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Lead’s International Flavor

By Paul Higbee

Lead has always been home to many cultures, from the hard rock miners who toiled at the Homestake Gold Mine to today’s scientists making groundbreaking discoveries at the Sanford Underground Research Facility.

Spring comes late to Lead due to its mile-high elevation. Then, almost overnight, flowers bloom gloriously in Manuel Brothers Park on Main Street and out-of-town vehicles no longer have snowmobile trailers and ski racks.

Lead is less harried in summer than Deadwood, its”twin city” just a few miles down the hill, but the old mining town still has plenty to offer. There are good restaurants (the Stampmill, Sled Haus, Lewie’s Burgers and Brews, El Jefe’s Fresh-Mex Cantina, and Cheyenne Crossing a few miles out of town in the pines), fine arts at the historic opera house, breweries, museums and the Open Cut, a dramatic remnant of the town’s gold mining era.

Kelly Kirk, director of the architecturally stunning Sanford Homestake Visitor Center that is perched above the Open Cut, interprets”how the past and present collided in Lead” when the storied Homestake Gold Mine segued into the Sanford Underground Research Facility (physics, medical and industrial science) 20 years ago. She sees evolving science and the future of science eventually being examined at the center. Today’s researchers, Kirk says, come to Lead from around the world, but international arrivals are nothing new here; in fact, South Dakota never knew a more cosmopolitan community than Lead. Immigrants flowed into town especially between the 1890s and 1920s, and residents today can still point out old ethnic neighborhoods: Italian, Finnish, Cornish, Irish, Slovak and many others.

Kelly Kirk is director of the Sanford Homestake Visitor Center.

A hundred years ago Gwinn Avenue, running a couple blocks south of Main Street, was known as Slavonian Alley (meaning residents with roots in Austria, Hungary, Slovakia and Yugoslavia) and it was a welcoming place for those from other neighborhoods wanting to experience eastern European traditions. Many of those customs stemmed from Catholic feast days. During the week between Christmas and New Year, homes along Gwinn were open house destinations serving cured ham, fresh breads, apple strudel and wine — always wine.”It was quite a challenge to make a trip through Slavonian Alley,” wrote the neighborhood’s Pearl Krilanovich.”To emerge sober was another thing, as the hospitality of the residents knew no bounds.” Wine was made in eastern European fashion, with great quantities of grapes shipped to town in ice-packed railway cars and then mashed by feet. Not bare feet, Krilanovich stressed; rubber boots were worn.

South Dakota also never knew a more tech-savvy little community than Lead. Homestake Gold Mine, in operation for 125 years and the reason South Dakota ranked first among states in gold production for much of the 20th century, drew most of those immigrants. Sometimes outsiders looked at the mine’s productivity and assumed the founders discovered the richest deposit of precious metal on earth. In fact, ore hoisted from Homestake’s depths wasn’t particularly dense with gold. Rather, Homestake’s international workforce perfected technologies not seen before for extracting quantities of gold, and the company became an American leader in developing hydroelectricity for heavy industrial applications. Lead was rightfully proud of its educated and inventive mining personnel, which numbered nearly 2,000 for decades. They engineered vertical shafts that took miners nearly 2 miles into the earth directly below Lead, and through a network of layered, horizontal passages called drifts that extended 400 miles. What’s more, the workforce applied technology that ventilated the vast subterranean world — in fact, air conditioned it in the deepest regions where temperatures approached 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

Twenty years after Homestake’s closure, there are still hard feelings over the way some outsiders discussed a conversion of the mine to a science lab. Lead residents supported the transition — that wasn’t the issue. But they resented the implication that Lead was being introduced to technology for the first time.

Children peer into the Open Cut from the Sanford Homestake Visitor Center.

Some observers also compared Lead to unlucky northeastern Rust Belt towns, and predicted that with high industrial wages gone, some residents might just walk away from homes and mortgages. Abandon Black Hills real estate? In the 21st century? Not likely. It’s true that some unemployed miners left the area, but their homes sold, often to people who always hoped to own a piece of the Black Hills before they died. Today there’s some controversy over owners of classic, older Lead homes who are tempted to break them into apartments for much-needed workforce housing. Should local government enforce single-family home zoning in some neighborhoods? The concept violates the libertarian spirit that seems to reign supreme among liberals and conservatives alike in the Black Hills.

