The 185 Round Fight & Perfect Placer Gold Strike

I was bound for the heart of Montana mining history—the gulch that would grow to become the richest placer gold strike in all the Rocky Mountains. That morning, I'd woken up to a fluffy layer of fresh snow blanketing the small town of Sheridan in every direction. Winter had come to Montana in early November, with the winds picking up along with the snow, further reminding me of the late start I had gotten on this border-to-border journey. I had a quick breakfast and packed up the dishes before getting out of town. My heading was southeast towards Alder, rolling down the wide open highway with bits of snow whipping across my windshield, creating a monotonous haze across the valley.

After too many minutes passed, I could still hear my air compressor humming along long after the tank should've been filled. It must've been malfunctioning in the fresh, grimy slush being thrown up from the road. Pulling over at a marker ahead to give it a look, I saw I'd stopped at a place known as Robbers Roost, the site of an old stage-era roadhouse notorious for housing the plethora of outlaws and vigilantes in the early days of the Montana Territory. I half-stooped under the edge of the truck to attempt a look, since I wasn't too keen on getting soaked so early in the day in that northern cold. I didn't see anything out of the norm, but I decided to pull the fuse temporarily anyway since I had the air I needed for the cruise.

Back in the day, the ravine I was following, named Alder Gulch, was home to a heaping handful of micro-mining boomtowns. I passed another marker discussing one of them, called Adobetown, which lay in one of the most profitable sections of the gulch. As one can guess, the few buildings and a stage stop that once stood were made of Adobe mud bricks instead of the normal wood or occasional fired bricks like every other place around. That settlement apparently supported nearly 100 claims, some of which had crews of up to a dozen men working them daily. When one thinks of how quickly men rushed in, 11 days after gold was discovered in 1863, it makes them wonder what the pandemonium was like in those first few weeks with so many people invading a small slice of wilderness all at once.

All around the area were also large piles of gravel high over my head along either side of the highway. They were dredging piles from the dredges that had come through in the early 1900s to help finance Harvard University. Even through the icy winds and snow, I could still see the towering evidence of the mammoth machines all around. I wondered what one of those heavy steel dredges with its chewing saw of iron buckets must've sounded like when scraping the earth for gold over a century ago. The shriek of the iron continually dragging against the million-year-old rock reverberating throughout the gulch, day in and day out like a mechanical dragon making its presence known all across the land.

As the sky began to lighten, I passed a large brown Victorian house standing off the road. With its cupola and ornate roof, I knew I was in for some excellent architectural ghost town history. A moment later, I was in Nevada City, which had a train station on the west side recently painted with a plethora of old weathered train cars out front in various states of disrepair. There was a plaque from the Montana History Foundation discussing the history of the cars used on the Northern Pacific, Great Northern, and lastly, the Milwaukee Road, which I would encounter soon enough deep in the mountains of Idaho. It also discussed how there had never originally been tracks that far into the gulch. Locals and volunteers had built tracks from Alder to Nevada City decades after the towns dwindled, just to get the train cars there for proper preservation.

On the other side of the road was a long row of buildings, including a restaurant, a music hall, and a couple of hotels, with a row or two of buildings behind them as well that were set up to look like old businesses scattered about. Some were still operating establishments, but all were closed for the winter months.

I was totally alone in the town. I guess it was on account of the weather that day, but I was stoked to get to explore the place totally vacant; usually that only happens in towns that are mostly gone, if I'm lucky. Many of the buildings in Nevada City are not original and were moved there by a man named Charles Bovey beginning in the late 1950s. They had come from all across Montana, and he moved them there in order to help preserve them since most of the original Nevada City was gone on account of the dredges.

A couple establishments had some interesting architectural features I hadn't yet seen, such as vertical log sides sandwiched tightly with boards in between, almost like a frontier attempt at Roman-style pillars. One of the hotels also had a two-story outhouse with a catwalk connecting it to the back of the main building. A short block east on Brewery Street, there was a barbershop, a saddler shop, and other preserved commercial buildings ready to fill the needs of the hardworking miner back in the day. Many western and historical movies have used the town as a backdrop, including Missouri Breaks and The Patriot.

