er with additional stories of creeks to the
north, so that there was a gradual straggling back toward Gold Creek and
other gulches. This prospector had been all over the Alder Gulch, which
was ere long to prove fabulously rich.

It was not, however, until 1863 that the Montana camps sprang into
fame. It was not Gold Creek or Alder Gulch, but Florence and other
Idaho camps, that, in the summer and autumn of 1862, brought into the
mountains no less than five parties of gold-seekers, who remained in
Montana because they could not penetrate the mountain barrier which lay
between them and the Salmon River camps in Idaho.

The first of these parties arrived at Gold Creek by wagon-train from
Fort Benton and the second hailed from Salt Lake. An election was held
for the purpose of forming a sort of community organization, the first
election ever known in Montana. The men from the East had brought with
them some idea of law and organization. There were now in the Montana
fields many good men such as the Stuart Brothers, Samuel T. Hauser,
Walter Dance, and others later well known in the State. These men were
prominent in the organization of the first miners' court, which had
occasion to try--and promptly to hang--Stillman and Jernigan, two
ruffians who had been in from the Salmon River mines only about four
days when they thus met retribution for their early crimes. An
associate of theirs, Arnett, had been killed while resisting arrest.
The reputation of Florence for lawlessness and bloodshed was well known;
and, as the outrages of the well-organized band of desperadoes operating
in Idaho might be expected to begin at any time in Montana, a certain
uneasiness existed among the newcomers from the States.

Two more parties, likewise bound for Idaho and likewise baffled by the
Salmon River range, arrived at the Montana camps in the same summer.
Both these were from the Pike's Peak country in Colorado. And in the
autumn came a fifth--this one under military protection, Captain James
L. Fisk commanding, and having in the party a number of settlers bound
for Oregon as well as miners for Idaho. This expedition arrived in the
Prickly Pear Valley in Montana on September 21, 1862, having left St.
Paul on the 16th of June, traveling by steamboat and wagon-train. While
Captain Fisk and his expedition pushed on to Walla Walla, nearly half of
the immigrants stayed to try their luck at placer-mining. But the
yield was not great and the distan