Controversy is nothing new to Lead. Homestake’s public relations department in the 20th century (perhaps the best ongoing PR campaign ever in South Dakota) was masterful in communicating how well various ethnicities got along in Lead. Usually that was true, but it would be a mistake to think of life here as one blissful stroll down Slavonian Alley, to employ a local metaphor. The darkest time was 1909-1910, when the mine caught wind of employees hoping to unionize. Homestake locked its crews out until everyone signed papers stating that they belonged to no union and would never join one. Homestake, actually a San Francisco corporation, won. Some Lead families were hungry before the mine reopened and paychecks came again, and there were resentments between families that ran deep and sometimes along ethnic lines. It was easy to believe certain nationalities were not astute in American contractual dealings. Not until 1966 did Homestake miners unionize, and sometimes family splits surfaced again when the time to renegotiate collective bargaining agreements rolled around.

Still, it was possible to grow up without much awareness of those matters. Lead was a lively town, full of diversions — youth sports leagues, arguably the best recreation building in South Dakota the first half of the 20th century, nearby hunting and the Midwest’s longest and most challenging ski slope just up the road at Terry Peak.

Bob Phillips was not only a member of the Homestake Mining Company Band, he pulled this bass drum through parades while a bandmate played it from behind. It’s among many artifacts at the Black Hills Mining Museum.

Bob Phillips, a retired Lead teacher, coach and school administrator, has witnessed more than half of Lead’s history. He spent his early childhood living in Slavonian Alley and remembers the open houses.”Our family name didn’t end v-i-c-h,” he notes.”But if you lived in the Alley, neighbors made sure you were part of it.” Phillips remembers some of the 16 or 17 grocery stores Lead once supported (many with ethnic specialties), Cornish pasties (a full meal of meat and vegetables baked in a pastry shell), long hours spent in the Homestake Recreation Building and the knowledge he was guaranteed a summer job as a teenager because his dad worked for Homestake. After college Bob and his wife, Cara Pat, traveled to Africa with the Peace Corps and then taught in Minnesota for a year. But then they were drawn back to Lead,”a culture totally distinct from other South Dakota towns,” Phillips says, and they built careers here.

A turning point for Lead came in April 1984 when fire gutted much of the Homestake Recreation Building, built 70 years earlier by the mine as a lifestyle amenity for employees (and, as it turned out, for pretty much everyone else who lived in Lead). The mammoth structure featured a thousand-seat theater, heated swimming pool, bowling alley, library and billiards hall. After the blaze it was determined that insurance alone couldn’t cover a full rebuild and there were people in town ready to write the building off as a lost relic. But others committed themselves to fundraising and rebuilding through a nonprofit corporation. The”rebuild” sentiment became Lead’s majority view and today the nearly lost structure is known as The Historic Homestake Opera House, focusing on a wide range of performing arts. Recent shows, drawing a Black Hills-wide audience, have included touring performers in An Irish Rambling House, stand-up comedian Jason Salmon, as well as a performance series by pianist Kathryn Farruggia. This summer a children’s theater program will put local kids on the big stage. The Opera House is also a popular wedding venue.

Yet 38 years after the fire, the rebuild is not yet complete. The building has a new roof (the original caved in) but marks where flames licked the walls remain visible in the auditorium. For some in the community the scars communicate there’s still work to be done and dollars to be raised.”We have set our sights on the completion of the entire project, raising funds for this massive project,” says opera house Executive Director Thomas Golden. The organization received a National Endowment for the Humanities Challenge Grant and, Golden adds, money”raised as a part of this matching grant will allow us to complete many of the infrastructure related projects such as fire suppression and HVAC.”

Development Director Christine Allen, President Linda Wiley and Executive Director Thomas Golden (left to right) oversee restoration and events at the Homestake Opera House.

