Tag: gold rush

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David Wolff’s Black Hills

By Paul Higbee

David Wolff spent 17 years teaching history at Black Hills State University in Spearfish. His new “Black Hills History Tours” book series blends travel with the region’s most colorful historical stories.

Every mountain range needs a few curious historians. They help the rest of us appreciate the peaks and valleys.

David Wolff of Spearfish fills that role in the Black Hills, and now the former professor is embarking on a six-book project that will not only recount the region’s colorful history but also serve as a guidebook for those who share the author’s itch to explore.

Mountain towns also need pharmacists — and that’s where Wolff got his start. Forty years ago the Denver native who was raised in Wyoming was working the pharmacy counter at a Pamida store in Sturgis. He wrote a history paper as an amateur and took it to a conference organized by university historians.”Pharmacists wear ties and that’s what I wore to the conference, and the history professors moved toward me when I arrived, assuming I was one of them,” Wolff recalls. He sensed they were less enthusiastic in greeting an amateur when they learned his identity.

The pharmacist eventually left the Black Hills, off to greener medicinal pastures, people in Sturgis surmised. In fact, he left to study history, first at the University of Wyoming where he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and then at Arizona State University where he gained a Ph.D. In 1998 he returned to South Dakota to teach at Black Hills State University. He became Dr. David Wolff not as a matter of pursuing a personal goal or for job security (no one will tell you a historian’s position is more secure than a pharmacist’s). Rather, Wolff became a historian because he considers the field vital, especially the multi-layered history of the Black Hills and its mining culture — a significant component to American history overall. And yes, the snub he sensed at that long-ago conference was a motivator in reinventing himself. He didn’t want the lack of academic credentials to limit his ability to reach the public through university offerings, writings and at local history society talks that are free and open to all.

“He comes across as an everyday person,” says photographer and author Paul Horsted, creator of books with photos that compare and contrast historic and modern images.”But he’s got such a depth and command of knowledge at his fingertips, especially gold rush history and what happened afterward. As I was feeling my way in learning that history, David was so kind in being a sounding board.”

When Horsted mentions Wolff’s depth, he could include his friend’s recognition of romance in even the gritty business of mining. Wolff remembers the soft glow of light emanating from windows in Deadwood and Lead’s mining mills, reduction plants and slime plant at night as his family vacationed there –“evidence of workers’ massive efforts, round the clock, in grinding out wealth from the earth,” he says. The Wolffs lived in Cheyenne, Wyoming, when he grew up. His dad was a traveling salesman, mostly supplying drug stores. David sometimes tagged along and that was his introduction to pharmacists — nice people and important members of their communities. Wolff’s parents encouraged him to pursue pharmacy himself. Sure, they knew David’s interest in history and his love for Wyoming’s past as documented throughout the capital city and at nearby Fort Laramie.

“But nobody in the world I grew up in thought you could make a living in history,” Wolff says. Still, the idea briefly crossed his mind in college after reading Watson Parker’s classic Gold in the Black Hills. Wolff wrote to Parker, a history professor at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, and Parker replied. He thought Wolff might be better off using money that would cover tuition for building a personal library of good books delving into history.

If Wolff got a delayed start as a historian, he more than made up for it — and continues to do so with an agreement with the South Dakota Historical Society Press to author six books in the coming years that will combine Black Hills driving with learning history. He taught 17 years at Black Hills State, a period that overlapped 18 years as a member of the South Dakota State Historical Society board of trustees. Still, the term he feels best describes him is simply”a history buff.”

Which is exactly how he comes across sitting in downtown Custer’s Way Park talking to a couple friends about historic cabins. Specifically he mentions this park’s Daniel Flick cabin, long proclaimed as the first built in the Black Hills. And that may be, Wolff says, although it’s unlikely the structure would pass a test by modern historians for such designation. Judge Henry Way pretty much declared the Flick cabin as first while developing the park across the street from the county courthouse in the 1920s.”That was fifty years after the presence of gold in the Black Hills was first confirmed in Custer,” Wolff says,”and the men and women who were here soon after gold discovery were aging and wanted credit for what they built. Almost every town in the Black Hills had its cabin.”

Wolff met with author Paul Higbee (right) in Custer’s Way Park. Despite his long academic career, Wolff says the title that best describes him is “history buff.”

Wolff believes the demand for credit by pioneers is more interesting than whose cabin came first. And while the Black Hills claimed structures more impressive than those humble dwellings — especially its great mines — there was something uniquely American about log cabins. They seemed to assert the Black Hills had become part of America rather than uncharted territory.

