Editor of Montana’s oldest newspaper recall balmy placer days of diamond city and confederate gulch

Hysham Echo Nov 26, 1925
by Dan R. Conway

In Great Falls there resides a gray-haired old gentleman, now well past the four-score mark, who, continuously for the past fifty years, has been editor and publisher of the state’s oldest newspaper, the first agricultural publication in the entire Rocky Mountain region, and the only weekly farm paper published in the Northwest.

On November 25, 1875, (just 50 years ago), R. N. Sutherlin printed the first copy of the Rocky Mountain Husbandman at the old mining camp of Diamond City, M.T. This same R. N. Sutherlin has just issued his fiftieth anniversary number of that paper which is now being published in Great Falls.

A firm believer in the agricultural future of Montana, Editor Sutherlin has from the beginning conducted his newspaper as a farm journal. In the early gold days, as is the common condition, there were many disappointments. There were not a sufficient number of claims to satisfy all, and many took up claims which did not prove profitable. As a result, scores of those who had been lured to the foothills of Montana by the call of “Gold!” were forced to return to the occupation which they had learned as youths in the east - farming.

The efforts of these tillers proved from the beginning that the soil of Montana’s valleys was productive, and it was thus that Mr. Sutherlin was brought to a vision of the possibilities of agriculture in the Treasure state.
And through his work at maintaining a forum for the agriculturists of the state, he has been able to follow Montana’s farm history through all its prosperity and adversity, from its earliest infancy to the wonderful present-day accomplishments.

Then, too, Mr. Sutherlin’s experiences in Montana did by no means have their beginning with the first issue of the Rocky Mountain Husbandman. (http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83025309/)

It was in 1865, in the days when fabulous fortunes were being made in the valleys and along streams in Montana, in placer gold mining, when the more adventurous of the country’s spirits were being lured by thousands by the chance of the pick, the shovel and the pan, in Montana’s foothills, that R. N. Sutherlin, then a young man, arrived in Diamond City, M. T., to try his fortune in a new country.

Diamond a Ghost City

“Diamond City,” says Mr. Sutherlin, “is a ghost city. Montana, like every other western mining state, has a long list of vanished towns. A history of Montana Territory published in the ‘80s purports to give the names of ‘ever village, settlement or city in the territory.’ The list contains many names that are now only a memory, and a few that are not even that. Among the latter are Yam Hill which was rated at 100 population; Ulidia at 48; Timberland of Butte, 118; Trapper, 228; Hismark, 89; Hoover City, 43; Kan Kan, 47; and Diamond City, 64.

“There are men who have lived in Montana for a quarter of a century who have never heard of these places and yet those settlements occupied a most important place in the development of the state years before the quartz minter, the cowboy and the homesteader came.”

Today, 35 miles northeast of the city of Helena, there is an abandoned, worked-out placer mining gulch, in which there now stand four or five ruined log cabins. Year ago they surrendered to the fierce assaults of the elements, and with sagging ridge poles and crumbling walls, they represent in sorry fashion the only monument that remains of what was once one of the most flourishing and hopeful of Montana’s boom gold camps.

Today the list of Montana’s post offices does not contain the name of Diamond City, but that was the proud appellation of the hustling and prosperous mining center that half a century ago was as well known as Helena, Virginia City and Bannack,a was then considered a much better camp than Butte.

Confederate Gulch and Montana Bar

Neither does the list of Montana mining districts now include the name of Confederate Gulch. Yet, for the area that was worked by the miners, that almost forgotten gulch was the richest gold producing district in what is now known as Montana state.

Confederate Gulch, which was the nucleus for the existence of Diamond City, was discovered in 1864, and, during the fall of that year and the spring of 1865, prospectors thronged there, an the vicinity was extensively mined by men who had come up from Idaho and from the California fields. The richness of the pay dirt in Confederate gulch was the sensation of Montana Territory’s mining camps. Miners are said to have ordinarily obtained as high as $180 to the pan, and at one of the diggings in the gulch, pans ran as high as $1,000.

A story has been told by J. X. Beidler to the effect that in the late ‘60s a heavily laden freight outfit pulled away from Diamond City’s streets with gold dust valued at $900,000, the cleanup of one short season’s work by three or four men on a rich bar. This shipment, Beidler says, was hauled to Fort Benton for transportation down the river. It was transported from Benton to the States in Mackinaw boats as no steamers were operating when they arrived there.

Montana Bar Richest in World

Montana Bar was situated above Confederate gulch, and consisted of a foothill about one-half mile long and from two to 300 feet deep, being much richer in yield than the main gulch. Up to the time of the discovery of the famous Ruby sands near Nome, Alaska, Montana Bar was the richest placer diggings the world had ever known. When the first cleanup was made on the bar the flumes were found to be literally clogged with gold by the hundred-weight. When the bedrock of this bar was reached the enormous yield of $180 to the pan was forgotten at the wonderful yield of $1,000 to the pan.

Editor Sutherlin states that P. P. Thomas, a prospector operating just across from Montana Bar secured $1,140 from one pan.

In its issue of June 16, 1866 the Montana Post, published at Virginia City, carried the following item:
“J. Despeck, who has come over from helena, informs us that $18,000 was washed from the claim of John & Metcalf on Montana Bar in seven days, and that he saw $4,000 carried away in a bucket from Smith and Burchett’s claim after a run of ten hours.”

Confederate Gulch was not so large as Alder, Last Chance, or Oro Fino gulches, but it was the richest by far of all the Montana placer diggings.

Diamond an Important Center

“Diamond City in the ‘60s,” says Editor Sutherlin, “was not only the trading center for Confederate gulch, but also for some 14 other gulches in that vicinity. Among these was New York gulch whose riches were discovered in 1866, and a townsite platted there the following summer by men who had high hopes of a city springing u there. Another town of Brooklyn was platted in this area. These camps in the midst of the mountains lived their little hour and passed like mist before the sun when the yellow metal failed to come.
“White’s gulch, three miles over the mountains from Diamond City was another famous producer which lasted a little longer than did Confederate, being mined as late as 1885. Dave gulch, another tributary, was also a famed producer.”

Diamond a Boom Town

In describing Diamond City as he first saw it, Editor Sutherlin pictures, for the period from 1865 to 1868, what was in every sense of the word one of the best boom camps of the entire west. There sprang up, he says, like mushrooms up and down the gulch, stores, saloons, gambling houses, hurdy gurdy houses, and hundreds of log cabins. Roads were hewn to camps in every direction, and soon rumbling stages began to arrive daily from Last Chance gulch, where the city of Helena was growing from Lusty infancy to a mountain metropolis. Along the trails walked weather beaten, booted men with wiry bodies and strong faces, some with pack horses and many carrying their blankets on their backs as they strode along. Soon ox and mule trains began to dray into the gulch, hauling stores of goods for trade with the miners.

In any new camp of those early epochal days, there were at first two sharply defined classes - the old miners and the “pilgrims.” Almost invariably in these camps it was the rule that these younger men were from the east and the grizzled seasoned men were from the mines of “California ‘49.”

It was in 1868 and 1869 that Editor Sutherlin and a partner prospected a claim not far from the famous Montana Bar, in Confederate gulch, and it was in these years and the years previous while he was freighting and selling lumber to the miners that he witnessed the wonderful boom days of this camp, and the thrilling episodes that nearly always went with life in a new placer region. Print this post