GOLD FEVER IN THE SOUTHERN BIG HORNS
Buffalo
While Sheridan prospered by mining the upstate New York investors, Buffalo grew it’s own crop of plungers to look for gold out across the southern Big Horns. From time to time, they were joined by a few Sheridanites who had gold-fever too.
In 1883, there was a brief rush to the Walker Prairie, but no one came away with any consequential amount of the gold. One local named Dan Wlker, left his bones up there as a result of a gun fight over various matters.
The year 1891 saw Joe DeBarthe, a Buffalo newsman, (editor of Frank Gruard Reminiscences) and what he thought was a strike at KelleyCreek. Just like his contemporaries in the Big Horns, DeBarthe was working a secondary placer below an exposure in that damable cement formation.
The BaldMountain excitement off to the north, combined with DeBarth’s discovery, set off a minor local rush to KelleyCreek that spread out over the southern part of the mountains. Sheridan outfits, too began to cast their eyes further south.
The Stockwell Brothers, who then own Beckton Stock Farms (but still has not completed the payments to George Beck) found an interesting looking igneous dike that cut across Stockwell Creek. They sunk most of the equity they had in the ranch, into it. When that played out, the elder brother committed suicide. A.G., the younger, looked for more backers and found them in the Wallops. At the turn of the century, they put in a small stamp mill on Stockwell Creek but made nothing out of it, and A.G. quit mining , to become one of the best of that fine early crop of the BigHornForest Reserve. He ultimately became its Deputy Supervisor, but that is another whole story.
W.H. Edlman, promonent Sheridan businessman, back some prospectors who turn up color on Edelman Creek, deep in the central part of the mountains,. W.H. then financed the building of cabins and kept quite a crew of men busy in 1896-97 trying to develop these prospects.
Edelman was one of the most persistent stayers in the area, for he was doing more work there as late as the year’s just before World War I.
Down in Buffalo, the results of gold fever were spreading through the business community. As we said earlier in the series, the allotment behaves in a strange and powerful ways. In Bufffalo, some unlikely-seeming individuals caught it.
They included banker, W.J. Thom, merchant, GA. E. Moeller, cattleman F.G.S. Hesse and others. People who wouldn’t lend a nickel on a range-bull that wasn’t up to grade but would bet on any show of color that someone brought off the mountains.
There was one rush to the KelleyCreek country in the mid 1890’s, another in 1906-07, and yet another in 1913. Newspapers puffed the 1906 period finds, but the state geologist who visited them said they visited then say they “didn’t warrant going to very much expense.” N.H. Darton of the U.S. Geoglogical Survey found a little three stamp mill pounding away there but thought it was wasting its time on the cement.
Altogether, more than a dozen mining companies were formed in Buffalo at the peak of the excitement. Some of them turn to the search for other metals, and are part of another story.
Buffalo had its own more-or-less home-grown promoters, too. One was Roy Peck, who stuck with the gold rushes persistently but eventually made his money in the Salt Creek Oil Fields.
Another was much more colorful. This was Frank Sparhawk, a genuine old frontiersman, who by the early 1990”s was a real-estate agent in Buffalo. He was a literate man and wrote and soke in glowing terms of the money to be made in the Big Horns. He was doubless a cool customer when dealing with investor, for he was well known for his alertness and fast responses. One time in the 1880’sFrank, better known as Sparrowhawk” was running the stage station at Crook’s Gap, out northwest of Rawlins.
A column of black cavarymen of the 9th or 10th Regiment came through on the way to FortWashakie. The senior sergeant major of the outfit stomped into the station in a rattle of spurs and saber, his brass buttons sparkling in the dim light. He said to Sparahawk: “Give me some coffee, black as the Devil and hot as Hell and stirred with a pistol.”
Sparhawk poured the coffee from the ever ready pot on the stove, whipped out his Cold and stirred it vigorously and then looked up at the sergeant and asked “Would you like some smoke in it, too, sir?”
So it is not too surprising that Sparhawk helped turn the interest of the Buffalo Crowd from gold to copper early in the new century.
Country Journal, 10/27/, P. 27, Home Grown Plungers, Bob Murray. Vertical files Sheridan County Library, Sheridan, WY.
GENEALOGY TRAILS AND HISTORY GROUP.
Home of FREE GENEALOGY.We would like to help you find, preserve and remember your ancestors and record the role they played in creating this great state of Wyoming. My name is Jo Ann Boyd Scott. I grew up on a ranch in southern Montana and went to high school in Sheridan, WY. I do lookups, e-mail me. Because we are a new website, we are looking for county hosts. If you would be interested in volunteering, please visit our Volunteer Information Page and get in touch with Kim. Enough html knowledge to build a basic webpage is required, along with a desire to transcribe data. I will help you get started or help me as a co-host on any county but Sheridan. Subscribe to mailing list.This site is continually growing, check back
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JOHNSON COUNTY, WYOMING