Confederate Gulch and Diamond City

Confederate Gulch and Diamond City
	Confederate Gulch and Diamond City
	Confederate Gulch and Diamond City
Basic data
Foundation :	1864
State :	United States
State :	Montana
County :	Broadwater County
Coordinates :	46 ° 36 ′ N , 111 ° 25 ′ W Coordinates: 46 ° 36 ′ N , 111 ° 25 ′ W
Time zone :	Mountain ( UTC − 7 / −6 )
	; Diamond City, c. 1870

The Confederate Gulch with the old gold mining town Diamond City is a steeply incised canyon or a valley on the western slopes of the Big Belt Mountains, in what is now the US state of Montana in the northwest of the United States , which is still for 1864-1889 Montana Territory (English . Montana Territory ) belonged. Its small creek flows west into Canyon Ferry Lake at the upper end of the Missouri River near the town of Townsend , Montana.

introduction

In 1864, soldiers in the Confederate States Army who fought on slogans during the American Civil War , i. H. found on parole, a small gold find in this ravine. However, when the discovery of the so-called Montana Bar, which was extremely rich in gold, and other enormous gold discoveries succeeded in the following year - until then one of the largest amounts of gold per acre of land - this triggered a rapid boom and ultimately the Montana Gold Rush , which began until 1869.

From 1866 to 1869, the canyon matched or surpassed all other mining camps in the Montana Territory in gold production, producing an estimated $ 19 million to $ 30 million gold, which is roughly $ 358 million to $ 565 million today (as of 2019) corresponds. Confederate Gulch was temporarily the largest parish in Montana. In 1866, Montana had a total population of 28,000, of whom about 10,000 (about 35%) worked in the Confederate Gulch.

Although boomtown Diamond City was the county seat of Montana's Meagher County to the Confederate Gulch miners during its heyday , it is now part of Broadwater County . While gold production was at its peak, life in Diamond City was raging day and night. In their desperate effort to extract more gold, the miners built kilometers of trenches and gullies using the hydraulic mining method, in which entire slopes were washed away with the help of water from hoses and nozzles under high pressure, tearing away the bottom of the gorge has been. The hydraulic excavation by flushing the slopes with pressurized water left huge banks of embankments in the gorge and since this had also been carried out very close to Diamond City, the whole settlement was eventually washed away, so that the county seat Diamond City was relocated to White Sulfur Springs has been.

After the Confederate Gulch gold ran out and the boom ended by 1870 , the residents of Diamond City took their belongings and just kept walking. In 1870 only 255 people lived there and a year later there were only about 60. The remnants of Diamond City are now little more than a ghost town and almost nothing is left of the other communities in the gorge. A dirt road still winds up the gorge from the Missouri River Valley, crossing the peaks of the Big Belts on its way down to the Smith River Valley.

Confederate Gulch Gulch, Diamond City, and the Montana Bar are still spectacular examples of Montana's mining history, particularly the “Flash in the Pan” gold mining camps common in Montana during the second half of the 19th century . This phrase is believed to originate from the mid-19th century California gold rush. Prospectors searching for gold were reportedly excited when they saw something sparkle in the pan, only to dispel their hopes when it turned out that it was not gold, just "lightning in the pan" .

geology

The Confederate Gulch is considered a mining district in its own right, as it encompassed the length of the gorge along with the upper tributaries of Boulder Creek, Montana Gulch, and Cement Gulch. The major rocks that contain the primary gold deposits in the Confederate Gulch area are Shale from the Spokane and Greyson Formations and limestone from the Newland Formation. The Spokane, Greyson and Newland Formations belong historically to the Belt Supergroup of the Mesoproterozoic in the period from about 1470 million to about 1400 million years ago. These formations are much older than the overlying Mid- Cambrian Flathead sandstone and there is a significant discordance between the older Mesoproterozoic rocks and the younger Cambrian rocks .

The Mesoproterozoic rock units are of diorite - and quartz diorite - Dykes , - Eruptivstöcken - and sills cut. Most of the high-quality gold ore is found in thin quartz veins along fractures in the diorite and along strata in the shale.

However, since the gold ore content decreases with increasing depth, only a few mines have been developed with a depth of more than 46 meters. In addition to the quartz veins in the slate, the diorite there also contains weakly mineralized shear zones .

Recent field surveys in the Big Belt Mountains suggest that some rocks mapped as belonging to the Spokane Formation coincide with the overlying Middle Cambrian layers and not with the Mesoproterozoic Belt Supergroup, but with layers possibly younger than that late Neoproterozoic are belong.

