Tag: ghost towns

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A Ghost Town Called Spokane

By David Ford

Editor’s Note: The mining town of Spokane, 16 miles northeast of Custer, was founded in 1890. The surrounding hills produced gold, silver, copper, zinc, mica and graphite. Mining proved profitable into the 1920s, but unfortunately Spokane met the same fate as did dozens of other Black Hills mining camps. By 1940 it was largely abandoned. Only remnants of its heyday still exist. Writer David Ford visited in the summer of 1990 and wrote this account for our May/June 1991 issue. It is illustrated with images by Spearfish photographer John Mitchell, captured in early 2019.

“It is said that there is a place on the small hill overlooking the old Spokane Mine, where on a moonlit night with the wind brushing softly through the pine trees, you can hear the miners clinging faintly to each other. As you listen to the wind, you can hear in it the faint sound of the miners working with picks hitting rock and see in the ever changing shadows, the dim outline of feathered Indians, fortune hunters, hard rock miners, loggers, rangers, and farmers driving their oxen, all passing by.”

— From Rushmore’s Golden Valleys, by Marthe Linde

I wasn’t exactly sure where Spokane was. I just knew it was there. Four of us had been hiking up the overgrown road in the draw for about 20 minutes, give or take a few. You lose track of time in the Black Hills. It just doesn’t seem as important as it does other places.

The first signs we found were scattered treasures of civilization: garbage, an oil filter, barrel hoops, and evaporated milk cans. The trash population increased as we climbed a rise on the left side of the road.

“Ssh, hear that?” I asked. Voices. Nothing you could understand, just muffled voices. Mixed with the voices was a sort of clanging — the kind of clanging one might hear in a factory or in a mill … a mill that should have been quiet for a quarter of a century, at least.

I was the tour guide for our quartet of explorers, Judy, Ron, Marietta, and myself. I had hoped to have Spokane to ourselves so we could explore to our hearts’ delight. It sounded as if we weren’t the first here today. I figured I would find, just around a curve or over a hill, a bus load of picture-taking tourists from Japan or Boy Scouts from Chicago. Those guys seemed to be following us everywhere we went since we arrived in the Black Hills. But when we reached the top of the rise, all human noises stopped. There was no one there. No bus, nothing. The sounds of nature were still there — the birds and the rustling of the leaves in the trees. Nothing else. What else could there have been?

The first mine feature to be seen was the top of the headframe. The large stamp mill came into view beside the house and machine shop. Just think what it was like with the huge cables running from the hoist house to the headframe, lowering men down to work the mine and bringing up buckets of ore laced with gold, zinc, lead, and silver. On the north wall of the mill we found graffiti left by previous explorers. Now it is a sad part of Spokane history.

We followed a road that led through the mine buildings and down around the hill. It was a beautiful day and the hike was refreshing along the shaded lane. We rounded a last curve and a lush green meadow opened before us. It seemed to have been waiting for years for us to take in, or maybe to take us in. The road we were on circled the meadow so we circled with it. Foundations were now appearing on either side of the road. A basement here, what looks like a vault or cold cellar there. At one comer of the meadow another small road trailed off up the hill. It was littered with all types of garbage — fenders, stoves, and the ever-present evaporated milk cans.

At the head of the meadow, a two story house and garage stood guard over what we now realized had to be the townsite of Spokane. The house was deserted now but for how long has it been that way? It had a timeless quality about it. Further up from the house was a one-room schoolhouse. The steps were gone, as were the windows and the floor. Just like in a lot of other small towns, this school must have been used as a church. There seemed to be an energy about this building. Did it come from the pupils at recess or a teacher writing today’s lesson on the blackboard? Maybe it was left over from some fire-and-brimstone preacher or the weeping of a wife and family who had lost a husband and father in some mine disaster.

As we left the schoolhouse I realized we were now speaking quietly and with reverence, a sort of new respect for the area we visited. This quietness continued as we took the road back to the stamp mill, the road that was the avenue to and from the mine for so many years. Every morning they marched up that road to work and every evening, home to their families. That was the key. We hadn’t just left foundations and piles of garbage. We had been to see the homes of a community. A town that had once been filled with laughter and tears. A town that had felt the excitement of a gold strike and the fear of an Indian attack. The ruins hadn’t changed but we had. Even though we had seen no one, I now knew we weren’t alone. We had never been alone. We were surrounded by the spirits, the life forces of folks who had walked here before us. Indians, who had been here first, miners and their wives, farmers, shopkeepers, doctors, lawyers, undertakers, children and their teachers, and maybe now our little group. I could feel the ghosts of another time, not necessarily a better time, but different. It was a taste of life I hope to experience just a little of through my travels, my photographs, and now my writing.

