Black Hills Gold Rush Towns: Volume II

By Jan Cerney and Roberta Sago

Rising out of the prairie, the Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming had long been rumored to have promising quantities of gold. Sacred to the Lakota, the Black Hills was part of the land reserved for them in the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. However, the tide of prospectors seeking their fortune in the Black Hills was difficult to stem. Members of the 1874 Custer expedition, lead by Gen. George Armstrong Custer, found gold. In 1875, scientists Henry Newton and Walter Jenney conducted an expedition and confirmed the rumors. By 1876, the trickle of prospectors and settlers coming to the Black Hills was a flood. The US government realized that keeping the interlopers out was impossible, and in 1877 the Black Hills was officially opened to settlement. In this sequel to their Black Hills Gold Rush Towns book, the authors expand their coverage of Black Hills towns during the gold-rush era.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: May 11, 2015
• ISBN: 9781439651292

Jan Cerney

As a child, Jan Cerney spent many memorable Sundays along the shores of the Missouri. She has written four books for Arcadia: Badlands National Park, Mitchell�s Corn Palace, Gregory and Charles Mix Counties, and Lakota Sioux Missions.

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Collection.

INTRODUCTION

For well over 100 years, the history of South Dakota’s Black Hills has been dominated by gold. Even before the Custer Expedition of 1874 and the official discovery of this precious mineral along French Creek near present day Custer, rumors of gold in the pine-clad forests of Western South Dakota had circulated. The Lakota Sioux knew of its existence long before 1874 and used it in trading, but they were warned by Father DeSmet to keep it a secret, or their hunting grounds would be in danger. The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 had set aside Western South Dakota and Eastern Wyoming for the exclusive occupation of the Sioux Nation. This region was—and is—sacred to the Sioux, and many of their legends are centered here.

The US government had ignored the earlier rumors of gold. The presence of hostile Sioux, and the existence of more profitable gold fields elsewhere, delayed the Black Hills gold rush. The miners who came to the Black Hills after the official discovery of gold in 1874 reported seeing abandoned sluice boxes and other mining equipment, along with human skeletons—proving that earlier miners had been in the area. The Sioux often silenced them.

In 1875, the government commissioned a follow-up scientific expedition, led by geologists Henry Newton and Walter P. Jenney, with a military escort. This expedition confirmed the existence of significant gold deposits and discovered that miners were already in the area. Lt. Col. Richard Irving Dodge commanded the 400 soldiers of the Jenney Expedition—later writing a book about the experience. In his opinion, every stream in the area yielded gold, but he felt that no single spot would pay the ordinary pan miner. Dodge was taken with the beauty of the Black Hills, however, and wrote, Unfortunately there is gold enough in the sand and soil of the creek bottom to induce some vandal to put the whole of it through sluice boxes, leaving the now lovely valley a desert of rocks and sand. Dodge felt that true wealth would be found in agriculture and stockbreeding, and in many instances, he was right on the mark.

The trickle of illegal settlers became a flood after newspapers announced the existence of gold in the Black Hills. The US Army was sent to turn back the interlopers without great success, as after being escorted out of the Hills, the miners often returned undeterred. A series of negotiations with the Lakota Sioux forged the Sioux Agreement of 1877, which transferred control of the Black Hills to the United States.

Once the Black Hills were no longer off limits, placer miners came in record numbers—panning and sluicing every stream. As Dodge had predicted, hydraulics, sluicing, and flumes left the scars of mining on the landscape. Within several years, the wave of placer mining ended, and hard rock mining began in earnest. Hard rock mining required more capital and drew the interest of Eastern and foreign investors. Various mines, mills, and processing plants were built in record numbers, only to fall into ruin after the gold, silver, and other minerals were extracted from the ores. In time, toppled buildings, rotting wood, metalworkings, and piles of tailings were all that remained of a once hopeful endeavor.

The needs of the miners were many, and since there was no railroad service to the Black Hills, freighters, ox teams, and wagons delivered goods over rough trails from the railheads in Cheyenne, Bismarck, Ft. Pierre, Chamberlain, and Sidney. An influx of settlers attempted to make their fortune by establishing businesses to provide needed goods and services, and while many Black Hills towns were established around a particular mine or mines, many were established to meet miners’ needs. Surrounding towns that were not directly involved in mining grew food on their rich agricultural land, and eventually, the railroads transported these goods to the various Black Hills towns. Other communities evolved around the sawmills that provided the massive quantities of timber required to keep mines running and build camps and settlements. Rangeland near the Black Hills also supported cattle, which furnished beef for the region. Others still survived by offering recreation and relaxation to visitors and residents of the scenic Black Hills.

Many camps and settlements rose and fell during the early gold rush years. Some are well documented with photographs and histories, while others are nothing more than a name. Not all mines proved to be profitable, causing many small towns to decline and disappear just as quickly as they sprouted. Often, the railroads determined a town’s success; towns built along the railroad route prospered, while those not served by the railroad failed.

In this follow-up to the previous book Black Hills Gold Rush Towns, the authors discuss many of these other types of gold rush era towns. This second volume expands on a few of the settlements discussed in their first book, as well as covering additional towns not previously included. Mining was the lifeblood of the Black Hills for many years, but the closing of the Homestake Mine in 2002 ended the region’s mining era. The Black Hills Gold Rush Towns series seeks to document a portion of this fascinating history.

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CENTRAL BLACK HILLS

CUSTER SKETCH. The gold rush in the Black Hills began in 1874, after the Custer Expedition officially discovered gold along French Creek. The native Lakota knew about gold long before, as did the miners and prospectors who had ventured into the Black Hills at an earlier date. Referred to as the Poor Man’s Diggings, the placer gold found in the streams was initially close to the surface and yielded well. (Case Library photograph files.)