“There are a lot of myths and mistakes in history,” Wolff says.”I started out thinking I could correct those things. But misinformation hangs on so tenaciously.” People tend to believe what their families told them as kids, whether they lived in the Black Hills or visited as tourists. Embellished tales survive because they incorporate good storytelling techniques. Deadwood, most South Dakotans understand, has spawned myths since its founding in 1875 and 1876, and the HBO series Deadwood, which ran from 2004 to 2006, took that mythology to new heights. Wolff, frequently asked to comment on the series during its run, understood it as historical fiction and not a history lesson.”Something I looked for in the show, though, was whether or not it remained true to the personal qualities of the historical characters it portrayed,” Wolff says.”And I think it mostly did.”

For example, take Deadwood’s first sheriff, Seth Bullock. The series’ writers and actor Timothy Olyphant created a lawman who was mostly hands-off when it came to little things.”That was authentic to Bullock,” Wolff says.”He didn’t go after the drunk and disorderly and thought that celebrating by shooting into the air was okay.”

Wolff accepted an invitation to discuss Bullock on the Discovery Network’s Gunslingers series. It turned out well although he had to tell producers there’s no evidence that Bullock slung his guns or engaged in shootouts. And the program prompted this question: What does a professional historian facing TV cameras look like? It seems there’s a school of thought that says anybody living in the West and writing its history must be so enmeshed in the culture that they dress in character.”The Discovery Network asked me to show up with my look,” Wolff recalls.”I don’t have a look,” and he didn’t invent one for the appearance.

Wolff accepted another invitation related to Bullock, this one from the state Historical Society Press to write a biography, Seth Bullock — Black Hills Lawman. The book came out in 2009 and addressed aspects of the subject’s life that were not fodder for a TV shoot-em-up: personal friend of Teddy Roosevelt, government official who worked to establish Yellowstone National Park, federal Black Hills Forest Reserve (today’s Forest Service) superintendent, ranching innovator and Belle Fourche founder.

Wolff’s next book for the Historical Society Press profiled a remarkable Deadwood man, James K.P. Miller, strangely forgotten by history. Even Watson Parker told Wolff he never heard of him, although when Miller died at age 45 in 1891 a local paper predicted”his name will always be coupled with the prosperity of Deadwood and the Black Hills.” But it wasn’t, and no one was more instrumental in retrieving it than Wolff 130 years later. Among tools Wolff worked with in exploring Miller’s life and times was newspapers.com, technology that didn’t exist when he wrote the Bullock book. Miller was a native New Yorker, frontier grocery proprietor, builder of Deadwood’s Syndicate Block, and a wheeler-dealer who brought two railroads into Deadwood by setting up something of a competition between the Fremont, Elkhorn and Missouri Valley Railroad and the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad.”Sometimes we forget,” Wolff says,”how competitive railroads were back then. They hated each other.” Miller apparently understood that industrial hatred and made it work for Deadwood, which became one of a select number of South Dakota towns served by two railroads. Very likely that saved Deadwood from deteriorating into something unrecognizable and beyond rehabilitation in the years after the gold rush.

Without Miller, would there have been Days of ’76 celebrations, today’s gaming industry or the Deadwood TV series? Maybe not. The Miller biography, The Savior of Deadwood, James K.P. Miller and the Gold Frontier, was published in 2021.

The Gold Rush and The Gateway to the Hills are the first two installments of Wolff’s “Black Hills History Tours” series.

Wolff’s new book, The Gold Rush, is far from a biography. It resembles the Works Progress Administration’s state guidebooks of the 1930s, with more detail yet retaining a thumbnail listing format. The book identifies driving routes from Custer northward (later volumes in the series will take travelers elsewhere through the Black Hills and surrounding plains), identifying historic locations along the way.”It is a travel book,” Wolff says,”but I don’t recommend places to stay or eat. It’s all history.”

It’s history that is found along roads accessible by regular cars — no ATVs required. Among the author’s favorite sites, most retaining an air of historical mystery, are the Flick cabin and the so-called China walls at Galena (on Galena Road off U.S. Highway 385 south of Deadwood). Galena was best known for its silver mines in the 19th century but in 1909 it was announced that the area held great quantities of copper. Construction began on a copper mill but only stone walls, impressively crafted, were completed.”It has become commonplace,” Wolff says,”to look at old rock work and mistakenly assume Chinese did it.” Indeed, Chinese laborers contributed to much construction during the Black Hills gold rush early on, but by 1909 few remained. Was there really a copper fortune to be mined at Galena? No, says Wolff.