Other significant gold deposits are soap deposits in gravel deposits that were deposited during the interglacial stages of the Pleistocene . The fact that the formation of gold soaps took place relatively recently has been confirmed by the discovery of the bones of mastodons and elephants , which were excavated from the gravel.

The distribution of the gold soaps found, in which the nuggets are due to gravity according to their specific weight in sediments such. For example, deposits of sand or gravel suggest that the main source of gold at Confederate Gulch and White Creek on Miller Mountain was a series of quartz veins at a fork in two streams. The gold-bearing quartz veins were removed there by erosion and the weather-resistant gold grains were transported away by the rivers and enriched in the river deposits at places where the flow velocity was reduced, easily accessible for mining by the gold diggers.

Discovery of the first gold

In 1864 and 1865, before the end of the American Civil War , Confederate soldiers came to the Montana Territory to look for gold. Many of the soldiers were part of General Sterling Price's Confederate Army , which marched into Missouri from Arkansas in the fall of 1864 . The campaign beginning with the Missouri Raid of 1864 , the Battle of Westport and the Second Battle of Newtonia broke up after several defeats by the Union Army . The remnants of the defeated army of about 6,000 men remained together in quasi-official units and had withdrawn to southwest Texas .

Tracking these scattered units was costly, time consuming, and dangerous. After considering the situation, the commander of the Union Army in the region, General Alfred Pleasonton , instituted an amnesty policy in which he offered the Confederates captured during the campaign of 1864 parole if they left the combat area and up the Missouri would travel the west. Pleasanton hoped his POW policy would also convince the remaining free-roaming units to disband and prevent them from becoming Bushwhackers , who, like the Quantrill's Raiders, under their leader William Clark Quantrill and brothers Jesse and Frank James, run off the land lived.

Since it was daunting to fight and perhaps die for what many thought was the Lost Cause of the Confederacy , offering parole seemed like a better choice. They received additional motivation from rumors that had spread about new gold discoveries in the Montana Territory. Whether due to or despite the policies of Pleasanton, in 1864 and 1865 these mixed confederate units disappeared and soon a tough breed of Missourians appeared in the Montana Territory.

In 1864, two Confederate prisoners, Wash (Washington) Barker and Pomp Dennis of Liberty, Missouri, were released on parole and handed over to the owner of a steamship that was sailing up the Missouri River towards the Montana gold fields. The steamers often had to dock to pick up fresh wood to fire their boilers, but from Yankton in the Dakota Territory to Fort Benton in the Montana Territory, which corresponds to a distance of well over 1,000 river miles , hostile Indians controlled most of the country . However, the Indians had burned the few existing wooden yards and so the steamers had to look elsewhere for trees and wood for their steam boilers along the Missouri. Rebel soldiers like Barker and Dennis were able to earn their trip to the Montana Territory by chopping trees along the way as "fuel" for the steamship.

Since the Missouri River was very low in 1864, Barker and Dennis only managed to get to Cow Island, where the low tide forced the steamboat to unload its passengers and cargo. The cargo and passengers were then carted the rest of the way to Fort Benton by a team, leaving the former Confederates on their own. Meanwhile news of gold discoveries in Last Chance Gulch in what is now Helena at the foot of Mullan Pass over the Missouri had spread, but by the time Barker and Dennis came here from Cow Island, the best soil had already been taken, there was no work to be had and the cost of living were high.

Small alluvial cone, also called alluvial fan

Since smoke could be seen everywhere from the camps of the gold diggers on the mountain foothills, Barker and Dennis set off from Last Chance Gulch upstream of the Missouri River to dig for gold here and there and to live away from the settlements. Here the Missouri was a great mountain river, cold and clear, bounded on both sides by high mountains, with huge alluvial fans flowing down from the steep gorges to the river . Stones of "good color" could be found in the gravel of the alluvial fans , but so far there were no significant finds among them.

While Barker and Dennis lived away from the settlements and looked for gold, they met Jack Thompson and John Wells, who had also previously served in the Confederate Army. Together they finally hiked into a gorge on the west side of the Big Belt Mountains and since it was already late autumn, they decided to stay there for the winter. At one point near the mouth of the gorge, east of the creek, Thompson dug a hole and found a piece of gold the size of a grain of wheat. As they explored further up the canyon, they found other small amounts of gold in the gravel of the creek. However, the quantities were still very modest, so a day of hard work was just enough to pay for a few pounds of beans.

