Four Georgians

The Four Georgians were a group of gold prospectors that are traditionally credited for discovering the Last Chance placer gold strike of Helena, Montana. They were John Cowan, D. J. Miller, John Crab, and Reginald (Robert) Stanley. Of the four, the only actual Georgian was Cowan, who hailed from Acworth, Georgia. The other three came from Alabama (Miller), Iowa (Crab) and England (Stanley). It has been speculated that they were named "Georgians" not from where they came from, but because they were practicing the "Georgian method" of placer mining.

In 1864, they left the Alder Gulch area of Virginia City, Montana Territory, heading north toward the Kootenai River country to pursue rumored prospects there. En route, they heard that the Kootenai prospects had played out, and instead decided to prospect the Little Blackfoot River. They crossed the Continental Divide to the Prickly Pear Creek drainage, still finding only minimal signs of gold at best. Noting a small creek in the Prickly Pear Valley with the best prospects so far, they again moved north to explore the Marias River. Still finding little gold after six weeks of hard work, they returned south to the place they referred to as Last Chance Gulch, since it would be their final opportunity on a long, arduous prospecting trip. They were prepared to give up on the whole area.

On July 14, 1864, they dug two prospect pits on Last Chance Gulch upstream from their earlier efforts. Both pits revealed flat gold nuggets and gold dust. All their efforts had finally paid off. Eventually, Crab and Cowan were sent back to Virginia City for more supplies, other prospectors began appearing, and the Last Chance Gulch bonanza began.

A Georgian genealogist named Suzanne suggests instead that the "Four Georgians" were: John Cowan, his nephew Frank Cowan, Henry Rusk, and Bill Palmer. She claims that these four are indeed all Georgians, knew each other, and mined gold in Montana. She refers to a news article in an Acworth, Georgia newspaper from 1975 but does not refer to a specific date. No other sources have substantiated this story.

In 1867, the Four Georgians finally sold out their claims and took $40,000 of gold dust by wagon to Fort Benton, MT to board a steam boat down the Missouri River and eventually all the way to the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia where they cashed in three years of hard labor in the Montana gold fields.

Reginald Stanley's accounts of his discovery of gold in Last Chance Gulch can be found in the archives of the Montana Historical Society in Helena, MT as Small Collection 781, Reginald Stanley papers.