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(Anaconda Standard, March 24, 1894)
Everyone who was in Butte in 1864 and 1865 is invited to meet at the office of the Coroner Porter in the rooms of the Butte Undertaking company to participate in the establishment of an Oldtime club, Wednesday Mary 28 at 2: p.m. is the time set. The club will consist of men who settled in what is now Silver Bow county when the district was a holwling wilderness. There is a long list of eligibles. the list includes three women--Mrs. Talbot, Mrs. Plizabether Poarter and Mres Barnard.
Not one of the three men who discovered quartz on the Butte hill is alive today. William Allison and Ollie Humphrey came here early in the spring of 1864. they found only one quartz location, the Bullion, and the original was afterwards located over it. The location notice (on the Bullion) bore the name of Bud parker but no trace of him could be found. It is bleieved he left during the winter of 1863-1864.
Humphrey and Allison took out some copper ore, which they areeied with them back to Virginia City and ran the copper out of a blacksmith’s forge.
George Newkirk, Dennis Leary and Henry Poerter head of this. They made inquiries but Allison and Humphrey would not talk. So Leary and his part set a watch on them and followed them back to Butte.
Starting one dark night they--Newkiri, Leary and Porter--took the old Deer Lodge Road to Miles ranch where they turned off for Butte.
They found Hunphrey and allison camped near the spot where the quartz fire station now stands.
Then they all joined up. Porter is dead, Leary is in Omaha. Newkirk and Tom Porter whom came Oct. 10, 1864, were the next arrivals. They were from Alder Gulch. Shortly after their coming the placer excitement broke out and hundreds flocked in.....Enos Sheldon claims to have been the first discovered of the geysers in what is now known as Yellowstone Partk. He went out hunting from Bannack. His party, the steam rising from the glaciers and thought it was from a huge indian camp. They crawled to the top of a hill and discovered the source of the steam. When Sheldon returned to Bannack and told of his discovery, he was laughted at. Untill his story was substantieated years leter he was known as the “the d----dest liar in the west.” (article provided by Janis Fulmer, article transcribed by Jo Ann Scott)
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