Observations: Fergus County, a Miniature of west

              Observations of Fergus County: Miniature of the West [a paper written by C.B. Worthen]
By Frank Bryant
Skookum Joe Anderson, David Jones, Frank Sage and others in a party from Junction City,
Montana, came into what in now known as Maiden in the fallof X879. A severe early winter
storm drove them out. They returned to.lunction City and returned early in March, 1880. lt was
still bad, lots of snow when they came in. They came into Maiden by way of Virgin Gulch, over
the divide down Butcher Knife in Alpine and up Warm Spring and camped near the present
Wieglenda home. tn the fallof 1879 they had sunk a shaft to bed rock a short ways above the
present Wieglenda home and had found some gold, barely pay. Upon their return in March
1880 they didn't work on the placer long. Joe climbed the mountain and finding good croppings
put his can on what he called the Montana claim afterwards known as the Maginnis. (They put
their location notices in a can). That afternoon he worked his way around the mountain and
discovered the Spotted Horse claim. (The best in the mountains.) On his road home that
evening he found John Kemper working on his Montana claim. He told John that he had located
that claim in the morning. Kempers said he hadn't seen the notice, Joe told him to go ahead as
he had found something he liked better around the mountain.
A week later Joe found the Black Bull on a north slope of Virgin gulch, and two weeks later he
found the placer in Butcher Knife.
Skookum Joe and Dave Jones built an arrastra on the Spotted Horse and a short while later thru
McAdow and Dexter bought a five stamp mill. The foundation bolts for the stamp mill can still
be seen in the creek bed below the Spotted Horse dump.
The two partners began to quarrel and double cross one another and lost the property to
McAdow who didn't want it at all as he was crippled. He made two fortunes from the mine,
one under his own management or rather under the management of Mrs. McAdow who looked
after the work under ground and the operation of the mill. Later, the Jay Gould Mining Co. of
Helena bought the mine on a contract with a large payment down. They worked the property
a, short time and returned it to McAdow who later sold it again to capitalists from St. Paul.
Their descendants still own the property. Messer's Ames and Taylor of S. Paul are the present
owners.
The ore mined in the first years of operation was very rich. Norman Poland who worked in the
assay office said there was big wages in the rejects of samples brought to the assay office.
Harry Kendall made stake cyaniding the tailings accumulated on his ranch. Hunter and White
also made money from the tailings.
Coolidge and Bryant on a lease moiled 7 tons of ore off the wall of one stope that assayed 5700
a ton. ln another stope worked by these men, ore piled between two chutes assayed over
51000 a ton.
The above two men on their lease shipped 2000 tons of ore from which the smelter returns,