Opera House President Linda Wiley says the nonprofit has brought together a community within the community, people”who enjoy the work and also one another.” There can be little doubt, she adds, that the evolving success led to action in preserving other aspects of Lead’s history. Wiley didn’t mention it but people from other Black Hills communities did: long gone is an unfair image that Lead fought for generations about being a company town incapable of tackling initiatives without Homestake’s guidance.

Rapid City actors Kurt and Tina Bauer sometimes lend their talents to the opera house for locally produced shows. Kurt understands what Wiley means about a community within a community.”They treat their actors right,” he says,”and they understand Lead. The opera house is the centerpiece of the community.”

Of Lead overall, Tina adds,”it’s a tight little community,” and one that the couple has explored well, especially after discovering the Town Hall Inn bed-and-breakfast, just steps away from the opera house on Main Street. The Bauers sometimes stay there during runs of their shows. It’s another example of Lead taking care of its past. The little hotel was Lead’s 1912 city hall and jail, with rooms bearing their original names: Mayor’s Office, Judge’s Chamber, and so on.

ìIt was the city hall until the 1930s, when it was replaced by the present one that was built as a WPA project,” says Mark McGrane, the owner along with his wife Jade and his brother Paul. The trio found a perfect use for the old town jail, turning it into a cozy pub called Jailhouse Taps. They brew their own Belgian-style beers.

Blond Alibi and Dungeon Drunkard are locally popular Jailhouse Taps brews. Being a tight-knit community, Lead people are quick to point out another beer producer just up the street — Dakota Shivers Brewing. The affection Lead demonstrates for its beers makes you wonder if they will still be recalled a century from now, much like those legendary Slavonian Alley wines.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the May/June 2022 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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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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Prospecting in the Hills

By Rich Jensen

Gary Mallams and fellow miners welcome opportunities to introduce youth to the adventure and intrigue of prospecting.

“We never sell the gold,” Kathleen Flanagan, secretary of the Black Hills Prospecting Club, tells me over lunch in Rapid City.”It’s the first question everyone asks.”

This doesn’t make much sense to me. Why else would someone go out panning for gold?

And then the members of the club bring out their favorite nuggets. Almost all of them have brought their best finds to lunch. Most are kept in small vials filled with water or mineral oil.

As I rotate the vials, nuggets and flakes roll around, catching light as only gold does, and these prospectors’ reluctance to sell their gold suddenly seems reasonable. Money all looks the same. Sell a gold nugget and you’re trading something unique for plain old folding money, and eventually whatever ordinary goods that money can buy.

People used gold for decoration long before they used it for money, and if you’ve seen unprocessed gold sparkle, a little bit of that fascination probably rubbed off on you.

For many club members, their love affair with gold started at an early age. Lou Schmeltzer, one of the older members of the club, can still remember the day 80 or so years ago when one of his father’s friends brought white quartz crystals embedded with gold into his father’s barber shop in Lead, along with pieces of schist that had free gold between the layers. He still has some of those pieces of schist.

By age 9, Schmeltzer was sneaking off into the abandoned mines around Lead, looking for gold with a candle in his hand. Later, equipped with one of his mom’s pie pans, he set about panning for gold wherever he found a ledge, or outcrop, of mineralized rock that might have deposited gold into a streambed as it slowly eroded. Finally he got an authentic prospector’s pan — a banner day indeed.

The process of panning for gold hasn’t changed much since the Deadwood gold rush of 1876. Prospectors start with placer deposits, which are basically old streambeds. They’re a mix of loose soil and gravel that eroded from the Black Hills eons ago and washed down into valleys, where it remains.

Deadman Gulch, buried deep in the Black Hills near Rockerville, is a popular claim site for Don Hamm and fellow members of the Black Hills Prospecting Club. The gulch was named for two miners who died there in 1876.

A prospector starts with a pan full of water and placer material dug from a nearby deposit or scooped from the streambed itself. By carefully swirling the water around and allowing it to spill out of the pan, loose soil and lighter rocks are washed away, leaving the densest minerals, often a dark gray to black mass. If there’s any”color” in there (yes, prospectors still call it that), it will appear right along the curve. Sam Griner, a veteran prospector, calls it”a big smile at the bottom of the pan.”

