P a g e 4 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 and the desperado fell dead. The followers of the slain man at once opened up a fusillade of shots at the cabin and the shooting for a few minutes was general. Then a party of miners rushed forth from the cabin and took a stand in the open. Three of the claim jumpers fell, mortally wounded, in a few seconds and the rest broke and ran into the timber. That ended the attempts of the claim jumpers to operate in Montana, at least on any extensive scale. The mines of Cave Gulch were worked in a desultory way as late as the 80's. Diamond a Boom Town For three years, when Diamond City was at its best between 1865 and 1868, it was in every sense one of the best boom camps of the west. Stores, saloons, gambling houses, hurdy gurdy houses and hundreds of log cabins grew like mushrooms up and down the gulch. As adventurers from the east and west poured in, the gold belt widened constantly by new discoveries. Roads were hewn to camps in every direction, and soon rumbling stages began to arrive daily from Last Chance Gulch, where the city of Helena was growing from lusty infancy to a mountain metropolis. Along the trails walked and rode weatherbeaten, booted men with wiry bodies and strong faces, some with pack horses and many carrying their blankets on their backs as they strode along. Soon ox and mule trains began to drag into the gulch, hauling stores of goods for trade with the miners. In any new camp there were at first two sharply defined classes—the old miners and the "pilgrims." It was almost an invariable rule in the camps like Diamond City that the young men were from the east, while the grizzled men were from California, even though they were natives of middle western or eastern states. The "tenderfoot" arriving in a new mining camp without previous experience in the mountains was usually somewhat nervous, uncertain of his rights and suspicious of all of his new neighbors and acquaintances. Not so the veteran miner and mountain man. When Diamond City came into being in 1864 the little host of gold seekers who flocked into the gulch found themselves beyond the reach of the law and without the protection or control of the United States government. The mineral lands had not been declared open to exploration or purchase and there was really no way of acquiring legal title. Actual possession was the only evidence of ownership. The Law of the Miners The situation demanded law as soon as a new district was discovered and that without delay. But the veteran miners and prospectors were not in any degree uncertain about what to do or how to do it, and the promptness with which they acted soon reassured the "tenderfeet." A mass meeting was at once called, which organized the district and adopted rules and regulations for the government and control of all matters pertaining to mining, the use of water for that purpose and the acquiring and disposal of mining claims after determining of what a mining claim should consist.
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