Gold fever struck Minnesota in the turbulent years following the Civil War. The state Legislature commissioned a mineral survey of the lands north of Duluth. Geologist Henry Eames completed the survey in 1865. According to historian Dana Miller of Hibbing, the payoff was a large supply of gold. The governor got the samples, the news got out, and the gold rush ensued; people feeling that gold was there for the taking, and it really wasn't. What gold was there was trapped, locked in hard quartz rock and surrounded by another hard rock, Greenstone. Yet hundreds of miners made the 80-mile trip from Duluth to Lake Vermilion, many during the winter of 1865-66 , ready to stake a claim before the snow melted. They travelled in winter over snow packed forests and swamps.