Naming Confederate Gulch and Diamond City

Barker, Dennis, and Thompson's initial gold discovery in the gorge in the Big Belt Mountains was still small, but the hard work produced so much gold that the news spread quickly. When other sympathizers from the southern states appeared there at the end of 1864, the area quickly became known as the Confederate Gulch (German: Confederate Gorge). In the winter of 1864-1865 they began to build four log huts equidistant around a large rock obstacle on the narrow floor of the gorge. In the snow, the paths from hut to hut, as you could see from the slopes above, formed a perfect diamond, and so the new little settlement in the gorge was called Diamond City . The part of the name City (German: Stadt) was more of a joke, as the poor settlement of southern sympathizers could hardly compete with the booming mining camps of the northwest such as Helena and Virginia City.

The discovery of the Montana Bar

Diamond City and the associated gold prospector camps grew slowly at first. In the winter of 1864 through the spring of 1865, many prospectors passed Confederate Gulch, as it was one of the few passable roads that led from the Missouri Valley across the Big Belt Mountains to the Smith River Valley, where there was plenty of game and land to cultivate. was present.

At the end of 1865, a group of newcomers called "The Germans" arrived . They were led by the former Colorado prospector named Carl Joseph Friedrichs (1831-1916). He liked the circumstances as they were and began searching the creek up the Confederate Gulch in what would later become known as the "Cement Gulch" . The area around Cement Gulch later became one of the richest sites, but the Germans were not interested in searching the rock to the bottom and decided to look elsewhere. Friedrichs led his group down through the woods of the main gorge and dug a small exploration hole in the floor of a clearing on the slope above at the foot of a small side gorge. With the find they made there, the group had literally "hit it rich". The side canyon became famous as the Montana Gulch and the place where it was found became doubly famous as the “Montana Bar” in the Montana Gulch.

The Montana Bar (German: Montana Sandbank ) had an area of only 8,100 to 12,100 m², but was one of the truly spectacular finds in terms of the yield of gold per unit area. The Montana Bar was also unique in that the gold was not on the bedrock at the bottom of the canyon, but on a slope of gravel that was laterally above the canyon. The floor of the Montana Bar was saturated from surface to bedrock with gravel and thick bluish-gray limestone and gold. The gold had always deposited in depressions in the bedrock when it was washed there by water, and the gold grains were so large that you could see them from a distance by their sheen. The gold-bearing gravel deposit was about 2.5 meters deep in most places, but towards the slope of the mountain it thickened to about 9 to 12 meters.

Gold digger with washing pan, 1871

The few acres of land (German: Acre ) of the Montana Bar were incredibly rich in gold. It has been claimed that the Montana Bar's gravel was among the richest ever laundered. It was not uncommon to fetch $ 1,000 gold from a panning pan ( safety trough ) filled with gravel and earth at a time when gold was worth about $ 17 an ounce. According to witnesses, the record in a wash pan was $ 1,400, or around 3.2 kilograms of gold in two shovels of 6.8 kilograms of gravel. After the first cleaning of the gravel in the wash troughs , the corrugations were often clogged with gold, so that one week of gold production in the Montana Bar brought in 115,000 US dollars.

A popular legend developed in connection with the discovery of the Montana Bar. According to a popular representation, the Germans were greenhorns, since they did not know the events of gold prospecting, after which gold sinks to the lowest bedrock layers in a ravine due to erosion and gravity. At her solemn, repeated (and angry) request to the more experienced Confederate men to show them the way to "the good claims", they were jokingly advised (with a gesture to the sides of the gorge) to "go up there". According to legend, they dutifully went "up there" and discovered the Montana Bar.

Gold production

The discovery of the Montana Bar prompted further hectic explorations throughout the Confederate Gulch and its side valleys within a short period of time, which subsequently led to a large number of other gold discoveries. About 3 kilometers above the Montana Bar, extremely productive gold discoveries were also made in claims in another side valley of Confederate, called Cement Gulch. Further finds followed quickly in other side valleys of the main gorge, such as the Montana Gulch, Greenhorn Gulch and Boulder Gulch. The finds in the Montana Bar soon motivated the prospectors to explore the remaining branches of the Confederate Gulch. Gold that was transported by the water of the brooks, due to its high specific weight , was deposited in increased concentration on the bottom of the Confederate Gulch and its side arms. However, this was rather the exception there, as the richest finds were made in the gravel banks along the gorge in the hills. At the same height as the Montana Bar, the so-called Diamond Bar was discovered, which was also very productive, albeit a little less than the Montana Bar.

Gold Hill and other gravel hills at the same height along the gorge and its side valleys were also very productive in terms of gold finds. The boulder bars that were in the Boulder Gulch were located on rock layers with underlying layers of river pebbles and inclusions of gold deposits, but brought with them the problem that the surface of these slope banks were littered with large boulders. The underlying gravel with the gold was so difficult to get at because of the boulders lying around in heaps that ultimately only washing out with the help of water under high pressure could be used. Within a few months of the gold discovery in the Montana Bar in 1865, the Confederate Gulch and its side arms looked like an anthill because of the many gold prospectors swarming and digging in their claim.

