RICH IN HISTORY
A History of the
Garnet Mining District
The Garnet Mining district has a
long and colorful history. This essay will outline the
series of events which lead to the discovery of this
district and to give the reader a taste of life in the
Garnet area in the late 1800's and early 1900's.
As with all hard rock mining districts,
placer mining was the first activity in the area. Bear Gulch
which is located downstream from First Chance Gulch and
Garnet was the first to see mining activity:
To Ben Dittes of the Montana Post
From Bear Gulch, written by a
responsible man.
"Friend Ben"
You may "toot the old horn and
blow the bazoo" as much as you please over Bear Gulch. It is
enormously rich claims are selling at $2000 and scarce
at that. Pet Hall, Dave Thompson, L. C. May and other
Virginia boys are here. The stampede is greater than ever
known to any mines before.
The Elk creek mines are also thought
to be big tho' not so well developed. This is reliable.
Montana Post, March 24, 1866
The following two excerpts are from
Montana Pay Dirt (Wolle, Muriel Sibell, A Guide to the
Mining Camps of the Treasure State, 1963) and describe the
initial discoveries. She toured the old mining camps during
the 1940's and 50's and was able to gather first hand
information from people who lived during the hey-day.
"Late in October, 1865, a party from
Last Chance Gulch, led by Jack Reynolds and composed of Bob
and Joe Booth, and Charles Hickey, discovered gold placers
on Elk Creek. Within a few weeks the surrounding gulches
were crawling with prospectors, staking claims before winter
closed in on them. Discoveries were made on Day, Deep, and
Bear Gulches, and at First Chance, at the head of Bear
Gulch. This last started a new rush which resulted in Bear
Gulch being staked from one end to the other with most of
the claims centering around it's junction with Deep Creek,
six miles above its mouth. Before long, the Elk Creek
District had more than 6,000 men in it, some living in
lean-tos and others sleeping under wagons until the first
snow sent them burrowing into dugouts and hastily built
cabins just big enough for a fire place and a bunk."
As the placer deposits played out,
miners looked upstream for the source of the gold.
A resident of Garnet in 1951 (Harry
Bouton) gave this account:
" When the camps on Bear, Deep, and
Elk Creeks began to play out, the miners who stayed on began
to prospect for new ground and found it up here. Two new
camps were built, Garnet, at the head of First Chance Creek,
and Coloma, three miles north of here. Some rich gravel was
also found in Williams Gulch and at the mouth of Cayuse
Creek. Garnet was all placering at first. Then, about 1867,
they looked for the mother lode and discovered three main
veins and several pockets of rich ore. That was when the
Lead King, the Grant and Hartford, and the Shamrock lodes
were discovered. It was all gold around here, except for
small deposits of silver, copper, and lead. Most of the
mines paid for themselves from the start; for pay ore was
found from the surface down. There were fifty active mines
in the district at one time; the whole country is pockmarked
with them.
During the 1880's, there were a
thousand men in Garnet and four thousand miners between Beartown and Coloma. The real boom came in the 1890's, when
the big outfits came in and consolidated some of the best
properties. The Mussigbrod and the Mitchell is one property
now and so is the Magone-Anderson. You passed the
Grant-Hartford, where the buggy stood. The Nancy Hanks was
one of the best producers. Sam Ritchey located it in 1873,
but it wasn't developed till about 1896, when red ore was
found in a shoot of the old shaft of the mine. That's when
Garnet had seven saloons and three hotels and a daily stage
between Bearmouth and Coloma. There were two mills in the
district, one with ten and the other with twenty stamps.
Between 1897 and 1917, the mines produced $950,000, of which
ninety-five per cent was gold and the rest copper and
silver.
One winter years ago, Garnet
was snowed in. When supplies got low one man, with a miners
lamp, found his way to Bearmouth through the mine tunnels.
At Bearmouth, he made arrangements for supplies to be sent
in as soon as packers could move their trains up the gulch.
We get lots of snow each year. Last winter, thirty-two feet
fell, but the greatest depth at any one time was seven feet.
I had to chop steps in the snow to reach my woodshed, and my
wife used to walk off the porch roof to get to the
clothesline."
A Montana Bureau of Mines publication
(Memoir NO. 26) The Gold Placers of Montana, 1948, by
Charles J. Lynden, reported:
"Placer gold was first discovered in
the gravels of Bear Creek and its tributaries in 1865. From
discovery to 1917 it has been estimated that the placer
mines produced gold valued between $5,000,000 and
$7,000,000.
Except for the gold in the gravels of
Felan Creek and Ten Mile Creek, all the placer gold in Bear
Creek and its tributaries was derived from the lode deposits
of Garnet, Top O' Deep, and nearby districts of lesser
importance."
Montana, The Magazine of Western History,
July, 1964, contained an article on Garnet (Montana's Last
Booming Gold Camp, by Dan Cushman). The following are a few
excerpts taken from this extensive article on Garnet:
"In 1886, Bror A. C. Stone opened the
first paying gold-in-quartz mine. The Haparanda. He built a
small mill, and recovered approximately $10,000 in gold (a
fortune in those low-cost times when the monthly wage of
common labor was slightly under $100" and grass-fat sirloin
went over the butchers' block at two pounds for two-bits).
About two miles southeast of the
Mammouth, and of Coloma, old-time placer miner Samuel I.
