In May, the Helena City Commission and Helena Public Art Committee hired Perpignano, a local artist, to paint a new mural inside a Centennial Trail tunnel.
Editor s note
This story is the second in a three-part series about the discovery of gold in Helena. Next Monday: Why they were called the Four Georgians.
Paul Cartwright
In the summer of 1864, a band of prospectors later known as the Four Georgians discovered gold in Last Chance Gulch. Even before that discovery, miners and settlers were traveling the roads and trails of the Helena Valley.
Earlier that year, in the spring, William Gillette had built his road from Virginia City to Fort Benton, guided by Native American trails. Gilletteâs road crossed the Helena Valley, coming from over the Boulder Hill, running along the Montana Avenue/Green Meadow corridor, and going over to the Mullan Road north of Silver City. (The Mullan Road ran from Fort Benton to Walla Walla, Washington.) Cargo coming upriver from St. Louis bound for Montana mining camps would have been shifting to this new route about the time the Four Georgians appeared.
Editor s note
This story is the first in a three-part series about the discovery of gold in Helena. Next Monday: The way to Last Chance Gulch.
Paul Cartwright
Gold was discovered in Last Chance Gulch by Reginald Stanley âon or about the 15th of July,â 1864. Stanley, along with his partners John Cowan, D.J. Miller, and John Crabb, would later be known as the Four Georgians.
In Stanleyâs own words, â⦠while my partners dug some holes near the mouth of the Gulch ⦠I made my way up stream looking for a promising bar on which to put down a hole likely to have bedrock. ⦠I commenced a hole on a bar the opposite side of the gulch from where the first National Bank was afterwards erected; and put it down to bedrockâ¦.â