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,Suzanne Coker suggests that the "Four Georgians" were: John Cowan, his nephew Frank Cowan, Henry Rusk, and Bill Palmer, all of whom were from Georgia. This group of young men left Georgia in 1859 with the older man, John Cowan, as their leader. They travelled around the west for five years with no luck and had decided they must give up their search after one more try. They cam upon a likely place for gold, which Cowan named "Last Chance Gulch," as they would return home if they did not find gold there. In family lore and in several histories, John Cowan is indeed credited with finding the first gold, in July 1864. They then built the first cabin in what was to become Helena and mined until 1867, when they all started home. She refers to a news article in an Acworth, Georgia newspaper from 1975 but does not refer to a specific date.
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.