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 Photo by Jolene Ewert-Hintz “No work to speak of has been done this year on the Cable, but I have had a force of men working on the Warm Springs creek ditch and have worked over some of the old placer ground. We have applied modern methods to the work and have done pretty well, even in working ground that was worked years ago. One of the improvements is simple but works wonderfully well, in the bottom of the sluice boxes we lay railroad iron rails on four-Inch cross pieces. The big, heavy rock is carried away quickly and with less water and less force by having a smooth surface over which the waste glides away while the gold settles down and is caught.” “Most of the work done this year, however, was dead work, repairing the ditch, which has been neglected, and next year we will open up some new ground.” “Politics I don't know much about except what I read in the Standard, and I should say this is a year that will keep the best of them guessing. I hear from my home In Iowa, that usually is so surely republican, that it is hard to find a democrat willing to run for office. I hear that the republican leaders are not boasting. One of them, in writing to me recently, said: 'We shall need every vote we can get.’ The farmers of Iowa are tired of this protective tariff rot, which has been talked to them for years, and now look to the financial question to assist them out of the hard times which press about them, even to the wall. It is the only issue today and the farmers are awakening to that fact, Iowa, that has been 40,000 republicans, is in the doubtful column this year.”- Accessed via: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/ ROCKY POINT / WILDER /TURNER HOMESTEAD A shale reef at Rocky Point Crossing on the Missouri River provided a solid bottom and a lowwater ford. The flat on the south side of the river had been the site of one of the many woodhawk camps during the steamboat era. There was a ferry at this location which served as the crossing point for north/south travel in this part of the country. In 1880, C. A. Broadwater, a Helena merchant, financier and entrepreneur moved upriver from Carroll to Rocky Point, where he erected a 40-foot by 90-foot two-story trading post. He named the settlement “Wilder” after Amherst Wilder, his business associate from St. Paul, Minnesota. Photo by Jolene Ewert-Hintz
3 Publizr Home