The hanging of a man named George Ive's also took place in Nevada City in 1863 after he murdered a man in cold blood for some gold dust. His execution led to the formation of multiple factions, the Vigilantes and the Innocents, involving some members of Henry Plummer's gang as well. The back and forth between those two groups among the streets of Virginia City and another mining town named Bannack would become the stuff of Montana outlaw legend over time.

Moving on from Nevada City, the daytime temperature was still hovering around fifteen degrees Fahrenheit, and it looked like the sun probably wasn't going to be coming out anytime soon. I turned back onto the skinny highway with its bits of drifting snow, and I rolled on into Virginia City proper, one of the finest preserved living ghost towns in the United States. The Pioneer Bar appeared to be the only business open in the wintertime in town since it didn't get much traffic on account of the summer tourist season being fairly short. Parking there, I threw on my jacket and put on some gloves since I knew there was a lot to see and that I would be out there for awhile. One of the first buildings I walked up to was nicknamed the "Hangman's Building" since five of Henry Plummer's gang members were hanged over the center beam before the building went on to have a storied history of hosting a couple different establishments. The last one was the Virginia City Water Company, which was owned by a woman named Sarah Bickford.

Born into slavery in the mid-1850s in Tennessee, Sarah tragically lost contact with her family during the Civil War. A few years after the war, she went west with a judge and his family as a nanny to what was then just the Montana Territory. Within a couple years, she got married to a miner named John Brown and had three children, although two boys were unfortunately lost to diphtheria. By all accounts, John was a wretched excuse for a husband, threatening and beating his family, so Sarah fought for a divorce, which a judge granted along with custody of her daughter Eva. She then started her own bakery and restaurant in Virginia City, before Eva was sadly lost to pneumonia in 1882. Sarah persevered, met Stephen Bickford, and they were married in 1883, having three more daughters and a son.

A few years later, Stephen would purchase a majority share of the Virginia City Water Company. After his death in 1890, Sarah took correspondence courses in business, acquired the remaining share of the utility company, and was the sole owner by the time 1903 rolled around. She was her own bill collector and managed the company with a steely resolve, yet she also ensured her customers were well cared for. Later on, she purchased the infamous Hangman's building to use as an office for the company. She lived in Virginia City for the rest of her life, into the late 1930s before she passed.

Nearby was a historical exhibit discussing the life of Charles Bovey himself and how he had become a vital part of the preservation of history in the area. He had come to Great Falls, MT in the 1920's to learn the milling trade, as it was part of the family business. He had always been interested in history, and by the 1940s, he'd found space at the Great Falls fairgrounds to begin storing old buildings he'd begun to save from around the state. In 1944, he stumbled upon Virginia City, which would become his life's true work. The city did have a good amount of its own buildings still standing in various states of disrepair, and that is partially why the site was chosen. In 1868, the city had over 1,200 different buildings, but many were lost to fire or disrepair between then and the 1930s. With this existing layout, Charles could fill in the gaps on Main Street with other old buildings in order to create the continuous boardwalk along the main drag to this day.

In the late 1940s, Charles did the work of forming official societies to watch over the preservation of the town, such as the Historic Landmark Society of Montana. In the 1950's, preservation really got going and buildings began showing up from every direction to their new home in Virginia and Nevada cities. By the later part of the decade, tourists began flocking to Virginia City in the summertime and in 1961, the town achieved its recognition as a National Historic Landmark. The Bovey's kept expanding and preserving buildings until their deaths, and then their son watched over the town for a time before he sold it to the government so the place could be preserved in perpetuity for all the public to enjoy.

