Hangman's Tree

Virginia City placers dwindled and many transferred their stores and shops to Helena to “mine the miners.” The settlement boomed. William Sprague, an early settler, recalled that there were one thousand people at Last Chance Gulch by May 1865 and, “There was a good deal of shooting and hanging. The shooting was most all done by the gamblers, other people having very little trouble.”  By summer, there were three thousand residents. John Keene committed the first murder on June 7, 1865, wh...