P a g e 2 G h o s t T o w n s a n d H i s t o r y o f M o n t a n a N e w s l e t t e r wealth and activity cannot fail to recall pleasant associations. Its very site will go down the flume, which is already within the borders of the town and gleaning a rich harvest—probably the last. There are only four families left of all the many hundreds that have dwelt there since the glorious days of '66. If the goose that laid the nestful of golden eggs can only be found in the shape of a prolific mother vein of gold-bearing quartz, the days of Diamond City's departed glory may return; otherwise it will disappear utterly with another season.” A street scene in Diamond City in the ‘70s, after the glory of the camp had departed and it was rapidly falling into decay. But, unfortunately, the rich strike of gold quartz was never made, and today old Diamond is only a memory in the minds of grizzled old-timers, who like to indulge in day-dreams of their lusty young manhood, when life lay before them and they came to the enchanted mountains of Montana to do a man's work in a new country. Back in the later 80's Charles M. Russell, the cowboy artist, passed through Diamond City — then deserted excepting for two or three gray-haired prospectors—and paused there for half an hour to rebuild in his mind’s eye the old camp as it had been and to populate once more the deserted streets with picturesque mountain men, miners, stage drivers, gamblers and all other types of the western frontier hosts that have passed on forever. Russell said Diamond City was one of the most perfect types of the old mining camp- even in its semi-decay- that he had ever seen. Struck in 1864 Confederate Gulch was discovered in 1864, and during the fall of that year and the spring of 1865 prospectors thronged there and the vicinity was extensively mined by men who had come up from the Idaho and California placer fields. The richness of the pay dirt in Confederate Gulch was the sensation of the Montana gold camps. As high as $180 in gold to a pan was obtained. Montana Bar, situated above Confederate Gulch, and consisting of a foothill of two acres, was richer than the main gulch. When the first cleanup was made on that bar the flumes were found to be clogged with gold by the hundredweight. When bedrock on this famous bar was reached the enormous yield of $180 to the pan in Confederate was forgotten in astonishment at the wonderful yield of $1,000 to the pan. Confederate Gulch was not so large as Alder, Last Chance or Oro Fino gulches, but it was the richest in proportion of all Montana gulches that yielded gold. The best informed miners of that day declared that, in proportion to the area of the surface worked, Confederate Gulch and Montana bar produced more gold than any other spot in the world. Diamond a Mining Center Diamond City in the 60's was not only the trading center of Confederate Gulch, but also for some 14
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