Continuing to walk around town, I photographed every historical plaque I could find since the wind was brisk and unrelenting. I figured I could read them that evening and make the connection with the other photos I was taking. There was a lot to see—so many Victorian architectural features and a historical plaque on nearly every building. It was wild to me that there seemed to be a fairly complete history for almost every one. I was surprised at the amount of information they had about some, and I figured it must've taken someone awhile to track down this complete history of such a little speck in time. Although hopefully Charles had kept track of some buildings' known information when he moved them. One of these signs that particularly caught my eye was one out in front of the house of a Mr. Julius Kohls home titled "Fight of the Century and the Flour Riots." This fight of the century took place in the fittingly named Leviathan Hall on January 2, 1865. The fighters were Con Orem, a 29-year-old saloon owner whose father had been a prizefighter as well, and Hugh O'Neil, a 34-year-old hard-drinking Irishman well known for his barroom brawls.

Levianthan Hall was 28 feet wide and 100 feet long, a sizable building for the time, but on that day in early January, it must've been packed beyond capacity since the fight went on for an incredible 185 rounds until the referee had to call it a draw! The whole front page of the Montana Post paper on January 7th, 1865 describes the fight round by round with great lines such as, "Con slipped to his knees, but jumping up let fly his left on Hugh's knowledge box," and it also notes that "Hugh's hand running open along the rope came against the post with great force, spraining his hand and leaving it worth little for the rest of the fight" in round 7... Hugh sure had a long way to go. This was also the original boxing, the kind done with bare knuckles, so the men were surely showing many of the hits they were taking round after round, with eyes swelling shut and blood spattering the ring.

Championship of the West: Boxing History by Andy Thomas

The Post also remarks during round 90: "Orem pretended to withdraw, changing front to the rear, then suddenly reeled to meet his opponent, sticking out his tongue and laughing." I do not know how Con Orem must've had the energy at that point to continue to taunt his opponent. O'Neil had 50+ pounds on Orem, so it had to be relentlessly arduous for Orem to keep moving around and around to avoid the heavy wallops advancing in his direction. Speaking of energy, the crowd's mood must've been purely electric, with the action lasting for so long, from about 1:30 in the afternoon until past dusk. There were a lot of gamblers and money on the fight, but according to the Post, many were allegedly satisfied with the call of a draw since both men had fought valiantly. However, with whiskey and beer flowing like a river from the saloons all around, there had to have been some drunken disagreements between at least a few of the likely thousands of patrons on that brisk January day in the Montana territory.

The Flour Riots would happen months later in late 1865 and early 1866, when the roads into the gulch were still snowed in for the winter and flour supplies ran dangerously low for many residents across town. According to the Montana Historical Foundation, Sheriff Neil Howie and the Vigilante Committee supervised the riot itself when 438 residents from around the area marched into town and went into Virginia City homes and confiscated all the remaining flour and put it all in one place, Leviathan Hall, in order to be distributed to all. They must've been fearful times indeed if people were hungry enough to invade the homes of their neighbors in order to get the flour, though it has been seen that hungry people can do much worse. It makes me wonder if they found any residents hoarding truly excessive amounts.

A shortage is a weird chaotic thing; it is part of our learned human nature and many animals nature to want to prepare for the bad times to protect the tight-knit group, so how can one blame someone for wanting to prepare a bit to protect their family? But then, when almost nobody else around has the foresight to prepare, the person who stocked up supplies to keep their family alive is seen as the enemy, and the one who's resources often must be redistributed.

After going back to grab some lunch, I opted to drive slowly around the side streets of Virginia City, parking and getting out here and there to read historical plaques and look in the windows of old homes and small businesses to attempt to get a sense of how a city thrived on the edge of civilization in its heyday. There were beautiful examples of Victorian architecture with many intricate features still surviving, including the C.W. Rank house and the Thexton house. The Corbett and Daems houses now sit very close together, with windows facing the opposite wall only a couple feet away. This was so close that the original construction couldn't have occurred like that, meaning they'd been moved at some point. In 2007, during restoration, the two buildings were finally joined with a doorway, making the spaces more usable.

I ended up wandering back to Main Street in order to see a few more commercial buildings that had caught my eye, including the Montana Post building, originally built in 1863. The Post was the first source of news in Montana and its editor, Thomas J. Dimsdale, published his series "Vigilantes of Montana" in the post in 1865–1866, ensuring the action's place in early territorial history. A fire in 1937 destroyed the original wooden section of the building so it was rebuilt by Charles Bovey a few years later in 1946. There were some other original buildings, including a dry goods store and a dress shop. A common pattern emerged among many of the shops; the signs out in front often listed the businesses and owners that had inhabited them over the years. It seems pretty much every building has served an array of purposes over the years.