Ritchey had come across a piece of likely-looking rusty
quartz float in 1874. Nearby were some placer diggings
extending up the flat slope from Williams Gulch. Sam staked
1500 feet, more or less, running his claim east and west. A
loyal son of Illinois, he named it the Nancy Hanks for Abe
Lincoln's mother.
In 1896, when the Mammouth commenced
with its new mill, Ritchey and Auchinvole finished their
placering early and got to work drilling and blasting on the
Nancy Hanks.
At that time the deepest
working was down 35 feet. They put it down 10 feet further;
either that winter or early in 1897, the two broke into a
seam of red, iron-heavy quartz. Henry Lehsou, from the head
of Deep Creek, now set up in the assaying business, ran
samples and found it to be highgrade.
In a little while it was obvious that
the Nancy Hanks had an ore body averaging almost two feet
thick, dipping at an easy 25 degrees into the granodiorite
of the mountain, and assaying in ton lots as much as $250
gold.
By the autumn of '97 the new town was
so well along that it quickly absorbed the crews laid off by
the closing, around the hill, of the Mammouth. Dr.
Mussigbrod, son of pioneer Doctor Mussigbrod, and late of
Germany, had arrived with a crew of three at the Lead
King-Red Cloud. He added steadily to their numbers as he
developed ore along tunnels run both directions into the
walls of First Chance Gulch. Things looked so good he even
started building a mill.
Eager prospectors were soon at work
all along the mountain. They staked ground everywhere, and
another camp came into being. Either because of the Garnet
Range on which it stood, or because of the masses of brown
garnet rock derived from the contact of limestone and
granodiorite, the town was called Garnet".
A letter written to Mr. H. Y. Walker,
Mgr. Tacoma Smelting Co., July 18, 1917 includes the
following reports on the Nancy Hanks Mine:
"At the present time the wagon road is in
excellent condition but during spring freshets (sic)
portions of it are generally washed out, while after it
rains sometimes becomes very heavy in places. During the
winter months enough snow falls to make good sleighing and
ore can be moved to good advantage. The first eight miles
out from Bearmouth there is a comparatively easy grade,
probably 2.5% but in the last two miles the road rises
another thousand feet giving rather heavy grades. Ore teams
of four horses each haul four tons per load and make one
round trip per day.
Ore was first discovered in the old Nancy
Hanks shaft and was continuous from the grass roots to a
depth of about one hundred feet. This came in a vein twelve
feet wide in an oxidized condition and according to reliable
reports made a return of three quarters of a million
dollars."
No production occurred after WWII. A
promotional pamphlet circa 1945, Information Regarding
The Nancy Hanks Mine, by an unknown author, offers the
following observations:
United Sates Geological Survey,
Bulletin 660.
"That other ore chutes will be opened
is but a reasonable inference considering the persistence of
the vein, or zone, the large part of which is undeveloped,
especially in depth, and the fact, as shown by the Dewey
(part of Nancy Hanks) that deep as well as superficial ore
bodies exist."
Mr. Dale L. Pitt, E.M. (Reporting
to the Tacoma Smelter)
"The production to 1942 was about
$1,750,000 of $100 per ton average value ore (new price)
taken from only about 4,000 feet of development, in only a
small part of the property."
Mr. Arthur Cory, E.M.
"With reasonable allowance for
exploratory development I expect the Nancy Hanks will
eclipse it's former glory."
The following was taken from the
Montana State Government (DEQ) website:
"Ore deposits in the area are
composite shear-zone veins in granodiorite in
bedding-fissure veins in the sediments. The veins are
narrow, 1 to 4 feet wide and vary in length from 50 feet to
half a mile. Depth also varies from 25 to 500 feet. The
veins carry rich gold values as well as some silver and
copper. Ores are a spongy mass of quartz and limonite."
(Sahinen 1935).
- Notes on the Dewey Mine;
'The mine was developed by a 400 foot
incline shaft with 1,000 feet of level workings. On the 400
foot level the mine is connected with the Nancy Hanks 200
feet to the west and another shaft 200 feet to the east. In
the lower levels the Dewey vein is quartz and barite with
pyrite, tetrahedrite and chalcopyrite ores. Above the 100
foot level the ores are oxidized with limonite the most
abundant of the secondary products. Ores average 3.5 ounces
of gold and 6.5 ounces of silver per ton and 2 percent
copper with some variation (Pardee 1918)."
The people of Garnet and other mining
towns in 1800's were very close and personal. I don't think
there was much that went unnoticed and I would like to share
a few odds and ends from the newspaper of the day, The
Garnet Mining News, October 6th, 1898:
Under the "Legal and Personal"
column-
"J.H. Keith went out yesterday to do
some development work on his claims near Crombie's new
strike."
"Judge Woodlock of Bearmouth was in
town Sunday and recounted a few reminiscences in the News
office."
"A woodchooper named Ed. Smith cut
his foot severely last Sunday and was taken to the hospital
Monday".
'Wm. Dashley went hunting the other
day and reports that he met many grouse face to face. He
didn't bring any home. Dashley ain't much of a hunter
anyway."
Weather Report For Garnet:
(Notice it's not called a forecast)
"This weather report will be kept up
from week to week, giving lowest and highest temperature,
the fall of snow, rain and anything of general interest.
For the past week six degrees below
zero has been the coldest."
I hope this compilation gives the reader
a feel for mining activity and life in the Garnet Mining
district in the early days, the richness of the district
then and it's future potential.
J. Robert Flesher
V.P. Geology and Mining
Grant Hartford Corp.
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