On December 19, 1863, Nevada City’s main
street was the setting for the miners’ court trial of George
Ives who brutally murdered a popular Dutch man named Nicholas Tibalt. The trial, which lasted three days and was attended
by as many as 2,000 area residents, finally found that Ives
had shot Tibalt before stealing his gold and several mules. After the miner’s jury found Ives guilty, proceedings
immediately began to hang him. Within no time, a 40-foot pole
was run through the window of an unfinished house nearby and a
rope fastened to its end. Just 58 minutes after his
conviction, Ive’s life ended on December 21, 1863.
This first trial,
conviction, and execution would become the catalyst for
forming the infamous
Montana Vigilantes. Within the next month, some 24 men found guilty by
the vigilantes would also be hanged in the area.
Nevada City
quickly peaked, boasting dozens of businesses and cabins.
However, by 1869, the population of the mining camp had
already fallen to about 100 people, but still sported three
general stores, two saloons, a blacksmith, butcher shop,
livery stable, brewery and a Masonic Hall. However by 1876,
Nevada City had all but become a ghost town as the miners
moved on to new finds.
It is estimated that in the first five years of
Alder Gulch’s heydays, some 30-40 million dollars in gold were
taken from the district. Although small mining operations
continued to work the original claims for several years, no
large operations occurred again until 1896, when the Conrey
Placer Mining Company was organized to dredge the gulch.
Dredges went to work in 1899, and continued for the next 24
years, processing more than 37 million cubic yards of ground
along seven miles of Alder Gulch. By the times the dredges
ceased to operate in 1923, some ten million dollars in gold
had been recovered and in their path, many of Nevada City’s
buildings destroyed. The dredges were then disassembled, the
equipment sold for salvage and the heavy wooden barges were
left to slowly be reclaimed by Mother Nature. Other original
Nevada City buildings were destroyed when the highway was
built through the area.
However, a few of the original buildings of the last residents
in Nevada City – Cora and Alfred Finney, were saved. Later,
in the 1950’s, in came a man named Charles and Sue Bovey who
had been "collecting” old Montana buildings since the 1940s.
Many of these buildings were first displayed at the Great
Falls fairgrounds in an exhibit known as "Old Town.”
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