Gold production, 1866–1869

Gold mining in the Confederate Gulch boomed for a few years, so that in the period from 1866 to 1869, gold production there probably equaled or even exceeded all other mining sites in Montana. This was mainly because the gold with the gravel was flowable with the addition of water in the washing troughs and was therefore easy to reach, there was sufficient water in the gorge from the streams and the natural inclines there was sufficient current to separate the gold from the sand and the gravel enabled. These circumstances later allowed the transition from rudimentary gold mining to more efficient mining with the help of pressurized water extraction or. Flushing out ( hydraulic mining ).

When it came to the productivity of the first gold discoveries in the Montana Bar, records were quickly set. The best prospects for the 60 m wide claims yielded around $ 180,000 or $ 2,500 per running meter. Total production, from the Montana Bar alone, is estimated to be around $ 1 to 1.5 million ( $ 16 to 24 million as of 2019).

In the Confederate Gulch the gold mining was carried out over a length of about 8 km. If this was done professionally, all sites were found to be rich. The richest sections were at the bottom of the gorge and were particularly productive. The gold production there was between 300 and 1,500 dollars per running meter and resulted in 20,000 to 100,000 dollars per claim (323,000 to 1.6 million dollars, as of 2019).

Cement gulch and Montana gulch were also very productive, however, cement gulch turned out to be in a class of its own, so some in the Confederate Gulch claimed that there were real gold mines there. More gold was mined there than in comparable claims such as the fabulous Montana Bar, although viewed in proportion, a significantly larger tonnage of gravel, boulders and earth had to be moved.

Because of the many boulders scattered on the bottoms of the boulder bar sandbanks, it is not known how much gold was mined there. Many prospectors worked here, some of whom were bag collectors, but others consisted of teams of men with professional equipment. Gold production at Confederate Gulch generated massive gold shipments from the gorge, beginning with the spectacular exploitation of the Montana Bar. In 1866 a single gold shipment, extracted after a short run of gold-bearing gravel through the wash troughs, weighed 2 tons and was carried with Valued at $ 900,000 ($ 14.5 million as of 2019). Based on a gold price of $ 49,245 per kg of gold in August 2019, the value would even be the equivalent of $ 98,490,000. In the late 1860s, a final cleaning of the gold-bearing soils through the wash troughs washed out 2.5 tons of gold again.

In September 1866 a steamship, the Luella , directed by Captain Grant Marsh , brought 230 miners down the Missouri River to St. Louis . Between the gold that was transported by individual miners and the gold shipments handed in as a consignment of goods, there was a total of 2.5 tons of gold on the Luella, worth a conservatively estimated 1.25 million dollars, adjusted for inflation about 20.2 million dollars and a gold price from August 2019 even $ 123 million. This made the steamship, the Luella, the most valuable ship that ever went down the Missouri (English: "the richest cargo ever to go down the Missouri River" ), with most of the gold, it is believed, came from the Confederate Gulch .

As for the estimates of total gold production from the Confederate Gulch in the boom years 1866 to 1869, these range from 16 million and 10 to 30 million dollars, respectively, but these estimates can fall far short of the amount of gold actually produced because of total production was never determined. That was u. a. The fact that companies as well as individual prospectors often secretly transported their gold in order to mislead road agents and thus prevent robberies. It should be noted that the estimates of gold production refer to the value of the dollar from the middle to the end of the 1860s and that the value of gold at this time was just under 17 dollars per troy ounce ( oz. Dr. ). Based on his correspondence with the National Merchants Bank of Helena and his bank statements, some of which are still preserved, it is assumed that the German Carl Joseph Friedrichs had cautiously mined around 11,200 ounces of gold (348 kg) in the summer of 1866. The owner of his neighboring claim, Johann Schönemann, as he later said: "For two months, he won half a hundredweight of gold every week".

A characteristic of the Confederate Gulch was the sudden increase in gold production in 1866, the continued intensity of production in 1867 and 1868, and its sudden end in 1869/70. The fact that gold extraction from the mining district of the Confederate Gulch began at such a high level in 1866 and could be continued for several years was ultimately due to the abundant gold discoveries that were made there. In the end, however, the major gold mining could only be sustained by intensive mining with the help of hydraulic rinsing with water under high pressure, until everything came to an end in 1869/70 because the gold ultimately ran out.

Technical problems

The gold claims along the Confederate Gulch and Cement Gulch were important sites, but their extraction required a lot of work, as there were large boulders mixed with gravel at the bottom of the gorge. The oval boulders that lay around there every two or three feet first had to be moved, but as soon as they were rolled aside, cold water from the stream ran into the hollows, making the work of the prospectors even more difficult.

