The Hardin tribune-herald. [volume] (Hardin, Mont.) 1925-1973, 1936-07-24

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days they purchased supplies and
horses and returned to their new dig
gings. Humphrey and Allison were
Butte's two first settlers. However, they
were not the first miners to prospect
on "The Richest Hill on Earth" When
they arrived on the site Of present-day
Butte, Humphrey and Allison found a
Nearby were elk horns, which had evi-
IDENTIFY been used in digging. From in
dications the two men decided that the
VI had been dug many years before.
Who dug it, there is no way of telling.
Others had seen the hole before AL
lison and Humphrey. One Caleb E.
4 Renfen ttE a Eo1t 9va goods Is fTs p E1rt
hole in 1860. No doubt many others
had seen this ancient mine.
So it came about that in the last year
of the Civil war, when Sherman was
making his famous march to the sea;
before the grading of the Pacific rail-
road had been started at Council
bluffs: and while the drama of the
being enacted, two wandering pros
pectors drove their claim stakes on
the hill that was destined to be the
greatest producer of them all.
BY the fall of 1864 comparatively
rich placers had been struck by Al
l1Son and Humphrey. Several other
prospectors followed the wagon tracks
Of these two men and also staked
claims on Butte Hill. The first house
on the present site of Butte was erect
ed in the summer of 1864 by Humphrey
and four other prospectors. It was
located on what is now Quartz street,
and was sold a few years later to
Robert Girton for $1c0. Chasteen A.
Humphrey, brother of one of the
founders Of Butte, rode horseback from
Nevada CITY, .e Calif.' to Butte in the
Things moved slowly for Butte of
those early days and when David N.
Upton arrived in September, 1866,
there were no buildings where the
town site is now, but in Buffalo gulch,
Centerville, there were about 40
men and 5 women, and they thought
they had the biggest town in the noun
Butte's first smelter was built in the
autumn Of 1867, in an effort to work
the ores which had been uncovered in
the search for collaborating quartz.
Some copper matte was shipped to
Swansea, Wales, but the enterprise
was soon abandoned, for the ore had
to be hauled to Fort Benton by bull
by river boat.
The failure Of the smelter business
did not slow down mining activity and
as a placer camp Butte reached its
first apex of prosperity in 1867. But
water was scarce and a dry season in
1869 caused many of the miners to
leave the camp: Also. the sands of Sill
population in 1870 was only
PAL persons. Then in 1874 interest in
quartz mining was renewed and miners
began to pour into the camp once
more.
: In the fall of the year 1874, one of
Butte's earliest ~prospectors, William L.
Idaho. The law of congress by which
all quartz claims unrepresented for a
year were to revert to the public do
main was about to go into effect. Jan.
l, 1875, was the date when claims un-
represented could be relocated under
this act. Mr.. Farlin had noted some
promising claims during his first res
idspse in in 1oaH s.M When h he W. went trot to
these claims with him. He had the
samples assayed at Owyhee, found
them rich in silver. Upon his return
to Butte, he kept quiet about what he
knew and at midnight, Dec. 81, 1874,
he relocated the Travonia and several
other claims that had been abandoned
by their original wners.
Mining news spreads quickly and
and the news of Butte's
rich silver lodges spread quickly to
other camps. Miners swarmed into the
area and an era of claim jumping fol-
More substantial buildings were
erected. The first miners union was
June 10, 1873, and to this day
that date is a holiday in Butte-Miners'
Union Day. Butte has always been a
great union town.
Perhaps the saga of Butte's rise
from a frontier mining camp of the
late sixties to the greatest mining city
in the Americas can best be told by
the careers of the three men
who played outstanding parts in the in
dustrial life of the city during its
era. The first Of these three
men to arrive was William A. Clark,
and he outlived both of the others.
Born in Connellsville, Pa, in 1889,
Mr.. Clark had been a farm boy in
Pennsylvania and Iowa, a country