As far as the post-boom days went, the town had actually never gone through a period where it was a true "ghost town", since children of Virginia City pioneers lived in homes there into the 1950's, after Charles had begun restoring the town nearly a decade earlier. One example is Mrs. "Aunt Julia" Elledge, who lived in the picturesque little Khol's house right near the beginning of Main Street with its small white-fenced front porch and red-painted siding. She lived there for decades into her old age after WWII. Directly across from her home was a stone building with large double doors that had the words "opera house" adorning its front. Upon closer inspection, the structure had been erected around the turn of the century, originally as a livery stable by two men named Smith and Boyd. Meaning it had stalls and likely hay and tack storage all inside a smaller-sized building compared to many barns out on a moderately-sized farm or ranch. I wished I could go in and try to get a sense of how it could've all been laid out, but it was locked up tight for the season, so I had to be content with a quick glance into its darkly shrouded interior, which did not show me much.

Some of the buildings in town had the classic western false front style of a square or rectangle end on the foremost part of the building to cover the peaked roof behind. It turns out that this style actually emerged for a few practical reasons when the frontier was still being settled across America. Many towns and settlements on the frontier started out as literal tent cities, and since businesses were formed quickly, often before permanent buildings came along, their owners began adding false wooden fronts to their tent establishments in order to make them appear slightly more professional. Plus, it also gave them a sturdy door to lock to make their goods a bit more secure. Additionally, a false front gave businesses a large advertising space where they could paint the name of their business in bright colors, with the goal of being one of the first things a newcomer noticed when they rode into town. Some false fronts even had elaborate trim work and a whole range of colors.

Like many other old western mining towns, Virginia City had an array of saloons to quench the thirst of the rough and tumble men who dared venture into the wilds of the early Montana territory. One of these establishments was called "Ten Pin Alley." As you may or may not have guessed, yes, the place did have bowling in addition to the brews, and it was named with a specific number of pins for a reason.

Bowling as a game has been around for millennia, with the first evidence of the game being played in Egypt over 5000 years ago. In the early 1840s, the state of Connecticut passed a law that made it illegal to own a nine-pin bowling alley. This was on account of the amount of gambling that surrounded the sport of bowling, and the mood against it likely rose from the remains of the strict Puritan values that many east-coast colonies and states had been founded on in the 17th and 18th centuries. On account of this new law, the patrons of the bowling alleys simply modified the rules of the game a bit by adding another pin, and then they were literally back in business. It turns out the people liked the game a good bit better with one more pin, and it stuck.

A deep red "brick" building with the letters "S. Content" above its door caught my eye, especially with its big windows showing off the interior. Reading the plaque attached to its wall, I learned that it was originally built with rough rock and then had gaps filled in with stucco and flattened, then scored to look like brick, making it one of the most impressive buildings in town during the early days. In fact, the territorial government folk seemed to take a liking to it and ended up locating the entirety of the territorial government offices on the second story during the decade that Virginia City was the territorial capital (1865–1875). The lower level housed a grocer and clothing stores, with one of the later owners being Robert Vickers. In about 1926, Vickers grandson Bob Gohn, who'd lost his sight in a mining accident, opened a bar, grocery, and hardware store combination and ran it successfully for over five decades, well into his old age in the 1980's. Bob saw it all when Virginia City began to empty out and when Charles Bovey helped to make it alive again in the mid-twentieth century.

Reaching the eastern end of town now, I was solidly within the residential district, surrounded by intricately styled Victorian homes mostly built in the latter decades of the 19th century. Many of the homes still stood because of the fine craftsmanship valued by their owners, most of whom were earlier entrepreneurs in Virginia City. Names such as Thexton, Batten, Gohn, Rank, and Daems helped to provide early essentials like drug stores, blacksmithing services, and the local meat market. The homes reflected their owners in some aspects of their design, with each one being uniquely styled with intricate trims, different sizes of windows, and a varying array of features like wraparound porches or second-story balconies.