The gently sloping hills of the Montana and Diamond Bar, on the other hand, were easier to dismantle, but some other sites on the slopes also had technical problems. Along the boulder bars z. B. Large boulders that covered the surface, drilled and blown or lifted with a rope and then pulled away, which was sometimes a dangerous project.

Rinse with pressurized water

In the Confederate Gulch, hydraulic mining was largely done by flushing with pressurized water . This hydraulic extraction process in the Confederate Gulch used the power of the water to wash away the gravel banks and terraces on the sides of the gorge and the gravel beds at the bottom of the gulch. The earth and fine gravel were then flushed through washing troughs , whereby the heavier gold was separated from the lighter gravel.

Rinsing with pressurized water in the Confederate Gulch proved to be particularly suitable, as the gold-bearing gravel could easily be washed down into the gorge from the terraces on the hills. In addition, flushing with pressurized water was favored by the existing water sources and the inclines in the terrain.

Pressurized water flush in Montana, Alder Gulch 1871

For this purpose, water was tapped from springs above the gorge and diverted into channels or ditches that ran along the sides of the gorge. The trenches and gullies were deliberately kept on a much shallower slope than the bottom of the gorge. Ultimately, the water was in the gullies and ditches high above the excavation sites in the gorge. From there it was then let down through a pipe, some more than a hundred meters deep, and out through huge nozzles that resembled a small cannon.

The massive jets of water from these nozzles supposedly had such power that they could have destroyed a brick building in one go. The most powerful hydraulic hoses had to be controlled by six men. However, building the trenches and channels for the hydraulic process required large amounts of capital, which led outside investors to start mining gold in the canyon. Since they wanted the fastest possible return on their investment, they demanded unrestricted use through the method of flushing with pressurized water.

The powerful jets of water used in this procedure washed away entire slopes, eating up the bottom of the canyon. Earth and fine gravel were then washed through the wash troughs and the mud was then brought out of the gorge. The gravel residues produced by the flushing process, which had accumulated on the bottom of the gorge over long periods of time, remained as spoil heaps . Eventually, the resulting escarpment wiped out all of the original remains of Diamond City and other small communities in the canyons. Flushing the canyon with water under high pressure was very harmful to the environment as it had profoundly changed the appearance, geography and ecosystem of the Confederate Gulch.

Later gold mining

From 1866 to 1869, gold prospectors swarmed the Confederate Gulch, extracting gold as if they were skimming the cream off the milk. In doing so, they took everything, or at least most of them, so that nothing afterwards - neither the mining of the soap deposits nor the mining of the gangue deposits - came close to the production of the boom years. After 1870, the procedure by flushing with pressurized water was sporadically continued for several years in some places in the Confederate Gulch and its side canyons, and in 1899 a company based in Milwaukee began to briefly search old sites again.

Risdon excavator, Fairbanks Gold Mining Company, 1914

About nine years later, another company was working on gravel deposits at the lower end of the gorge with a Risdon excavator, but had to cease operations after three months because no noteworthy findings could be made with it. Gold prospecting ceased in the late 1910s and 1920s, but continued again with at least two more attempts in 1928, although success was mostly hampered by lack of water.

Since gold mining sometimes had a negative impact on the economy, mining activity declined in the booming 1920s. When a global depression developed after 1928 , however, gold production picked up again. The federal government of the United States set the price of gold, which then rose to about $ 35 an ounce. The increased gold price in connection with lower wages and material costs during the global economic crisis made gold mining attractive again.

Dry land dredge on Mahinapua Lake, Hokitika

In the 1930s, dredging companies came to the Confederate Gulch on a massive scale, digging with the help of backhoes and a variety of other equipment, such as: B. a stationary Gold washer, a mechanical washing system (engl. Dry-land dredge ) and a dragline excavators for gold. In 1939, the best returns were when two companies excavated a total of 2,357 troy ounces of gold. A company employed 16 to 18 people in the season. In 1942 only one mechanical washing plant worked the soil, but the rest of the operation was stopped for the duration of the Second World War . For 1939 gold production of 2,357 ounces at the then price of $ 35 an ounce for a total of $ 82,495 was reported. A little patch, compared to the amounts produced at the Confederate Gulch at the weddings from 1866 to 1869, where tons of gold were mined year after year and a week in the legendary Montana Bar of gold worth $ 115,000 at a price of about $ 17 the ounce yielded.

