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 While a few small placer and hard rock operations continue even today, Virginia City's economy has depended upon tourism since the beginning of the Bovey's restoration efforts in the 1940s. The area near Virginia and Nevada Cities in Alder Gulch held the richest placer gold deposits in Montana, and some say richer than anywhere else on Earth. According to research done in the 1920s, over one hundred million dollars worth of gold had been removed from the gulch. At today’s prices, Alder Gulch has yielded something closer to two and a half billion dollars worth of gold! -Courtesy of the Montana Heritage Commission The River of Gold Mining exhibit and gold panning experience is a tribute to the gold rush days in Alder Gulch. It is located at 1559 MT Hwy 287 between Virginia City and Nevada City. Look for the big mining dredge on the west side of the road. For more information call 406-843-5247 or visit: https://virginiacitymt.com/ Photo by Jolene Ewert-Hintz The Old Lexington Stamp Mill was Butte's first stamp mill. It began as a five stamp mill and was erected by Charles Hendrie in 1867. A stamp mill is an ore crushing machine that pounds rock into fine sand. Soon after the mill's construction, Hendrie left Butte and never returned. A.J. Davis held the lien on the property and took over the mill. It laid idle for 9 years until a process to extract the minerals out of Butte's complex compounds was discovered. Because of the newly discovered metal extraction process, the mill was enlarged to ten stamps, and first blew it's work whistle on January 23, 1877. Eventually enlarged to a twenty stamp mill, it operated around the clock until Davis' death in 1890. In 1881 Davis sold the mill along with The Lexington Mine to a French Syndicate for $1 million (about $15 million in today's money). This was the largest transaction in Butte up to that time. Eventually, the mill processed about $45 million of wealth in today's money. –Courtesy of Interpretive Sign at Site Photo by Jolene Ewert-Hintz Photo by Jolene Ewert-Hintz
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