![]() ![]() The greatest day in Black Hills mining history came on April 9, 1876, when Fred and Moses Manuel, Hank Harney and Alex Engh discovered a gold bearing outcropping near present day Lead, staked a lode claim, and named their new mine the Homestake. So, while some people rushed to the placer diggings at Deadwood, others looked for the quartz outcropping that had originally held that gold. They knew that gold naturally occurred in quartz/rock formations, and that thousands of years of erosion had released the placer gold. Most good prospectors knew that this gold had to come from somewhere else. ![]() The gold they found was placer gold, loose gold pieces that were mixed in with the rocks and dirt around streams. By early 1876, miners had claimed all of the land around the creeks, but thousands more folks poured into Deadwood, hoping to find a missed spot. Each spade of earth uncovered a veritable fortune in gold to those who arrived first and staked their claims. Poor returns had stymied many earlier gold rushes in the West.īut everything changed when the roving miners stumbled across Deadwood and Whitewood Creeks in the northern Black Hills. ![]() For all practical purposes, the Black Hills gold rush could have ended then and there. At each spot, flecks of gold appeared in their pans, but never the bonanza they sought. But the diggings proved meager, and soon prospectors started looking for better paying locations.įrom Custer, the fortune hunters moved north, establishing the towns of Hill City, Sheridan, and Pactola. People flocked to the southern Black Hills, looking for their share of the gold. As Custer led his 1000 men through the Hills, two miners attached to the undertaking uncovered small quantities of gold near present day Custer, South Dakota. The Black Hills gold rush and the consequent local mining industry began with the Custer Expedition of 1874. ![]()
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