Mining the ore veins

Even before the placer deposits were exhausted, the miners scoured the Big Belt Mountains to the main vein - that transition deposit from their gear , the rich placer gold had formed after the erosion. However, a rich main vein was never found, which is why it was assumed that the main rock was consumed by erosion and that the gold had thus spread over time in the gravel of the Confederate Gulch and its adjoining gorges.

Although no main vein could be found in the Confederate Gulch, there were still some attempts to mine gold ore, but these never reached the standards previously achieved in mining the gold soaps.

The major mines, including those of Hummingbird, Slim Jim (Miller), "Blind Mike" Schabert, the Baker Group (Satellite) and the Three Sisters, were on the border between Confederate Gulch and White Creek, mainly on Miller Mountain . The ore mines only produced $ 100,000 worth of gold, while the Confederate Gulch's soap depot exceeded that amount by at least 150 times. With a capacity of 15 tons per day, the Philadelphia Mill in Diamond City was briefly in operation around 1889.

Diamond City

Confederate Gulch and Diamond City morphed after the discovery of the Montana Bar, closely followed by the discovery of the Diamond Bar. Gold was mined and carried away in record amounts. The news of the gold discoveries spread in no time in the Montana Territory and soon prospectors poured in and began the excavations. From an initially small collection of houses and huts, Diamond City quickly became an overcrowded city that pulsed day and night, and satellite communities such as El Dorado, Boulder, Jim Town and Cement Gulch City soon sprang up. At the height of the boom, around 10,000 people lived and worked in the Confederate Gulch, and when Meagher County was established, Diamond City was named a county seat.

Discoveries of gold soap deposits like the one at Confederate Gulch attracted a diverse and cosmopolitan population. While many came from the Midwest and neighboring states like Missouri, others came from mining areas in California , Idaho, and Nevada . Because they were constantly on the move, they didn't care about the background and status of others. Amongst each other, they casually gave each other random nicknames that were preferred to their own names. A list of names of residents of the Confederate Gulch could e.g. B. Includes names like Wild Goose Bill, Black Jack, Nubbins, Roachy, Steady Tom, Workhorse George, Dirty Mary, Whiskey Mike, and Lonesome Larry.

Gold soap finds were "poor man's digs". Gold soaps are formed by erosion forces that slowly dissolve the gold veins embedded in the bedrock and thus leave the gold behind in the course of geological time in the gravel and sand of old or current flowing waters such as river or stream beds . The gold is found in its natural state as gold dust, in tinsel or as nuggets. The preparation of the gold deposits usually did not require any special work, except that tons of gravel, sand and boulders had to be excavated and then sorted. The newly discovered deposits in the Confederate Gulch attracted unattached young men motivated by a desire to get rich quick.

Gold nugget

Cities made makeshift by the gold diggers were almost ephemeral and hectic places and Diamond City and other settlements in the Confederate Gulch were no exception. They boomed as long as gold was being produced, but when mining stopped, prospectors went as fast as they came.

During the boom years, Diamond City was an excited and very busy city. All kinds of goods have been delivered to supply the 24-hour miners working at the Confederate Gulch.

At the height of mining activity between 1866 and 1869, this type of mining led to the displacement of Diamond City. The approaching hydraulic mining gradually undermined the city and the spoil heaps were already piling up against the buildings. The merchants initially placed their buildings on stilts, but had to increase them steadily until they finally reached a height of 5 m. When that didn't help either, they finally moved to another place in the gorge and rebuilt their houses there. The mining of gold in the period from 1866 to 1869 was intense, as the rich deposits had encouraged them to be exploited quickly. By switching to flushing with pressurized water, production could be kept at a high level for some time, which led to record production, but also shortened the life expectancy of the community, since gold simply ran out in 1869 and 1870. Likewise, the population decreased until 1870 only 225 people lived in Diamond City, in 1871 there were 64 and from the 1880s only 4 families lived there.

Out of nowhere in 1864 and barring a few cottages in 1865, Diamond City first became the county seat of Meagher County and then the center of the most populous place in Montana in 1866. Diamond City boomed for 3 years to 1869, when almost after that With all the miners gone, the city slowly fell into oblivion. Unlike other boomtowns, Diamond City didn't even remain a ghost town.

Confederate Gulch today

Today you can still drive through the Confederate Gulch on an unpaved road, but unlike other mining areas, no ghost town has survived there. The dismantling by flushing with pressurized water ( hydraulic mining ) in the boom years and the renovations that have taken place since then have completely destroyed the sites of the former mining communities. At the lower end of the gorge are embankments overgrown with scrub and bushes, where small wooden plaques have been placed here and there to show visitors where towns and buildings once stood in the gorge.

