Distinctly Montana Magazine

72 D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A M A G A Z I N E • FA L L 2 0 2 6 ready for assembly. A tremendous line of wagons waiting to cross helped. Then came the rope pulley system. After a few test crossings, Bruffey and company ferried one hundred wag- ons every 24 hours for the next several days. But Crawford hired a ferryman, green to the job, who fouled the ropes. He sent the boat barreling over broadside. It crashed on a bank miles away. An Irishman, one of four tossed into the abyss, narrowly swam to shore. He said, "Well, boys, I gave myself up to God, but He sent me back. Have you got any whiskey?" With the help of twenty oxen, the boat returned to its station. Once repaired, the toll business resumed on the Jefferson. In 1867, after working on a construction crew for a Butte stamp mill, Bruffey finally had the means. He assembled his team to dig again. Of the hundreds of gold camps now in the Montana Territo- ry, he first tried those near Deer Lodge. ("We found gold in all of those creeks but nothing permanent.") Then he went to Cable, now long abandoned, in present-day Granite County. ("It yielded much gold but small profits.") Finally, he mined in camps near Butte like Rocker and Silver Bow. ("In June the ground paid but little more than expenses and July was poor.") Like many whites in the West, Bruffey and crew sold their claim to Chinese miners when it stopped paying. According to historian Michael Malone, the 1870 Butte census listed 98 Chi- nese among the 241 population—an indication that the Silver Bow Creek gold boom was going bust. Chinese miners had fol- lowed gold rushes since California. The law forbade them from staking any claims other than those whites had first deemed worked-over. Malone notes that, at one time, Chinese miners predominated in Rocker, which they knew as Foochow. Bruffey wanted to keep mining, but on his first Christmas visit home in nearly a decade, he married his childhood sweetheart Matilda. He brought her back to Fish Creek near present-day Whitehall. They started a family. This necessitated steadier work. He first drove wagons of Jefferson Valley cheese to the Butte-area gold camps. From there, his merchandising grew into a storefront on his Fish Creek ranch. The stage station and post office came to his property. He served as Fish Creek's postmaster and built a blacksmith shop. He sold Buckeye ag- ricultural mowers, hardware, clothing, food, hides, pelts, ores, harnesses, saddles, toys, wagons, and buggies. Wisely, "I sold no whiskey, allowed no card playing." Bruffey's name and Fish Creek grew inseparable. "The little burg looks pleasing," wrote a visiting Butte journalist, "and George presides over it with the dignity and bearing of a duke. His store, too, is the centre of attraction…." The 1870s and '80s brought industrialization, urbanization, and railways. These factors changed Montana Territory con- sumerism. Butte or Helena stores, like Sands Brothers, Raleigh

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