Helena, Montana, began in 1864 as a chaotic gold camp, with the crooked path of Last Chance Gulch weaving between original mining claims. Within a year of the placer gold discovery, a boomtown flourished, with homes and businesses in tents and log cabins, while fire remained a constant threat and regular scourge. After the downtown burned in 1869, brick and granite business houses replaced it over the next few years. Helena survived after the placer gold played out and population declined because pioneer entrepreneurs had made it a financial center. It took the territorial capital from declining Virginia City in 1874, and in 1875 received one of the nation’s five U.S. Assay Offices, recognizing the extensive hard-rock gold and silver mining that replaced placer mining. The arrival of the Northern Pacific Railroad in 1883 and Helena’s election as state capital in 1894 confirmed the town’s survival. Although many downtown buildings in a great variety of architectural styles were later lost to fires, earthquakes, and urban renewal, the gold camp that survived grew gradually as a business and government center after the panic of 1893 and the end of guaranteed federal silver purchases slowed its early momentum.