The only thing that can still be seen from a cliff overlooking the Confederate and Boulder Gulch is the old Diamond City and Confederate Gulch cemetery south of the site, where about 65 people are believed to have been buried. This page is tagged on Wikimapia.

Web links

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e Inflation Calculator, In: Officialdata.org
↑ Hydraulic Gold Mining (English), In: Goldrushnuggets.com
^ History of Washington, Idaho, and Montana: 1845–1889 by Bancroft, Hubert Howe, History Company (1890), Victor, Frances Fuller, p. 758 In: Archive.org (English)
↑ Destination: White Sulfur Springs, In: Treasurestatelifestyles (English)
↑ The meaning and origin of the expression: Flash in the pan, In: Phrases.org.uk
↑ Spokane Formation, In: mrdata.usgs.gov (English)
↑ Greyson Formation, In: mrdata.usgs.gov (English)
↑ Newland Formation, In: mrdata.usgs.gov (English)
↑ Mesoproterozoic Belt Supergroup, Introduction to the Belt Supergroup Geology, Age and Extent of Belt Supergroup, Geologic History of Belt Supergroup, In: geology.isu.edu (English)
↑ ^a ^b ^c Abandon Mines, Diamond City, Historic Context, In: web.archive.org (English)
↑ Detrial Zircon Evidence Requires Revision of Belt Stratigraphie in Southwestern Montana, In: The Geological Society of America (GSA) (English)
↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k ^l ^m ⁿ ^o ^p ^q ^r ^s ^t ^u ^v ^w The Gold Frontier, Dan Cushman, Stay Away Joe Publishers, 1973, pp. 172-179.
↑ The color referred to is the heavy black mineral magnetite , which is more common than gold and is often associated with gold. Hence it is used as an indicator or marker for potential gold discoveries.
^ Carl Joseph Friedrichs (1831-1916) in the RPPD. Retrieved August 25, 2019 .
^ Cement Gulch Gold Occurrence Winston, Montana (English). Retrieved August 25, 2019 .
↑ Early Diamond City-Confederate Gulch, Montana Mining Report! Photo: Confederate Gulch, Diamond City, Montana Bar (English). Retrieved August 25, 2019 .
↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g "Roadside Geology of Montana", David Alt, and Donald W. Hyndman, Mountain Press Publishing Company, Missoula, 1986, ISBN 0-87842-202-1 , pp. 276, 277, 296 ( English).
↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h "Montana: A History of Two Centuries" By Michael P. Malone, Richard B. Roeder, William L. Lang, 1991, University of Washington Press, ISBN 0-295-97129-0 , Pp. 67, 68, 71 (English). [1]
^ ^A ^b Pardee, Joseph Thomas and FC Schrader, 1933 "Metalliferous Deposits of the Greater Helena Mining Region, Montana", US Geological Survey Bulletin # 842, reprint of article in Mining Truth, Vol. 14, no. 10, cited by Montana Department of Environmental Quality Report on Confederate Gulch Mining District (English) Archived copy . Archived from the original on December 22, 2009. Retrieved August 27, 2019.
^ "Conquest of the Missouri", Joseph Mills Hanson, 1909, AC McClurg and Co., pp. 80-88 (English).
^ US Department of Interior, Bureau of Land Management website for Upper Missouri Breaks National Monument, with sub site on Missouri Breaks History. Accessed August 27, 2019 .
↑ ^a ^b Fort Benton Blog. Accessed August 27, 2019 .
^ Carl Joseph Friedrichs (author): Notes from my life , 1886 Frankfurt / Main, 197 pp.
↑ ^a ^b The Gold Placers of Montana. Retrieved on August 29, 2019 .
↑ Histories of selected Mines, Baker Group (Satellite), Hummingbird, Schabert, Slim Jim (Miller), Three Sisters. Retrieved August 30, 2019 .
↑ ^a ^b ^c "Montana, A State Guide Book" Federal Writers' Project, American Guide Series, Hastings House, New York, 1939, reprinted 1955, p. 219 (English)
↑ ^a ^b Wolle, Muriel Sibell, 1963 Montana Pay Dirt: A Guide to the Mining Camps of the Treasure State. Sage Books, Denver (1963) Montana Pay Dirt: A Guide to the Mining Camps of the Treasure State. Retrieved August 30, 2019 .
^ Diamond City Cemetery, Also known as Boulder Bar Cemetery. Retrieved August 30, 2019 .
↑ Big Sky Country, Boulder Bar Cemetery (aka Diamond City Cemetery and Graveyard Bar Cemetery) Confederate Gulch, Broadwater County, Montana. Retrieved August 30, 2019 .