Panning equipment has been upgraded slightly, even if the process is little changed. Rather than sturdy metal pans, today’s prospectors often prefer pans made of soft rubber that can be twisted and bent to better control the water swishing around the bottom. Pans are usually dark in color to make it easier to see small flecks of gold.

Some prospectors also use a sluice box, a long trough that has various ridges that catch rocks and minerals as water runs through it. The principle is basically the same as panning — gold is heavier than almost any other rock or mineral likely to turn up in a placer deposit, and it will settle to the bottom of the sluice box, while the water washes loose soil and lighter gravel away.

Although prospectors are looking for gold, it’s not unusual for other minerals to show up at the bottom of the pan. The Black Hills have a little of everything, including gems and metals. Don Hamm, the club’s vice president, once found a small platinum nugget while panning, and several other prospectors have found tourmaline and gem quality garnets. In fact, the January birthstone is so plentiful in the Hills that one of the club’s claims is called the Garnet.

The suspense of panning, of not knowing what you’re going to find, is part of what makes it an enjoyable hobby.”It’s all about the hunt,” according to Dean Duncan,”and the sense of satisfaction in finding the first piece of the day.”

“You can learn a lot of patience and a lot of frustration,” says Sam Griner.”But it’s all fun,” he continues, because when some color does turn up,”you’re the first person to ever see that nugget of gold.”

Stewardship of the land is an important part of panning. Prospectors during the gold rush weren’t so concerned about leaving a claim in better condition than they found it, but it’s a point of pride for many members of the club. If prospectors dig a hole in a placer deposit, they’re expected to backfill the hole and seed it with grass when they’re done. If they excavate loose deposits from a hillside, they’re expected to knock down the overburden, meaning to collapse the hillside over the excavation instead of leaving holes in the hill.

Club president Gary Mallams says, “finding gold in your pan is just one of the rewards for being in a beautiful place with good friends.”

Panning on National Forest land still occurs on claims, and while a few members of the Black Hills Prospecting Club also work their own claims, most of them work on one of five claims that the club maintains. Two are along French Creek, where members of George Custer’s expedition discovered gold in 1874.

Don Hamm works his own claim. He and his father, Bob, the oldest member of the club at 92, may be the most experienced prospectors. In 1982, they incorporated themselves as”Southern Hills Mining” and had the third largest gold mining operation in South Dakota that year. They pulled about 50 ounces of gold out of a placer deposit from one of Don’s secret spots.

The land under most claims remains the property of the federal government. Prospectors are free to take the gold they find, but they don’t have any other ownership stake in the land. However, some claims are”patented,” meaning that the claim belongs to the claimholder. He can build a mine — or even a house — on the land. Lots of private property in the Hills started out as patented claims.

Don Hamm lives on a patented claim along Deadman’s Creek. That inspired his grandkids to try prospecting.”You dig in the dirt and you can usually find gold,” he says.”It’s fun to teach the kids how to pan — once they find gold, they’re hooked.”

Kathleen Flanagan’s daughter, Kristin Draine, and her husband Chris are also active in the Prospecting Club. Like most members, they have a stock of nuggets found while panning.

However, they have an additional reason for being involved.”It’s something we want for our kids,” Kris says,”to be out in nature and active, not always inside.” Of course, many youth are skeptical at first. Venturing into the Hills to slosh water and dirt around in a rubber plate may not sound like fun. But many kids change their minds when they start finding gold.”Are we going prospecting this weekend?” is now a common question in the Draine household.

There’s also a social aspect to prospecting. Membership in the Black Hills Prospecting Club is just over 250 from several states, and they have regular monthly meetings and organized outings and contests. The current record holder in their panning contest is a man from Keystone who sifted through a pan in only 12.5 seconds.

Dean Duncan talks about the enjoyment of being out with friends, and”showing the greenhorns how to pan and some of the shortcuts and tricks.”

