Alder Gulch--Virginia
City--1863; Last Chance Gulch--Helena--1864; Confederate
Gulch--Diamond City--1865. Smaller placers were being worked on
large numbers of streams, many of them very rich, but the four here
named were those which achieved national renown from the vast
wealth they produced and from various incidents connected with
their rise and fall. In 1876 there were five hundred gold-bearing
gulches in Montana....

"'The California gold wave reached its zenith in 1853. What more
natural than that the army of miners, with the decadence of the
California fields, should search out virgin ground?...

"'When Captain Clark crossed the divide between Ordway's and
Pryor's Creeks he had at his right-hand the spurs of the Rockies
about Marysville, where one mine was afterward to be located from
which more than $20,000,000 of gold was to be taken. As he
proceeded across the prickly-pear plains toward the Missouri, he
came in sight of the future Last Chance Gulch, whereon Helena, the
capital of the state, is located, and from whose auriferous gravels
the world was to be enriched to the amount of $40,000,000 more.

"'From the gravel bars along the Missouri and its tributaries gold
dust and nuggets running into millions of dollars have been taken,
and the total production from placer mining through Montana,
including hydraulic mining, from 1862 to 1900 was, probably, not
far from $150,000,000, the total gold production from the state
being reckoned at about $250,000,000.

"'On July 23d the narrative mentions a Creek "20 yards wide" which
they called Whitehouse's Creek, after one of their men. This stream
was either Confederate or Duck Creek. The two flow into the
Missouri near together--the U. S. Land Office map combines them
into one creek. If Confederate Creek--this was the stream above the
mouth, in the heart of the Belt Mountains.

"'This gulch is said to have been discovered by Confederate
soldiers of Price's army, who, in 1861-62, after the battles of
Lexington, Pea Ridge, etc., in Missouri, made their way to Montana
_via_ the Missouri River and Fort Benton. On their way to Last
Chance Gulch they found "color" near the mouth of this creek.
Following up the stream, they found the pay dirt growing richer,
and they established themselves in the gulch, naming it
Confed