. L. Rodney Pococke, who succumbed to tuberculosis in March 1865. Pococke was a Mason, and his funeral brought Masons together for the first time in the new settlement. The lodge had thirty-two members at the start of 1866, and from this time forward, Masons were a significant presence in Helena, as they had been in Virginia City.

Helena's first population mirrored that of Virginia City's, with miners, merchants, service providers, saloonkeepers, freighters, gamblers, and prostitutes forming a noisy, boisterous community. Within its first two years, Helena had formally established Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish cemeteries. Andrew J. Fisk visited Helena in October 1866 and noted, “There are a good many Chinese there and all of them (I guess) wash clothes for a living.” There were 188 retail and wholesale business houses; forty-five of them were food stores. Helena boasted both Democratic and Republican newspapers and a public school with one hundred students. Daily coaches traveled from Helena to Salt Lake City or Fort Benton. A ticket from Helena to Corinne, Utah, on the Wells Fargo stage cost $145, and the trip took at least four and a half days, traveling twenty-four hours a day, to cover the 550 miles. Arrival of the telegraph in 1866 provided a critical link with eastern states.

With the end of the Civil War, more newcomers flooded into the Montana Territory, and Helena's population continued to grow. A. K. McClure wrote in 1867:

The Montana Territorial Legislature met in Virginia City in 1868 and passed a bill allowing a vote to relocate the territorial capital to Helena. Although Governor Green Clay Smith vetoed the bill, it illustrates the decline of the one gold camp and rise of the other. In 1874, Congress passed a bill that established a federal assay office in Helena, built in 1875 at government expense. There were only five others—in New York, St. Louis, Charlotte (North Carolina), Deadwood, and Boise—and this illustrated Helena's strategic location at the headwaters of the Missouri, its importance as a regional center, and its wealth of gold. The capital moved to Helena in 1875, and along with it came the attendant territorial offices and officials, boosting the town's prestige and population. Helena [Page 298]by this time had diverse industries, including a foundry, several breweries and brickworks, lime kilns for the manufacture of mortar, and stone quarries.

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