In 1849, gold was found in Kansas by a party of Georgians bound for California. The mountains of Colorado proved more attractive than the plains of Kansas, therefore the early days little prospecting was done within the state. Attention was first called to the occurrence of gold in central western Kansas in 1895, when H.H. Artz and others sunk a shaft on the bank of the Smoky Hill River while prospecting for zinc. The report that the shales at this and other points in Gove, Trego and Ellis counties, contained gold, caused quite a flurry of excitement in the state and although the price of land rose somewhat, ther was no rush to the locality.
In 1902, J.T Lovewell of Topeka, indicated the presence of gold and silver on several samples. The same year Ernest Fahrig of Philadephia from the Kansas Daily Capital obtained from mill runs in a small plant some values of gold. In some shale zones were taken samples and the presence of gold was low (e.g. 0.5-1 g/t of gold) and the silver content reported 2 to 3 g/t. aside from the finding of gold in glacial drift and was from the mountains on the west. Both gold and silver were found in small quantities in the shales of the Benton group of Cretaceous in the western portion of the state.