Club president Gary Mallams agrees. He discovered prospecting on a trip to Alaska, and while he enjoys the search as much as anyone in the club,”finding gold in your pan is just one of the rewards for being in a beautiful place with good friends.”

It doesn’t hurt that the prospecting takes place in the Black Hills. For many, the scenery is worth the trip, even when the prospecting doesn’t go their way. Larry Howells moved into the Hills from Kansas. He thought that panning would be an”easy, fun hobby with some financial return.”

Veteran prospectors say the gold flakes they find are, “a big smile at the bottom of the pan.”

It didn’t work out that way.”I soon found out that carrying a pick and shovel, packing buckets of rock and dirt, standing in cold water, and swirling several pounds of mud and gravel in a pan is not easy.” Regarding the financial return, he says,”Don’t quit your day job.”

But he’s still an active member.”Fun comes from being out in some of the most breathtaking scenery and the sounds of nature.”

“I’d heard of the Hills,” says Bill Dore.”I was working out in the eastern Montana oil fields in the early ’80s, in the summer heat, just baking, and I used to dream about going up some creek with a pan — and who knows what I’d find? I just wanted to be out in the shade. That’s a lot better than the Montana oil fields.”

There’s great value in prospecting deep in the Black Hills, but these days it has little to do with the price of gold.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the March/April 2017 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Manganese Memories

By Michael Zimny

Frequent cross-state travelers may sometimes wonder: What the heck are those brick and concrete ruins just north of Interstate 90 a few miles west of the Missouri River? All alone on the swollen grass seas west of Oacoma, their mystique recalls Caspar Friedrich’s depictions of pastoral ruins.

So what are they?

The vestiges of what was a sizable manganese mining operation. According to a local, the open-ended concrete structure was a mineshaft and the brick building housed an auger.

Manganese — which is instrumental in steel production — was discovered in the black soil strata of the river bluffs in the 1920s. In 1929, the Deadwood Pioneer Times announced the formation of the General Manganese Corporation, dedicated to mining the metal from what it described as, “undoubtedly the largest deposit in America.”

State attorney general and future governor Merrell Sharpe, who farmed and practiced law in Oacoma, was involved in the project from the outset, acquiring much of the land.

The operation picked up steam as the build up to U.S. entry into World War II called for more steel, and consequently more domestic manganese production. Prior to the war, America was dependent on Russian imports. In 1941, the Argus Leader claimed that, “Up to 95 percent of our steel needs … have come from Russia, where it was mined practically with slave labor producing a very economical ore.” Most likely, the short-lived Molotov-Ribbentrop pact between Nazi Germany and Russia impressed upon U.S. planners the need for manganese-independence.

In 1941, the increased demand led the federal government to build a pilot plant to experiment with cost-effective methods for separating manganese from the surrounding shale. After the war, local papers reported that Merrell Sharpe, who had leased the land to the government, announced plans to utilize processes developed by the Bureau of Mines to expand private mining operations. Those methods must not have proven cost-effective enough to compete with imports in the post-war economy. A 1954 Rapid City Journal article on the flooding (for Lake Oahe) of Oacoma gave it a, “last chance for survival as an important town if supplies of manganese are cut off from Brazil and Russia.”

To date, the Oacoma manganese deposits are still considered too low-grade to compete with those in say, South Africa. One day, a new technology may unleash their potential. Then condominiums will kiss the skies on either side of the Oacoma/Chamberlain divide. For now, they’re moldering reminders of that time we tried to simultaneously stick it to the Third Reich and the damned Russkies.

Note: The old mining site is on private property. We were granted permission to access. Please enjoy respectfully from the road.

Michael Zimny is the social media engagement specialist for South Dakota Public Broadcasting in Vermillion. He blogs for SDPB and contributes arts columns to the South Dakota Magazine website.

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Lead’s Meat Pies

By Ruth Steil

The humble pastie from Cornwall has become a Lead tradition.