The voices were always there, I just didn’t know how to hear them. Now I know.

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Homecoming at Esmond

Esmond qualifies as a ghost town six days a week, but rural people congregate at the little Kingsbury County burg on Sunday mornings for services at the Methodist Episcopal Church. Every two years the dirt streets actually become congested with traffic when the church hosts a homecoming. The next one is Sunday, June 26. It begins with morning worship at 10:30, followed by a pork barbecue and potluck. A freewill offering raises money to help with the small congregation’s costs.

Irene Aughenbaugh (pronounced Ahn-bow), age 90, hasn’t missed many of the homecomings even though she now lives in Rapid City.

“We moved to Esmond in 1938 when my father (Asa Heabirland) bought a gas station and blacksmith shop there. We moved from Nisland. Esmond was quite a town then. They had three grocery stores and the post office man had a gas pump and my dad had a gas pump. There was a lumberyard and railroad depot and a grain elevator and of course two pool halls.”

One of Irene’s first and best memories came on the first day of May.”The other girls said you have to get ready for May Day. I said ‘What in the world is that?’ I found out that you had to make May baskets and take them here and there and give them to your friends and then they gave you a kiss. I was about 11.”

She says the Methodist church and a Farm Bureau Hall were the center of town activities in the 1930s. Today those are the only structures still maintained and in use.

“I don’t know how many houses were there but there must have been more than a hundred people living there and there was always something going on. But after the war they started moving the houses out to other towns. Some went to De Smet and some went to Arlington and here and there. It’s kind of depressing to see how the town has gone downhill but it’s like everything else. After the war people got better cars and they could go to bigger towns and shop and the little towns went downhill. Little by little they fell apart. It’s sad, but it’s fun to go back every two years.”

The public is invited to the homecoming. This year, prints of a painting of the 1885 church by local artist Julie Waldner will be available for $25.

Photos by Bernie Hunhoff.

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Ghost Town Friends

By Doug Rees

Editor’s Note: We were sorry to hear that Black Hills historian and South Dakota Hall of Famer Watson Parker died this week at the age of 88. Long-time Hills residents might remember the Palmer Gulch Lodge dude ranch and resort near Hill City, operated by the Parker family until 1962. Parker and his wife Olga raised three kids in the shady pines there. He earned his PhD in history in 1965, taught at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh for 21 years, and gave expression to his love of the Black Hills in four books. The creation of one of them, Black Hills Ghost Towns, is described below, in a story from our January/February 2006 issue.

Watson Parker and Hugh Lambert published Black Hills Ghost Towns almost 40 years ago as a record of the myriad towns, stage stops and hovels that rose and decayed along with the boom and bust of the Black Hills gold rush. But their Ghost Towns is more than a coffee table book of interesting pictures and witty anecdotes. It is a valuable record of a vanishing history and a legacy to the enduring friendship of the two men who collaborated for over 17 years.

Like many Black Hills stories, this one starts with a family vacation. In 1937, Hugh Lambert’s family traveled to the Black Hills. While staying at Palmer Gulch Lodge, young Hugh fell in love with the Black Hills and met the innkeeper’s son, Wat Parker. They would become lifelong friends.

After Wat finished his daily chores, the two boys searched for abandoned mining camps. Their summer explorations left an indelible impression on Hugh. Even so, he would not talk to Parker again for 20 years.

Around 1957, Hugh Lambert decided it was time to return to the Black Hills. To his happy surprise, a call to the American Automobile Association confirmed that Palmer Gulch Lodge was still in business, and still run by the Parker family. It didn’t take long for Hugh and Wat to become reacquainted as they shared memories. Both observed that many of their stories would disappear as the towns and mines turned to dust.

Dr. Watson Parker was professor emeritus of history at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh before retiring to the Black Hills.

Rather than lament in nostalgia, the two decided to find and record the history of the surrounding ghost towns. Little did they know that they would work on and off for the next 17 years, gathering material for what eventually was published in 1974 under the title Black Hills Ghost Towns. Their book describes about 600 towns and sites that once populated the Black Hills region. A few of the places survive today, but most were already ghostly when Parker and Lambert began their project.

