The Sweet Grass Hills

Location: East of Chester

You can see the Sweet Grass Hills or the Three Buttes to the north of here on a reasonably clear day. The Indians used them as watch towers from which they could locate buffalo herds. Things sure grow in this country. Some old-timers claim that when they arrived those buttes weren’t much bigger than prairie dog mounds.

In 1884 a Blackfoot Indian found gold in them thar hills and the usual stampede followed. The middle peak is called Gold Butte. It was claimed that the placer ground in Two Bits Gulch produced twenty-five cents in colors for every shovel full of gravel.

The pay dirt has been pretty well worked out and the glamour of boom days is gone, but a few old-timers still prospect the gulches, hoping some day to find that elusive pot of gold at the rainbow’s end, called the Mother Lode.