Archives West Finding Aid

Richard D. Cotter was born in Ireland on September 17, 1842. Cotter worked as a packer for the Whitney surveying party to California from 1860 to 1864. He ascended Mount Tyndall and discovered Mount Whitney. Mount Cotter is named for him. It is possible that he originally came to Montana as a soldier at Fort Shaw prior to 1870, but he was certainly in New York Gulch by April of that year. New York Gulch was a mining camp in the Trout Creek mining district of Meagher County, Montana. The town site was established around 1866 and from then until 1869 the camp was in its heyday with thousands working placer claims in the area. The quartz deposits proved less profitable as time went on and by 1880 the number of inhabitants was forty-nine. In 1874 the camp boasted a social dancing club with its own meeting hall. One of the members of the club was Richard Cotter. In 1875 he left New York Guch and travelled to Washington Territory. By 1880 he was back placer mining in Cooper Gulch in Meagher County. For many years he lived in York, Montana. Cotter spent the last eight years of his life in the county hospital in Helena, where he died March 12, 1927.