They divided the work. Parker researched the places in old newspapers, maps and the”musty books of history.” He also wrote the descriptions for sites featured in the book. Lambert located the places on the ground, using the opportunity to correct old maps and to draw up new ones, many of which appear in the book. Lambert also selected photographs for the book and wrote many of the captions. He supplemented the photographs with his own pen and ink drawings.

Parker and Lambert’s Ghost Towns goes a long way toward capturing and preserving many of the”history, ballads, yarns, legends [and] monuments” that give the Black Hills its own unique sense of place. A favorite handed down from Parker’s grandfather is set in Pactola, once a bustling mining area and resort, now under the waters of Pactola Reservoir:

At Pactola in years gone by there used to erupt a dance of quite considerable vigor, presided over by the indomitable Mrs. Bernice Musekamp. During Prohibition, Wat Parker’s grandmother arrived for a visit in the hills, driven, in those long-gone days, by her chauffeur in his natty uniform of boots, breeches and visored cap. It was in this outfit that Pace (that was his name) decided to attend the Pactola dance. Unfortunately for him the local populace mistook him for a revenue officer on the prowl, and a hurried midnight call from Mrs. Musekamp brought Pappy Parker to Pactola just in time to rescue Pace from the angry crowd that was about to lynch him.

The authors also tell about Gayville, named for Albert and William Gay, the latter of whom”achieved notoriety by killing a boy who delivered a flirtatious letter to his wife. He was sent to reside in the crowbar hotel for three years; he returned unrepentant and was welcomed back with a brass band. A dissident party who didn’t like the way William dressed — thought he would look better in a rope necktie — hoped to put him on a platform where everybody could see him, but they were in a minority and nothing was done about it.”

The book teaches without an ounce of pedantry but with plenty of dry wit. One good example is found in the caption that accompanies an otherwise nondescript photo of a cemetery near Harney:

They always built the cemetery on a point of rocky ground. Some say it was to get the departed nearer to heaven, and probably many of them needed all the help they could get. Others say it was to get off the wet valley floor, for no man in his right mind would want to spend eternity in a grave that wasn’t properly drained. But mainly they picked out the most ornery patch of ground there was, that nobody wanted, and made a graveyard out of it.

Parker and Lambert also teach us that Moskee in Crook County, Wyo. was taken from the Pidgin English”maskee,” meaning”no matter, never mind, I don’t care.” They share the lore that Mystic might have been derived from”mistake,” but suggest the more likely (but more mundane) version that it was named by a pioneer who hailed from Mystic, Conn. They explain that the origin of the name Two-Bit is much disputed, and could have been named for placers that yielded 25 cents in a single pan, or, for the more pessimistic, because a miner couldn’t get two bits worth of gold in an entire day. With tongue firmly in cheek, the authors tell us that Bare Butte was”an early name for Bear Butte. Captain Raynolds, exploring the area in the 1850s, took meticulous care to note that it was pronounced Bewt, to avoid giving offense to the delicate-minded.”

While the book has many lighthearted stories, it also captures the pioneers’ desolation. Describing Burdock, in Fall River County, the authors note that”one gets the impression that maybe the young folks held out there as long as grandma in her little cabin looking towards the mountains lived, but when she died, they folded up the store and headed for civilization.”

Only occasionally does a touch of nostalgia creep into Parker and Lambert’s writing. In discussing Rockerville, Parker and Lambert recount its development as a”real mining camp,” and”one of the roaringest.” The authors then ruefully describe how modern Rockerville became a tourist town, and note with palpable regret:”There are not many echoes in the Rockerville of today — the clink of coin, rustle of bills and click of cameras have drowned them out.”

The book’s central theme is that”the ghosts of the past are where you find them.” The epilogue features a Parker story and a Lambert drawing as a monument to the lives that were lived in the harsh, rocky Black Hills:

Here lived the pioneers and built their hopeful towns, and here they nursed their frail ambitions only to move on, into the pages of history. These Hills and their past will come alive, though all around is in ruin and decay, if you will follow down the trails we have trod, see those strange sites that we have seen, and hear the tales that we were toldÖ

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Horror on the Hill

By Christian Begeman

The fog was thick by the time we heard the knock on our door. My brothers and I were drifting off and Dad was half asleep on his easy chair. Boom, boom, BOOM came the frantic knocks. When Dad opened the door, a wide-eyed, white-faced stranger stumbled into our home. Dad sat him down at the dinner table but couldn’t get much out of him other than gibberish about getting lost in the fog and something about someone needing help. This of course prompted Mom to call the sheriff. My brothers and I huddled in the shadows of the hallway out of sight, but not out of earshot.