[Inflation_Calculator-1] Inflation Calculator, In: Officialdata.org

[2] Hydraulic Gold Mining (English), In: Goldrushnuggets.com

[3] History of Washington, Idaho, and Montana: 1845–1889 by Bancroft, Hubert Howe, History Company (1890), Victor, Frances Fuller, p. 758 In: Archive.org (English)

[4] Destination: White Sulfur Springs, In: Treasurestatelifestyles (English)

[5] The meaning and origin of the expression: Flash in the pan, In: Phrases.org.uk

[6] Spokane Formation, In: mrdata.usgs.gov (English)

[7] Greyson Formation, In: mrdata.usgs.gov (English)

[8] Newland Formation, In: mrdata.usgs.gov (English)

[9] Mesoproterozoic Belt Supergroup, Introduction to the Belt Supergroup Geology, Age and Extent of Belt Supergroup, Geologic History of Belt Supergroup, In: geology.isu.edu (English)

[Abandon_Mines,_Diamond_City,_Historic_Context-10] Abandon Mines, Diamond City, Historic Context, In: web.archive.org (English)

[11] Detrial Zircon Evidence Requires Revision of Belt Stratigraphie in Southwestern Montana, In: The Geological Society of America (GSA) (English)

[The_Gold_Frontier-12] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k ^l ^m ⁿ ^o ^p ^q ^r ^s ^t ^u ^v ^w The Gold Frontier, Dan Cushman, Stay Away Joe Publishers, 1973, pp. 172-179.

[13] The color referred to is the heavy black mineral magnetite , which is more common than gold and is often associated with gold. Hence it is used as an indicator or marker for potential gold discoveries.

[14] Carl Joseph Friedrichs (1831-1916) in the RPPD. Retrieved August 25, 2019 .

[15] Cement Gulch Gold Occurrence Winston, Montana (English). Retrieved August 25, 2019 .

[16] Early Diamond City-Confederate Gulch, Montana Mining Report! Photo: Confederate Gulch, Diamond City, Montana Bar (English). Retrieved August 25, 2019 .

[Roadside_Geology_of_Montana-17] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g "Roadside Geology of Montana", David Alt, and Donald W. Hyndman, Mountain Press Publishing Company, Missoula, 1986, ISBN 0-87842-202-1 , pp. 276, 277, 296 ( English).

[Montana:_A_History_of_Two_Centuries-18] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h "Montana: A History of Two Centuries" By Michael P. Malone, Richard B. Roeder, William L. Lang, 1991, University of Washington Press, ISBN 0-295-97129-0 , Pp. 67, 68, 71 (English). [1]

[Metalliferous_Deposits_of_the_Greater_Helena_Mining_Region,_Montana-19] A ^b Pardee, Joseph Thomas and FC Schrader, 1933 "Metalliferous Deposits of the Greater Helena Mining Region, Montana", US Geological Survey Bulletin # 842, reprint of article in Mining Truth, Vol. 14, no. 10, cited by Montana Department of Environmental Quality Report on Confederate Gulch Mining District (English) Archived copy . Archived from the original on December 22, 2009. Retrieved August 27, 2019.

[20] "Conquest of the Missouri", Joseph Mills Hanson, 1909, AC McClurg and Co., pp. 80-88 (English).

[21] US Department of Interior, Bureau of Land Management website for Upper Missouri Breaks National Monument, with sub site on Missouri Breaks History. Accessed August 27, 2019 .

[Fort_Benton_Blog-22] Fort Benton Blog. Accessed August 27, 2019 .

[23] Carl Joseph Friedrichs (author): Notes from my life , 1886 Frankfurt / Main, 197 pp.

[The_Gold_Placers_of_Montana.-24] The Gold Placers of Montana. Retrieved on August 29, 2019 .

[25] Histories of selected Mines, Baker Group (Satellite), Hummingbird, Schabert, Slim Jim (Miller), Three Sisters. Retrieved August 30, 2019 .

[Montana,_A_State_Guide_Book-26] "Montana, A State Guide Book" Federal Writers' Project, American Guide Series, Hastings House, New York, 1939, reprinted 1955, p. 219 (English)

[Wolle,_Muriel_Sibell-27] Wolle, Muriel Sibell, 1963 Montana Pay Dirt: A Guide to the Mining Camps of the Treasure State. Sage Books, Denver (1963) Montana Pay Dirt: A Guide to the Mining Camps of the Treasure State. Retrieved August 30, 2019 .

[28] Diamond City Cemetery, Also known as Boulder Bar Cemetery. Retrieved August 30, 2019 .

[29] Big Sky Country, Boulder Bar Cemetery (aka Diamond City Cemetery and Graveyard Bar Cemetery) Confederate Gulch, Broadwater County, Montana. Retrieved August 30, 2019 .