blackfoot-valley

Today’s southern Powell County was the site of the first gold strikes in Montana. Often given credit for the first discovery was the French Canadian fur trapper Francois Finlay, who in 1850 found traces of the yellow metal on what was later named (of course!) Gold Creek, a southern tributary of the Clark Fork, which it joins between Garrison and Drummond (using I-mileages, Gold Creek is 13 miles upstream from Drummond and 7 miles below Garri- son). The first definitely recorded strike occurred eight years later in 1858, when the brothers James and Granville Stuart and Reece Anderson found placer gold deposits on the same stream. The Stuarts returned three years later to commence serious working of their claim. Other prospectors followed. A modest town named American Fork and soon named Gold Creek, and also a town with the hopefull name Wall City three miles south, sprang up on the west bank of the stream. But the dig- gings turned out to be not particularly rich - the active claims typically yeilded $1 to $ 3 dollars per day. Reputedly the best one, in French Gulch seven miles or so south of the Clark Fork, was said to have brought in $6 to $ 20 per day. Neither town ever housed more than a few hundred people. The claims pettered out after a few years and the prospectors moved on. Later diggings on the Continental Divide’s west slope, on the other side of the Clark Fork, in several gulches tributary to the Little Blackfoot, proved to be better. They covered a 20-square-mile area several miles northeast of the present town of Avon. Both placer gold dust and nuggets were found not far below the surface - one nugget, found after the discovery was made, was valued at $ 11,880. Others are said to have brought close to $ 1,000. These discoveries naturally attracted a substancial influx of gold-seek- ers. A group of canny promoters / developers founded Blackfoot City on Ophir Creek just inside the present Powell County line and sold rectangular building lots 40 feet wide by 102 feet deep for $ 125 to $150 dollars each. The founders expected their town to become something of a metropolis. By 1866, it had attracted some two thousand people. Besides gold, some silver and copper were found and mined in the district. A note of historical interest is that the famed Calamity Jane wrote that her mother, Mrs. Robert Cannary died and was buried in Blackfoot City. Gold in and Around Powell County 100