My granpa, Earl McConnell, was a philosopher, prospector and proud to be the first to run on the Socialist "ticket" in Yellowstone county Montana. He died on his gold claim on the banks of the Yellowstone river, near Gardiner, MT, in 1977. He was interviewed by Charles Kuralt in the tv series "On the Road". Years later, when Kuralt was asked who he remembered most from the series, he named two old men, one my grandpa McConnell. When I did a google search to find something about him, the first page that came up was a "Political Graveyard" index to politicians.
McConnell, Earl — of Montana. Socialist. Candidate for U.S. Representative from Montana 2nd District, 1942.
Google also came up with a link to ordering the Charles Kuralt video of my grandpa.
http://openweb.tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/1973-8/1973-08-09-CBS-20.html
When asked what would happen if he died on his claim, he said he would just go up to the meeting of the positive and the negative in the sky.

I remember visiting him with my parents when I was a kid. We would drive down and camp on the claim, fish for the big trout in the Yellowstone. I would find flint and obsidian flakes in the sand and garnets among the "concentrate" he would pan from the river. The last time I saw him, I was in college and went to visit with a friend who was from Gardiner. We found him trying to keep some kittens warm that had been born that night. They died from the cold. He had an old cookstove in his shack that he used for heat, my uncles taking coal to him. He would not move from his place. It was crude living, but he felt free there.

After he died, my parents had to remove all the implements, his shack, outhouse, the garden fenced by old bed springs, the very old Ford truck. It was Forest Service land that he had filed a claim on and lived on. When everything was removed, they named the location "McConnell River Access". They put up a highway sign by his dirt track that wound down to the river and people use the spot for putting in boats for rafting.

When I saw him last, he told me he would sing an old Lake Michigan song to the rafters who would come there to put boats in. He was a folk singer and musician. He played fiddle.... I still own his violin. My grandmother would play guitar and he would play fiddle and they would sing and call dances in their younger days. My grandmother's name was Maggie. He was fond of singing When You and I were Young Maggie. His claim was called the Maggie and Me. I didn't know that until after he died. I was walking down along the river among the cedar trees and found an old tin can that he had flattened, nailed to a tree and punched with a nail to spell Maggie and Me claim.

Alice