Pa g e 5 Gho s t History Of Alder Gulch Virginia City and Nevada City lie along Alder Gulch, the site of the richest placer gold strike in the Rocky Mountains with an estimated total value of 100 million dollars throughout the 18th and 19th century. In the early 1860s, during the first three seasons, an estimated $30 million worth of gold was removed from the gulch. In the following years, gold was extracted from placer as well as lode mines. From 1848 through the 1860s Alder Gulch was part of a broad expansion of mining from California into many parts of Western North America. The western gold rushes of the 1860s led Congress to create five new territories. Experienced miners traveled to the successive mining frontiers, bringing with them mining technology and social traditions. Alder Gulch was in Idaho Territory until May 1864, when the Montana Territory was created. Bannack was the site of the first placer gold strike within the Montana territory in 1862 and shortly thereafter became the first territorial capital. T H E D I SC O VER Y On May 26, 1863, Barney Hughes, Thomas Cover, Henry Rodgers, William Fairweather, Henry Edgar and Bill Sweeney camped along a small stream fringed with alder trees. Fairweather and Edgar went to prospect a place of rimrock. Fairweather dug the dirt, filled a pan and told Edgar to wash the pan in the hope of getting enough gold to buy tobacco. When the first pan turned up $2.40, they knew the gulch had great potential. Word spread like wildfire. Miners covered the hillsides with tents, brush shelters and crude log cabins. On June 16, the Varina Town Company platted the town. Supporters of Jefferson Davis and the Confederacy, intended to name the new town after Jefferson Davis' wife, Varina. However, Dr. G. G. Bissell, the newly elected miners' court judge, was an equally stubborn Unionist. When it came time to file the official documents, he submitted the name Virginia instead. Virginia City was designated as the new territorial capital of Montana in 1865 when Alder Gulch had gathered most of Montana's population. At its peak, 10,000 people flooded the area named "Fourteen-mile City" for the numerous settlements that lined the gulch. Virginia City became the largest settlement with an estimated population of 5,000 by mid-1864. It rapidly became the territory's first social center and transportation hub. T o w n s a n d Hi st o r y o f Mo n t a n a N e w s l e t t er
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