* The Acts of Congress organizing Territories and admitting States are milestones in the occupation of this last West. On the eve of the Civil War, Kansas was admitted into the Union; during the war, the Territories of Colorado, Nevada, Dakota, Arizona, Idaho, and Montana were organized, and Nevada was admitted as a State. Immediately after the war, Nebraska was admitted and Wyoming was organized as a Territory. In the Centennial Year (1876) Colorado became a State. In 1889 and 1890 North and South Dakota, Montana, Washington, Idaho, and Wyoming were admitted as States. In the latter year Oklahoma was carved out of the Indian Territory. Utah with its Mormon population was kept waiting at the doors of the Union until 1896. Oklahoma became a State in 1907; Arizona and New Mexico were admitted in 1912. In Montana as elsewhere in these days of great sectional bitterness, there was much political strife; and this no doubt accounts for an astonishing political event that now took place. Henry Plummer, the most active outlaw of his day, was elected sheriff and entrusted with the enforcement of the laws! He made indeed a great show of enforcing the laws. He married, settled down, and for a time was thought by some of the ill-advised to have reformed his ways, although in truth he could not have reformed. By June, 1863, the extraordinarily rich strike in Alder Gulch had been made. The news of this spread like wildfire to Bannack and to the Salmon River mines in Idaho as well, and the result was one of the fiercest of all the stampedes, and the rise, almost overnight, of Virginia City. Meanwhile some Indian fighting had taken place and in a pitched battle on the Bear River General Connor had beaten decisively the Bannack Indians, who for years had preyed on the emigrant trains. This made travel on the mountain trails safer than it had been; and the rich Last Chance Gulch on which the city of Helena now stands attracted a tremendous population almost at once. The historian above cited lived there. Let him tell of the life.