Pictured above is the C. W. Rank house. According to the Montana Historical Society, Charles Rank came to Montana on one of the first trains into Bozeman in 1883. He was a druggist by trade and headed to Virginia City to manage a small drugstore, later coming to own it outright after a number of years. In 1887, he married Ms. Elizabeth Hill, who originally hailed from Ireland. As time went on, the store grew to carry a wide array of products for many ailments, making Rank a prominent businessman in town. In 1898, the house was built, and Rank later went on to become a city councilman and mayor of Virginia City. The Ranks stuck around Virginia City their whole lives and celebrated their golden wedding anniversary in 1937 with other old friends left in the town. Charles passed away in 1939, and Elizabeth continued to run the store until her death in 1946.

Soon after exploring the last spots in town, I stopped at the tiny old 20's-style fuel station to top off and then got back on the road, knowing more snow may be on the way and that I still hadn't found a spot to camp for that evening. Locating a spot was easier said than done of course, given the scarcity of service around at that point to research beyond my downloaded maps. I intended to make it to Dillon via a dirt (now snow) route that went through a couple basins and around the Ruby Mountains. It was still early afternoon at that point, so I knew if I just kept moving, I could hopefully make it before dark. Heading out of town to the northwest, I soon made a turn to the southwest and back onto dirt on Brown Gulch Road.

Not soon after, I stumbled upon a couple old abandoned mine buildings along with a towering ore storage bin that stood a few stories tall on a barren hillside, which made up its own small gulch. It had big, wide loading chutes to unload into heavy-duty wagons at that spot on account of the rough country. Soon the road turned west into a winding path through the brushy, thick bottoms of the smaller basins between Virginia City and Dillon. I also saw some cabins and scattered herds of black angus cattle that were still grazing here and there through the snow before full winter froze it all solid. Continuing along and turning onto a new road southwest again along irrigated fields, I spotted some ranch buildings painted gray, not a color I'd seen much before. Most notably, there was a big beautiful barn with a steeple and spire fit for a grand old church, standing proud and tall out there among the bitter Montana winter.

With that barn rolling through the window over my shoulder, I knew it was the last best sight of the day—time to double down and make it to Dillon and into some semblance of service before I got pummeled with a foot or two of unexpected snow. I kept rolling along, through the gullies and basins, as the sky got darker and darker. As dusk began to set in, I entered some modern extraction territory and saw lights and mining rigs a short distance off the road, possibly for natural gas. I passed under a mining truck bridge over the forest road; it was definitely closer quarters than your average highway overpass. After squeezing through, I rolled on into Dillon without incident in the blustering slush, happy to be calling it a day and being able to clamber into bed for a good night's rest.

Sources:

Tilton, D. W., editor. “Great Fight Between John C.  Orem and Hugh O’Neil for $1,000 A Side, in Gold, and the Ring Money.” The Montana Post , 7 Jan. 1865, p. 1.

The Montana Historical Society

Eberle, Jeff. “Photo Blog: False Front Architecture the Trademark of the Old West.” Life...Death...Iron, 24 May 2023, lifedeathiron.com/2018/08/04/photo-blog-false-front- architecture-the-trademark-of-the-old-west/.

Whm. “Celebrating Sarah Gammon Bickford.” Women’s History Matters, 28 July 2020, montanawomenshistory.org/celebrating-sarah-gammon-bickford/.

The Montana Historical Foundation

Rollins, Gray. “One of the World’s First Sports.” History of Tenpin Bowling, www.topendsports.com/sport/tenpin/history.htm.

Thomas, Andy. Championship of the West: Boxing History.

“History of Alder Gulch.” Alder Gulch Area History - Explore Virginia City and Nevada City, MT, Montana.Gov, virginiacitymt.com/Preservation/Area-History#:~:text=Virginia%20City%20was%20designated%20as,settlements%20that%20lined%20the%20gulch.