Last Chance Gulch Grows Up!

Unlike most mining towns in Montana, Last Chance Gulch didn't disappear when the gold ran out.  What made the difference? Last Chance Gulch had a good location for agriculture, a good location to other mining towns, and eventually, good locations to major transportation routes.

There are several legends on how Last Chance Gulch became the city of Helena...by the 1870s it was a resort town for cowhands, gamblers, cattle barons and highway men.  In fact, it boasted a red light district that was in business until reform finally shut it down in 1953.

Last Chance Gulch is said to have only had 3 women living in it when it was named, so the fact that it was named for a women seems to have several stories attached.  One has John Sommerville, who lived near the head of Nelson Gulch 6 miles away, chairman of a meeting held by dissatisfied citizens on Oct 30, 1864.  These men wanted to change the town's name, authorize the layout of the streets and elect commissioners.

The first suggestion was "Tomah," a word the committee thought had connections to the local Indian people of the area. Other nominations included Pumpkinville and Squashtown (as the meeting was held the day before Halloween), but Sommerville, who was a lawyer in the business of prosecuting gold crimes in the area, proposed that the name be Helena (and set the pronunciation of it as Hel-EE-na) because of the classic Greek reference, meaning "far from the interior".  It seems Mr Sommerville was quite knowledgeable in Classic Greek and wanted it known.  Obviously classic Greek had little to do with this frontier mining town.

Another legend says that a small town in Minnesota named Helena was the original home of many of these dissatisfied citizens  and they just wanted a taste of home. This immediately caused an uproar from the former Confederates in the room who insisted upon the pronunciation HELena, after a town in Arkansas on the Mississippi River. While the name won, the pronunciation varied until approximately 1882.

The third story is that there was a kind and very popular resident name Mrs. Goldberg, who came from Virginia City and brought most of that town's Jewish population with her to vote  to name the town after her, as her first name was of,  course, was Helena.

Which one of these legends is true? Depends on who you talk to, but the end result was that Last Chance Gulch was officially changed to Helena, Montana  and became the capital of the territory in 1875, and then the state of Montana in 1889.

Montana's Early Days

Anxious to create new free territory during the Civil War, President Lincoln established the Montana Territory in 1864.  Montana was then "unstable" frontier. The first governor, Sidney Edgerton actually fled the state after months of Indian raids, including the Sioux, Shoshone, Arapaho, Cheyenne, Flathead and the Blackfoot.

Until the 1850s the settling of Montana was sparse. It wasn't until 1862, when a small amount of gold was discovered at Grasshopper Creek and the first Anglo settlement was born, almost 20 years after most of the West and Northwest. In 1864, the discovery of gold in Last Chance Gulch brought prospectors to Montana and qualified it for territorial status.  It wasn't until 25 years later that it qualified for statehood.

On July 14, 1864 four prospectors (called the 4 Georgians - John Cowan, D. J. Miller, John Crab, and Reginald  Stanley).spotted signs of gold in a gulch off the Prickly Pear valley (modern day Helena).  They were eager to reach what they thought were richer gold finds farther to the north and so passed it by.  After striking out in the Kootenal area, they decided to take one "last chance" on finding gold and returned to the Helena area.  When they found a rich deposit there  on July 1864, they marked their claims and named the new mining town "Last Chance Gulch".

Last Chance Gulch proved to be the 2nd biggest placer gold deposit in Montana, producing some $19 million worth of gold in just 4 years.  Thousands of miners came, and the four original prospectors added to their fortunes by establishing the town as a place for food, lodging and supplies. The city's main street is named Last Chance Gulch and lies close to the winding path of the original gulch.

Unlike many of the mining towns, however, Last Chance Gulch did not disappear when the gold gave out....
Next time...Last Chance Gulch grows up!

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