In December 1869, the miners struck gold at Cedar Creek and a stampede ensued. As early as 1875, four towns had been built and abandoned as miners exhausted the placer mining in the area and moved on to other claims. But some prospectors stayed. Larger investors also moved into Cedar Creek. Small sluices gave way to hydraulic giants—massive hoses with powerful pumps that could wash entire hillsides down into flumes. Alphonse and Treffle Lacasse, along with their cousin Tom Asselin, came to Cedar Creek in the 1890s and shipped in heavy equipment via the new train depot at Iron Mountain. In the summers, their claim did well enough to support a crew of 50 laborers, and in 1906 a portion of the claim sold for $200,000 to out-of-state investors. In addition to gold, the gulches on and around Cedar Creek yielded rich deposits of quartz, barite, silver, copper, zinc, and lead.

Though silver and copper attracted new investors in the first decades of the twentieth century, during the 1930s it was gold that drew prospectors back to Cedar Creek. Rumors of rich veins persisted, and with the rising price of gold—and the loss of other jobs due to the Great Depression—many looked once more to the gulches. The Gildersleeve family had mined claims in the area for years, but in the 1930s they constructed several buildings for use as a seasonal camp. For decades they made just enough to pay for the cost of mining, supplies, and groceries to feed the family through the long winter months when no mining could be done.

Despite the booms and busts of nearly 100 years of mining, the prospectors remain. The Gildersleeves still own and occupy their claim. The Lacasse descendants own theirs as well. The same qualities of hardiness and optimism characterize residents of the area. “No matter what,” George Gildersleeve once said, “things up here don’t ever change much.”

Credits and Sources:

Step Back In Time: Mountain Memories Flow at Family Mining Camp High in the Bitterroots.” Missoulian,June 20, 2015.

Davis, Deb. Along the Mullan Trail.Publisher unknown, date unknown.

Davis-Quitt, Deb. Gumboot Gamblers: Tales of the Cedar Creek Gold Rush.Seeley Lake, MT: Deb Davis-Quitt, 1987.

Hahn, Margie E. Montana’s Mineral County in Retrospect.Stevensville, MT: Stoneydale Press Publishing Company, 1997.

Malone, Michael P., et al. Montana: A History of Two Centuries.Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1991.

National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form: Gildersleeve Mine. United States Department of the Interior, 2002.

Historic photographs of “Hydraulic Giant,” “Working Below the Gate,” “Amador Town Site,” “Flat Creek 1917,” and “Treffle LaCasse” courtesy of Mineral County Historical Museum, Superior, MT.

Contemporary photograph of Amador town site courtesy of Mineral County Historical Museum, Superior, MT.