There was no shortage of nefarious mine developers who attracted naÔve investors to sink money into operations that would never yield profits. Three-and-a-half miles below today’s Pactola Dam, about 10 miles west of Rapid City on Highway 44, the Fort Meade Hydraulic Gold Mining Company (perhaps named for Fort Meade army officers who invested) began blasting a tunnel to move water for a sluice box that would work supposedly gold-rich gravel. The company’s very real tunneling, done from 1879 to 1882, probably kept investors engaged, but it closed. Soon, another company picked up the work, also relying on investors, but disappeared in 1889. Not much gold was recovered. What remained was a tunnel moving swiftly flowing water and an underground falls, later illuminated with electricity and named Thunderhead Falls for tourists. The attraction is permanently closed now, but the inspiring natural setting of cliffs and rushing waters makes it easy to see how investors thought something good was bound to take root.

Another site Wolff introduces is one the Forest Service calls the”only gold mining site on the BHNF (Black Hills National Forest) with a standing mill frame.” That’s the Gold Mountain Mine, northwest of Hill City down Burnt Fork Road. Lots of infrastructure work was done there in the 1920s and ’30s.”There is, however, no record of production,” Wolff says. That didn’t stop the Black Hills Historic Preservation and Trust Society from deciding to preserve the mill, rock work and exterior boilers a few years back, with volunteers and students from the Boxelder Job Corps Work Center, joining the effort.

This is a travel book, yes, but it will undoubtedly reach armchair travelers around the world and find use as a well-organized reference. A glance reveals the remarkable range of historic personalities connected to the Black Hills across the years, from giant American industrialist George Hearst (who developed Homestake, the western hemisphere’s biggest gold mine at Lead) to Lakota traditionalists committed to retaining a modern presence. Wolff is certainly describing more authentic Indigenous historical views than the WPA writers and in part credits landing on the faculty of Black Hills State, a university committed to Native course offerings and its Center for American Indian Studies. In particular he appreciated his late colleague Jace DeCory, a widely respected Lakota elder and teacher.”She was invaluable in helping me understand Lakota perspectives, and was always balanced and thoughtful,” Wolff says.

The book was released this summer, and surely readers will want to collect the entire series of six. They won’t wait long. There’s a chance the second will come out later this year, and Wolff and his editor and designers are working at a pace that could see two more published in 2025 and the remaining two in 2026. Upcoming books will address the Lawrence County triumvirate of Deadwood, Lead and Spearfish, Rapid City and the central Hills, the southern Hills, the Belle Fourche River and Wyoming Black Hills, and what Wolff calls”unknown, under-told or under-appreciated stories.”

The Black Hills delight people who sometimes declare they’ve found a pristine natural environment. But travel with David Wolff and you’ll see it’s a rare patch of the Hills that hasn’t been touched profoundly by humans — Lakota defenders, the U.S. Army, railway builders, miners, loggers, engineers who transformed land and water, town builders and, after devastating fires, town rebuilders.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the September/October 2024 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Gold in the Hills

Our March/April issue includes a story on prospecting in the Black Hills, where hobby gold miners still carry pans and pickaxes deep into our mountain valleys. Our founder Bernie Hunhoff, editor Katie Hunhoff and her son Steven visited a claim to sift for gold and take some photos. Here are some photos that didn’t make the magazine.

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Is This Jack McCall?

By John Andrews

When you hear the name Jack McCall, there’s probably one image that comes to mind: a black and white photo of a man with black hair, black mustache, black jacket and seated, facing the camera with his bent left arm resting on a table. We’ve come to accept that this is a photograph of McCall, but historians in Yankton, where was McCall was executed on this day in 1877 for the murder of Wild Bill Hickok, are skeptical.

I never gave the photo a second thought until our book, South Dakota Outlaws and Scofflaws, was released in August. I wrote a chapter on McCall, which features the image in question at the bottom of page 41. Not long after we finished the book, Yankton historian Bob Hanson visited our office and listed five or six reasons why he believes the man in the photo is not Jack McCall. The assassin’s age and various descriptions of his physical appearance don’t match, he said. McCall was called”Crooked Nose,” or”Broken Nose” Jack, and the nose on the photographed man doesn’t seem that crooked. Plus, McCall was no more than 25 years old when he died. The photographed man appears to be older.

