John Cowan (top left) went west in the late 1850’s to seek his fortune in Montana’s Black Hills. This famous picture shows the “FOUR GEORGIANS”, who are credited with founding Helena, Montana, and striking gold at the mine they called the “Last Chance Gulch”. After their discovery, John Cowan returned home to Acworth and built the old mill, circa 1870, in order to manufacture flour with friend Tarlton Moore.

John Cowan (top left) went west in the late 1850’s to seek his fortune in Montana’s Black Hills. This famous picture shows the “FOUR GEORGIANS”, who are credited with founding Helena, Montana, and striking gold at the mine they called the “Last Chance Gulch”. After their discovery, John Cowan returned home to Acworth and built the old mill, circa 1870, in order to manufacture flour with friend Tarlton Moore.
This three-story mill originally made very high quality flour called “Lynette Flour”. Through the generations this mill manufactured flour, textiles and tapestries. The mill ceased operations when it mysteriously burned in 1992.
As the story goes, John Cowan, who was in his 30’s, left his hometown of Acworth and traveled to the Black Hills of Montana with his two nephews, Frank & Tom Cowan, friends John Boring, Bill Palmer, and Henry Rusk from neighboring Forsyth County. Together they traveled the wilderness looking for gold while they battled Indians, wild animals, weather and other gold-seeking competitors. After many months of prospecting, with nothing to show for all their work, John Boring and Tom Cowan headed home. Indians killed John Boring, so only Tom Cowan made it home, with John Cowan, Frank Cowan, Bill Palmer and Henry Rusk left behind, thus their name, “The Four Georgians”.
John Cowan and his band of prospectors spent the next several years looking for gold in the Black Hills. In the spring of 1864 they reached a tributary of the Missouri River in Montana where a tired and very disheartened John Cowan told his men, “Boys, this gulch is our last chance,” and on that very day they found a $20 nugget of gold. They were overcome by their crazed emotions, driven by their pursuit for gold, and some very bad Indians who chased them away from their digging.
In a few days when they felt it was safe, they returned to the site and prospected there for the next three years. The “Last Chance Gulch” became one of the largest gold discoveries in the history of the United States. All four men returned to the Acworth area. Frank Cowan married and named his daughter Helena; Bill Palmer married and lived in Cherokee County, while Henry Rusk returned to Forsyth County, married and had seven children. John Cowan returned to Acworth a very wealthy man and built the “Old Mill”. He never married, but he became a much respected businessman in the community of Acworth.