Immigrants from around the world came to work in the Homestake Mine in Lead when it opened in 1876. Along with a desire for a better way of life, they brought a diversity of customs and cuisine. Several ethnic foods continue to be local favorites, including the Cornish pastie (pass-tee).

Pasties are similar to the meat pies found in today’s frozen food section without the variety of fillings. The old-fashioned pies were usually just meat and potatoes wrapped in a crust. Pasties were a perfect food for hungry hard rock miners who didn’t see the light of day until their shift was over. The filled pie fit easily into their oblong metal lunch buckets, and provided a complete meal — meat, potatoes and bread.

Some say the thick-crimped crust of the pastie was more handle than food. Cyanide, arsenic and other toxins were often used to extract gold and tin so the miners knew their hands might be contaminated. To be safe, they held the pastie by the crimped edge. After eating the rest of the pastie, superstition compelled them to leave”the handle” for the ghosts they believed lived in the mines.

Although the Homestake Mine closed years ago, Lead residents carry on the pastie tradition. In our Jan/Feb 2009 issue, pastie-making members of Christ Episcopal Church shared a scaled-down version of their recipe.

Pasties were a popular lunch for miners in the Northern Black Hills.

Pasties

(makes six)

3 cups sifted flour
1 cup shortening
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup cold water
1 1/2 cups cut up top sirloin steak
5 1/2 cups sliced potatoes
1/2 cup onions
Dried parsley
Salt and pepper
Butter

Cut shortening into flour and salt. Add water bit by bit to work into a paste you can handle. Refrigerate one hour. Divide dough into six equal pieces. Roll each piece into a nine-inch circle. Mix potatoes and onions together. Put 1 cup potatoes and onions in center of dough. Spread º cup well-packed meat over potatoes and onions. Sprinkle with dried parsley. Salt and pepper to taste. Put pat of butter on top. Pull dough over top and seal edges. Snip air hole in top. Baste with melted butter. Bake in 350 degree oven for 45-50 minutes. After removing from oven, baste with melted butter.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the Jan/Feb 2009 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.

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There’s Gold in Spearfish Canyon: Leave It There!

By Cory Heidelberger

Last month, the state Board of Minerals and Environment approved Wharf Resources’ proposal to mine more gold near Terry Peak. Our state officials are now talking with Valentine Mining about gouging out another chunk of the Black Hills. Gold miners would like to make the Ragged Top Mountain area, just over the rim of Spearfish Canyon near Savoy, a little more ragged.

Ragged Top was first mined back in 1886. Gold mining there petered out after 1914, since which time Spearfish Canyon has become known as one of the most scenic drives in South Dakota. Tourists flocking to the canyon for the fine fall colors make September one of Spearfish’s best months for sales tax revenue.

The Ragged Top site is on a list of what the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources calls”Special, Exceptional, Critical or Unique lands.” State statute defines such lands as territory of great ecological sensitivity and influence and/or”scenic, historic, archaeologic, topographic, geologic, ethnologic, scientific, cultural, or recreational significance.”

Spearfish Canyon region is clearly special, exceptional, critical, and unique. Frank Lloyd Wright recognized this fact during a trip through the canyon in 1935:

“But how is it that I’ve heard so little of this miracle and we, toward the Atlantic, have heard so much of the Grand Canyon when this is even more miraculous. All the better eventually … that the Dakota are not on the through line to the Coast … My hat is off to South Dakota treasures.”

Expanding the non-sustainable gold industry makes little sense. We could rev up another gold mine in the Northern Hills, drive more industrial traffic up Highway 14A, and hack up some more trees and mountaintops, just for the sake of increasing the supply of a metal used mostly for non-essential purposes. But we can only mine gold once, and such industry threatens the other natural assets of the region. The autumn rush for golden leaves enriches Spearfish Canyon and its visitors time after time, for as long as we preserve the area’s natural beauty.

Cory Allen Heidelberger writes the Madville Times political blog. He grew up on the shores of Lake Herman. He studied math and history at SDSU and information systems at DSU, and is currently teaching French at Spearfish High School. A longtime country dweller, Cory is enjoying “urban” living with his family in Spearfish.

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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.”