September 12, 2009
Spruce Tree House, one of the larger cliff ruins of Mesa Verde, Colorado, so called from a large spruce which grew on top of the ruins. This dwelling occupies a cave about two hundred and seventy feet broad and ninety feet deep. There is a limited supply of spring water in this district, and on this account tourists make their headquarters near by.
Another of the most important of the Mesa Verde ruins is that of the Spruce Tree House. This occupies a small canyon named ”Spruce Tree Canyon,” and was discovered by Richard Wetherill on the same day that he discovered the Cliff Palace. The name was given to this dwelling by Wetherill because of the great spruce tree which jutted out from the ruins. The valley or canyon itself is the home of a whole forest of spruce trees.
It is possible that this ruin contained, when completed, in the neighborhood of a hundred rooms; there is every indication that all the rooms were not built at once, but that a few were first built and that these were added to as the occasion demanded.
The Cliff Dwellers of the Southwest
The Pacific Monthly
May 1906
Information Links:
National Park Service – Mesa Verde National Park, Spruce Tree House, Self-Guided Trails
Wikipedia – Mesa Verde National Park
Wikitravel – Mesa Verde National Park
Skinner’s Saloon – Originally built on Yankee Flats, Cyrus Skinner moved this building to Bannack’s main street in the spring of 1863. It became the popular gathering place for Sherriff Henry Plummer’s gang of road agents. Skinner had left Bannack before the hanging of Plummer, but he was tracked down to a mining camp near present day Missoula and hanged for his purported role as a spy for the Plummer gang. The building was later used for many years as a store.
Miscellaneous Bannack images:
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Bannack, Montana was founded in 1862 after a major gold discovery. It served as the capital of Montana Territory briefly during the civil war. The last residents left in the 1970s.
“Images from Bannack” are from July 30, 2010, our third visit to Bannack.
Built in 1875 for $14,000 as the Beaverhead County Courthouse, this building was the first brick courthouse in Montana. Prior to its construction, two nearby log cabins served as the chambers for the first territorial legislature when they met here in 1864.
In 1880, the Utah and Northern Railroad established a terminus in Dillon. Stock raising and agriculture were displacing mining as the main industries in Beaverhead County, with mining declining as was Bannack, while Dillon was evolving into a bustling freighting center. Dillon residents petitioned the territorial legislature who called a special election to determine the county seat. By a vote of 665 to 495, Dillon was chosen as the county seat in February, 1881.
The photo below was taken by photographer John Vachon in April, 1942.
The building remained empty until about 1890 when it was purchased by Dr. John Singleton Meade fo $1,250. Dr. Meade remodeled the building into a plush hotel. It became the center of Bannack and temporary home of many travelers. A large kitchen, dining room, and living quarters were added to the back of the building. Hotel Meade operated off and on until the 1940s.
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Bannack, Montana was founded in 1862 after a major gold discovery. It served as the capital of Montana Territory briefly during the civil war. The last residents left in the 1970s.
“Images from Bannack” are from July 30, 2010, our third visit to Bannack.
Masonic Lodge and School House
The first schools in Bannack were subscription schools – essentially private schools with parents paying tuition for their children to attend.
In 1874, Bannack Masonic Lodge No. 16 built a combination lodge and school building. The school was a public school serving students in K through 8th grade. It finally closed in the 1950s. The school was on the bottom floor and the lodge on the second.
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Bannack, Montana was founded in 1862 after a major gold discovery. It served as the capital of Montana Territory briefly during the civil war. The last residents left in the 1970s.
“Images from Bannack” are from July 30, 2010, our third visit to Bannack.
Searching a hillside across the Yankee Fork, three prospectors stumbled upon what would become the most famous mine on the Yankee Fork. Named after the popular military general, George Armstrong Custer, the General Custer Mine was a rich vein of ore, exposed by a snowslide. The discovery of the Custer Mine in 1876 transformed this small mining camp into a lively community and the site of the region’s most significant mining activity.
Founded in 1879, Custer flourished and what began as a tent community rapidly became a town of over 100 building lining both sides of it’s narrow main street. For 30 years, Custer experienced frenzied activity and growth as well as periods of uncertainty and decline until its final bust in 1911.
Charles Alexander Pfeiffer purchased this family home after his marriage to Ellen Louise Olson in 1890. Charles managed the Pfeiffer Store for his uncle and later worked as a gold and cleanup man at the General Custer Mill. As the family increased in size, a kitchen and bedroom were added to the family home. The roof shingles are made of flattened cans. Families in Custer were not an oddity, but certainly weren’t the norm either, as most miners and the supporting merchants were single men.
I am returning to “working” through the images from our summer trip.
The Yankee Fork gold dredge is one of the mining attractions along Idaho’s Yankee Fork River, between Bonanza City and Custer. When we first visited the area in the 1970s, it was a closed relic. Today, it has been restored to the point that tours are available for those who are interested.
Beginning in 1872, the valley floor of the Yankee Fork River was hand placered in the search for gold. Years later, tests showed that gold still remained in the deep gravels of the stream bed. In 1939, a gold dredge was purchased by the Snake River Mining Company and hauled to the Yankee Fork for assembly. Before it was shutdown in 1952, the dredge recovered more than $1,200,000 in gold from about 6,000,000 cubic yards of gravel.
Today, the dredge still sits where it stopped operation after all of the claims owned by the company had been dredged. The path taken by the dredge up the stream bed left large piles of gravel on which little grows. In a satellite image showing the dredge, the piles form rows where the dredge’s stacker belt deposited the gravel after processing.
In operation, small particles of gold and silver from naturally disintegrated ore were scooped up by the bucketline (see image on left for scale).
The dredge has a chain of 71 buckets, each wighing just over a ton. Each pin holding the chain together weighs 195 lbs. The bucket mechanism can be raised and lowered and moved left and right. It can dig 37 feet deep.
Most of the online work that I have been doing lately has been associated with my civil war blog, adding entries that will be posted at some point in the future. The following is cross-posted from that blog.
Introduction to some of the letter, journal and diary writers from 1860 and 1861 who will appear on the pages of Daily Observations from The Civil War.
A major part of my approach to the war is to present observations made in letters, journals, and diaries by people living the war and its impacts. My hope is that this will often result in our being able to “see” the progress of events from a variety of perspectives.
In most instances, I will be including all of what was included in the published versions of their writings, no matter how mundane. Some will have entries for almost every day while, with others, there will be long lapses without writing.
I have a large number of posts already scheduled for future publication in “Daily Observations from The Civil War,” including material from the following writers:
Dora Richards Miller, "War Diary of a Union Woman in the South"
Mary Boykin Chesnut, "A Diary From Dixie"
Lincoln Administration Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Wells, "Diary of Gideon Welles"
Susan Bradford Eppes, "Through Some Eventful Years"
Horatio King, Postmaster General at the end of the Buchanan administration
Catherine Cowles Richards, "Village Life in America 1852 - 1872"
The Woolseys of New York, "Letters of a Family During the War for the Union"
DNC Chairman August Belmont, "A Few Letters and Speeches of the Late Civil War"
John Beuchamp Jones, "A Rebel War Clerk's Diaray at the Confederate States Capital." (Image is from 1845 political cartoon)