A few months later I mentioned the controversy to Jim Lane, another Yankton historian who is married to our circulation director, Jana. He deepened the mystery by pointing out that no other image of McCall or his hanging has ever surfaced.

McCall’s trial and execution in Yankton were pivotal moments in Dakota history. His trial helped established the territorial court’s jurisdiction over Deadwood, and his execution — which was well reported attended by as many as 1,000 people — was Dakota Territory’s first. It seems astounding that no verified image (a photograph, sketch or woodcutting) has ever been seen, especially since Yankton was home to expertly trained photographer Stanley J. Morrow.

Morrow was an Ohio native who learned his trade as an apprentice to famed Civil War photographer Mathew Brady. Around 1868 he moved to Yankton and started a photography studio. His passion was as a traveling photographer, and his summers were spent traveling to forts, towns and reservations along the Missouri River making portraits and landscape scenes.

In the summer of 1876, around the same time McCall shot Hickok at Saloon No. 10 in Deadwood, Morrow left for the Black Hills to photograph the gold rush. He also spent time with Gen. George Crook’s troops, who had battled Indian tribes in the Slim Buttes of far northwestern South Dakota.

He arrived at the Red Cloud Agency in Nebraska in October 1876 and spent a month there photographing Indian leaders like Red Cloud. It is believed that Morrow returned to Yankton in mid-December, just a week or two after McCall’s trial had concluded. McCall spent January and February of 1877 in jail downtown, but either Morrow never attempted to photograph him or McCall never granted permission.

Even if Morrow wasn’t in Yankton, his wife Isa had the expertise and opportunity to capture an image of McCall. After the Morrows moved to Yankton, Stanley taught Isa how to make photographs, and she ran the studio while her husband was gone on photographic tours of Dakota.

Morrow left Yankton in 1883. Many of his images were lost in a fire, but about 500 that we know of have survived. And maybe an image of his, or another traveling photographer, depicting McCall has survived tucked away in someone’s attic or basement. Pay attention the next time you’re rifling through old boxes. You might be holding a never-before-seen piece of Dakota history.

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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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Wild Bill and Calamity Jane: A Love Story?

By John Andrews

We’ve all heard the stories about Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane being more than just friends. But of course we know better. James McLaird, a longtime history professor at Dakota Wesleyan University in Mitchell, debunked the myth pretty forcefully in his book Wild Bill and Calamity Jane: Deadwood Legends. He proved the two knew each other for only a brief period in Deadwood, and were certainly nothing more than casual acquaintances.

But that’s not what The Days of’75-’76 would have you believe. The 1915 silent film was the first movie to link the two romantically. Audiences haven’t seen the film in decades, but it reappears this weekend, the opening of the Historical Film Series at the Black Hills Roundhouse in Lead.

Scholars at the University of Nebraska discovered the film in their archives over a decade ago. They were unable to identify the locations or characters portrayed, so they contacted Wayne Paananen in Lead. Paananen owns the largest private collection of historical films in the state, and was able to piece the story together.

The Hart brothers, filmmakers from Omaha, shot the picture in the Black Hills, Badlands and Fort Robinson in Nebraska. Its run time is about 70 minutes, much longer than other films produced 100 years ago. And it’s clear the directors did not strive for historical accuracy.”It takes tremendous liberties,” Paananen says.”For example, Jack McCall vies with Wild Bill for the affection of Calamity Jane early in the film.”

It includes typical Western scenes depicting Indian uprisings and stagecoach robberies. One of the final scenes shows Jack McCall on trial in Yankton for the murder of Wild Bill.”It is truly a real piece of Americana, not only portraying the true Western format of filming, but it was done at a time when movies were the rage,” he says.”It was a totally new form of entertainment.”

Paananen says the film is exciting for two reasons. First, you get a feel for the filming techniques of the day.”When they had an indoor shot, they only built a three sided set with no roof, and they used all natural light and shot from the open side,” he says.”That was really a great technique, except in this film when they are supposed to be indoors the tablecloth and papers on table are blowing around because of the wind.”

Audiences also get to see the Deadwood of a century ago. A scene at Mount Moriah Cemetery shows the second of two statues that once stood over Wild Bill’s gravesite. Souvenir hunters regularly chipped pieces from the monuments.”You can see it’s already been attacked by tourists and starting to look ugly,” he says. It was eventually removed and is now displayed at the Adams Museum in Deadwood.