What we didn’t know at the time was the scene that unfolded earlier that day in town. A stranger with a camera arrived, checked in at the post office, the bank and finally into the cafÈ. He apparently was a somewhat renowned photographer working on his next book featuring ghost towns and abandoned buildings.

By the time he finally pulled a chair up to the main table of the cafÈ, the elderly members of the liar’s club (as they were affectionately known by the cafÈ’s regulars) already knew he was coming. Such is the miraculous nature of news in a South Dakota small town — it travels faster than the speed of light. The liar’s club proceeded to tell this stranger the best place in the county to photograph. About 13 miles south of town on a lonely gravel road was an abandoned house on a hill. This wasn’t just any house, mind you. It also happened to be haunted.

The story went something like this: During the Great Depression, two brothers in their twenties and their younger 18-year-old sister lived with their aging parents on this ranch. They suffered like all the rest of the farmers and ranchers due to the hard times. The impossibly dry weather couldn’t stop love from blossoming, though. The girl fell in love with a boy from Nebraska who worked on the WPA crew that built the dam just south of town. One foggy October night this girl snuck out to be with her lover and accidentally fell into the open well her brothers had been digging next to the house. No one heard her cries above the wailing wind. By the time she was discovered, it was too late. The brothers took their grief out on her boyfriend. A week after the funeral, they caught him, tied him up and threw him down the same well that took their sister’s life and then sealed it tight. No one ever saw the boy after that. Eventually, the brothers were found out, convicted and later died in prison. Folks who lived in the house afterwards talked of strange sounds and eerie cries on nights when the weather was foul and the wind blew. It wasn’t long until no one wanted to live there anymore.

Only the old-timers knew how much truth was in the story. The stranger was smart enough to figure that out. His only real concern was if there truly was an abandoned house on the hill. If so, a nice photo of it along with the ghost story would be perfect for his new book. He was assured the ranch house still stood.

After getting directions, he left town in order to shoot the building in the golden light before sunset. The golden hour never came, as the wind switched and a cold front blew in from the northwest. The remaining warm air collided with the chill to create a thin, drifting layer of fog. Our photographer didn’t mind as the atmosphere and fading light provided for dramatic shots of the house and he soon became lost in his craft. After taking his time to frame up a few photos, a shrill shriek pierced the evening. He called out. No answer. All at once, he felt like he was shoved squarely in the shoulders. He tripped, fell backwards and blacked out. When he awoke, the fog was so thick he couldn’t find his camera… or his car. A gnawing feeling of fear began to wash over him as he remembered the story from the liar’s club earlier. Alone in the dark, he left the house behind and started running as pure terror washed over him. He ran far and he ran hard. That was when he saw our yard light through the fog and began pounding on our door.

The sheriff came and got him within an hour. That was the last I saw of the photographer. The next day my older, braver brother and I rode our bikes to the abandoned house. We found a camera with a shattered lens lying about 20 yards from the house. My brother took the film out before turning the camera in. We secretly mailed it off to have it developed. It turned out that only three images were on the roll; two beautifully composed shots of the ranch house in an eerie fog, and the last photo showed two faint yet unmistakable sets of white, ghostly hands reaching towards the lens. We burned the photos and never went near that house again.

Christian Begeman grew up in Isabel and now lives in Sioux Falls. When he’s not working at Midcontinent Communications he is often on the road photographing our prettiest spots around the state. Follow Begeman on his blog. To view Christian’s columns on South Dakota’s state parks and recreation areas, visit his state parks page.


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Bad River Road: a Hidden Photographic Gem

By Chad Coppess

Some of South Dakota’s backroads offer not much to a photographer and some offer great rewards. The Bad River Road in central South Dakota between Fort Pierre and Midland provides more than most.

In roughly 45 miles of gravel road, you can find rolling prairie landscapes, winding waterways, a huge herd of buffalo, abundant other wildlife and a great ghost town. No matter what the season or weather, there’s bound to be something interesting to photograph here.

The start/finish lines for this photographic journey are just outside of Midland at the top of the hill near the city cemetery or just southeast of Fort Pierre off Highway 83. Depending on your vehicle, road conditions, amount of time you’ve got to spend, lighting conditions, etc., you might want to tackle this road from each end on separate trips.

