SHALLOW DIGGIN'S

by Jean- Ed. Davis ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 15, 1962

Gold is where you find it"", so this excellent compilation of contemporary newspaper accounts of the rise and fall of Montana gold camps applies also to a large extent to the history of similar ghost-towns in California and Colorado. Not all the ghost-towns in this book, however, were founded on gold. Here also are lost railway settlements and the faded dreams of mighty cities, but the emphasis is on gold and gold camps, from the early 1860's to the 1900's. The pattern of these camps was much the same throughout the West; the first discovery of pay-dirt; the rush of prospectors; the growth of a settlement into a ""city"" with saloons, outlaws, ""hotels"", Committees on Law and Order, business-houses, newspapers; the final decline. The Montana story varies little: Deer Lodge and Virginia City, which in its first year yielded $30,000,000; Maiden and Gill Edge and , and many others, lived and died, or nearly died. However, not all the towns have vanished, are all the hopes of riches dead; many early mines are still worked today, ""Last Chance "" is now the main business street of Helena, the state capital, is far from dead. Less well written than Willi similar Here They Dug the and by its subject far more limited in scope than the contemporary flavor of this book brings to life the days of the great Montana strikes and is an excellent source book on Western camps in general. Armchair prospectors in parts of America than Montana should relish it.

Pub Date: May 15, 1962

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Caxton Printers

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1962

Categories: NONFICTION