Dear Carolyn, Wow! You found "my" Last Chance Gulch. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you, too, to all the nice folks I've met on the Goldrush site. You've been so helpful with a question I seriously doubted could be answered. Keep me in mind if you ever think I might help you with info re east of the Mississippi! Suzanne in GA On Tue, 11 Aug 1998 13:59:09 -0700 Carolyn Feroben <[email protected]> writes: >Suzanne wrote: >According to family lore, at age 22, he left north GA in 1859 to >prospect >for gold in the west with three other young men and one older man >named >(James?) COWAN. > >What do you think about whether this place could have been in Montana? > >Was there gold prospecting going on there in the early to mid 1860's? >(he >left GA in 1859 and was gone for even years) Otherwise, why would he >be >building a log cabin in what would become Helena? > >Maybe I should try to find the Montana mailing list. >======= > >Suzanne, there was a Last Chance Montana. > >The best places to search in the early 1860's were the future states >of >Idaho and Montana. >Pioneer Montana prospectors had located placer and quartz gold in the >1850's, the boom begining in 1862. > >It seems that six (you mention a group of 5) prospecters stumbed upon >extremely rich Alder Gulch, only sevety-five miles away from Bannack. >This was the begining of Virginia City, Montana. Then as many people >crowded into Virginia City, discoveries at Emigrant Gulch, Confederate >Gulch, and at Last Chance Gulch sparked continued movement. The >discovery at Last Chance was to be the begining of Helena, Montana. > > >The above info from _Precious Dust_ by Paula Marks published 1994. >This >is a wonderful book about the vaious gold discoveries in North >America. > >Hope this may be the confirmation you were looking for. > > > >Have fun, Carolyn > > >==== CA-GOLDRUSH Mailing List ==== >Automatic Administrative Reminder: >PLEASE, NO GEDCOM files and NO ATTACHED FILES of any sort >to this list. Attachments can do weird things to rootsweb.com >equipment and to lister's equpment! > > > > > > > _____________________________________________________________________ You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail. Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com Or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866]