From the Fort Pierre end you’ll come to the beginning of Ted Turner’s Bad River Ranches within roughly 10 miles. The large herd of bison here has an immense expanse of territory to roam, so there’s no guarantee that you will see them at all. When they are near the road however, they are spectacular. Even if you don’t find the herd, you’ll see some beautiful prairie and river scenery.

From the Midland end of the road, it’s approximately nine miles to the ghost town of Capa. Never a hugely populated place, Capa now boasts one resident, hundreds of prairie dogs and a few cows. Please don’t trespass on Phil’s yard without his permission, but do stop and say hi. He appreciates the company and doesn’t mind photographers. GPS coordinates for Capa are N44.96.641, W100.58.862.

Fourteen buildings are standing in Capa if you count three outhouses. Photographers (and painters) could spend a lot of time here capturing various subject matter. I love using High Dynamic Range techniques with this type of shooting. That involves shooting three or more different exposures of the same scene without moving the camera and then blending them together in the computer later. HDR gives you the ability to brighten shadows, darken highlights and emphasize texture. It also tends to give a vintage feel to a lot of photos.

There are many more hidden photographic treasures out there on South Dakota’s backroads. If you’ve got favorites you’re willing to share, let’s hear about them!

Chad Coppess is the senior photographer at the South Dakota Department of Tourism. He lives in Pierre with his wife, Lisa. To view more of his work, visit www.dakotagraph.com.

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The Old Swimming Hole

Warm water and rare plants make Cascade Falls a unique place to take a dip.

Story by Katie Hunhoff
Photography by Stephen Gassman

Artesian springs fill Cascade Creek with constantly warm and clear water. Photo by Stephen Gassman.

Today most swimming holes are concrete squares with colorful umbrellas and rows of plastic chairs. But South Dakota still has some natural places and one of the best is 8 miles south of Hot Springs at Cascade Falls, where murmuring falls, lush foliage and warm turquoise-colored pools create a movie-like atmosphere in the middle of Fall River County.

The clean, clear water of the falls originates about two miles upstream at Cascade Springs, where a series of six artesian springs feed ever-warm, 67-degree water into Cascade Creek. The water’s temperature creates thick vegetation around the springs, creek and falls. Rare plants are found there, including a fern, prairie gentian and orchid that are nonexistent in the rest of South Dakota.

Cascade Falls is the only place along the creek recommended for swimming.”The water isn’t too fast and you can find different depths of water,” explains Cindy Reed, who lives with her husband Marc Lamphere in an old building that was the Allen Bank in the town of Cascade.”People feel safe about their kids being there. It has the added nuance of being a historical public swimming hole for well over one hundred years.”

Early settlers at Cascade hoped their village would become a popular destination for warm mineral baths and spas, but leaders of nearby Hot Springs plotted Cascade’s demise by directing traffic away from the town. Photo by Stephen Gassman.

Cascade was founded in the 1880s between Cascade Springs and the falls. Town fathers hoped it would become a thriving spa destination due to the confluence of the warm mineral water and a railroad through the Hills. By the turn of the century, Cascade had 50 businesses, a post office and 400 residents. Fred Evans, an ambitious businessman who owned much of the land around Hot Springs, put a quick end to Cascade’s growth, along with the economic crash which eliminated a lot of the town’s financial support. Evans was determined that Hot Springs would have the only mineral spa in the Hills, and he even went to the expense of paying a stage coach driver to not stop at Cascade.”The age of the stage passed, the railroad went in to Hot Springs and Cascade withered and died,” wrote journalist Jerry Wilson after a visit to the valley.

J.G. and J.H. Keith, husband and wife, were founders of Cascade who remained there decades after everyone else had given up and left town. The Keiths owned much of the land around the former town and their heirs eventually donated Cascade Falls and Springs to the Forest Service, believing them to be so special they should be shared with the public.

If you go

Cascade Falls Picnic Grounds is 8 miles south of Hot Springs on Highway 71. The area got a makeover recently by the U.S. Forest Service. There is a small parking lot, restrooms and a picnic area. An established trail and steep stairway connects the parking lot to the falls. The area is ideal for swimming or picnicking, but watch for poison ivy on the banks of the creek.

EDITOR’S NOTE — This story is revised from the July/Aug 2010 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order this back issue or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.