The Days of’75-’76 screens at 7 p.m., tonight through Saturday. Future films include Homestake: The Legend and Legacy (Feb. 15-18), World War II films (March 14-17, and a film festival and competition open to amateur filmmakers in April and May. Information on each film and the upcoming festival can be found at www.bhroundhouse.com.

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Together One Last Time

By John Andrews

This weekend could be the last chance you’ll ever have to see the two biggest pieces of gold ever found in the Black Hills side by side.

The Adams Museum and House in Deadwood plans to display Potato Creek Johnny’s famous gold nugget alongside the Icebox Nugget, found just last summer, from 1 to 4 p.m., on Sunday.

The Adams Museum has housed Potato Creek Johnny’s nugget for 77 years, though it rarely makes public appearances. Johnny Perrett, a petite Welsh immigrant with long hair and a scraggly beard, pulled the nugget shaped like a hockey stick from the tumbling waters of Potato Creek in Spearfish Canyon on May 27, 1929. At 4 3/4 inches long and weighing 7 3/4 troy ounces, it was declared the largest nugget ever found in the Hills. But skeptics claimed it was actually a melted mass of gold that Perrett stole from other miners.

Perrett decided to sell his nugget in 1934. He entertained many offers, but the winning $250 bid came from W.E. Adams, a longtime Deadwood businessman and politician who had recently built a new museum. Adams immediately placed the nugget in a museum vault and had two replicas made, one of which is on permanent display.

The original stayed hidden until 1995, when it was displayed in honor of the Adams Museum’s 65th anniversary.”It was like the Shroud of Turin,” says Mary Kopco, the museum’s director.”I’ve never seen so many people come through the Adams Museum doors in such a short period of time. Since a replica has always been on display, a lot of people thought the actual nugget had disappeared entirely.”

It has appeared publicly only a handful of times since, including a four-hour display in 2010 at the Journey Museum with the newly discovered Icebox Nugget, the largest undisputed gold nugget to come out of the Black Hills in 120 years. Prospectors Charlie Ward and Byron Janis pulled it from a cool, Black Hills stream on July 6, 2010. The exact location of the find was never revealed, but they say it was within 20 miles of Rapid City. Chris Johnson, owner of the Clock Shop in Rapid City, bought the 5.27 troy ounce nugget last summer.

After Sunday, there are no plans to reunite these two important pieces of Black Hills history, so Kopco expects a busy three hours.”It’s so fun for people to see both of these nuggets, but of course I’m partial to Potato Creek Johnny’s,” Kopco says.”It’s an incredible piece of history. I’m fortunate to have the opportunity to hold it in my gloved hands. It’s the reason we go into the museum profession. Pieces like these have impacted our lives.”

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No Gold In Those Hills

By John Andrews

Sorry, treasure hunters. We’re about to burst your bubble.

Our blog last week about the South Dakota guidebook written in the 1930s prompted a note from Custer, South Dakota photographer Paul Horsted. He’s been trying to correct a myth that’s been circulating ever since the book appeared.

Apparently the writer was told a tall tale about buried treasure. The story says that as Custer and his men were leaving the Black Hills following their 1874 expedition, they buried a large cache of arms, ammunition, gold and whiskey at their campsite where Box Elder Creek meets Bogus Jim Creek.

Horsted has done two books that retrace the Custer Expedition’s trail, so he has spent hours digging through old accounts of the trip. He regularly receives inquiries about this stash because the story appears on numerous treasure hunting websites, and he’s eager to set the record straight.

Here’s why Horsted believes the story is garbage: “No one has ever been able to explain why Custer would bury anything. They were about to re-cross Indian territory and would want all their guns. Based on accounts, the whiskey was being consumed in large enough quantities that burying it would make no sense at this point. as they were heading home. There’s no discussion in the accounts of enough gold being found to bury any of it due to weight. They had over 100 wagons to carry supplies, many of which would have been quite empty by this part of the expedition.”

And here’s what Horsted says really happened: “A wagon (possibly carrying a Gatling gun) and apparently some other wagons tipped over on a rough section of trail. The gun was recovered but parts of the wrecked carriage it was on may have been left behind. This somehow turned into ‘buried guns’ and then ‘buried gold’ and the rest over time. Great story, but there is absolutely no mention of anything like that in the 15 first-hand eyewitness accounts of this expedition which we have researched for our books. (If there was, I’d be out there looking myself!)”