There is still plenty of gold to be found along with many artifacts from the early
days of Indian settlement, mining and homesteading. Deadwood has gentled ...
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By J.C. Fine
Gold and Ghost Towns in South Dakota
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Jon Mattson on his land outside Deadwood, South Dakota, pointing to the gulch where gold was first discovered in 1875 in Whitewood Creek. Photography by Myriam Moran.
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“If you find gold in your yard in Lead, you don’t own it. Mineral rights belong to the Homestake Mine,” Wally Slattery said. We had just met up with Jon Mattson outside Deadwood, South Dakota, to explore an area of land where he pastured his cows all summer. We were discussing the 1875 gold rush and development of mining in the area. “This whole area here was the Golden Rewards Smelter. There were buildings all along here. Buildings up all along this draw. The foundations are left,” Mattson explained. He owns about 1,000 acres of land that is contiguous with Whitewood Creek. A modern highway leading into the city of Deadwood was built above the creek. The First Gold Hotel and Casino sign is visible from the Mattson property across the highway. It was here, at this spot, where gold was first discovered in 1875. Placer gold, flowers, pickers and nuggets washed out in every miner’s pan along Whitewood Creek
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at Deadwood Gulch. Gold was so plentiful that miners would take $10 worth of pure gold from every pan. This was at a time when gold was selling for $20 an ounce. The South Dakota gold rush was in full swing in 1876. As many as ten thousand miners staked claims in the Black Hills hoping to strike it rich. There is still plenty of gold to be found along with many artifacts from the early days of Indian settlement, mining and homesteading. Deadwood has gentled down some since the days when Wild Bill Hickok gambled in Saloon Number 10. Hickok met his fate with a bullet in the back of his head fired by a disgruntled looser. Marshal Seth Bullock tamed the town. Civilization turned Deadwood from a pestilent shanty town into a prosperous mining community. Its
Jon Mattson and Wally Slattery (hat) detecting on the Matson property near Deadwood Gulch on a site where a gold refinery was established. Wally is using a Garret metal detector.
Lee Harstad detecting in an excavation made on Jon’s property. Jon looks on with Myriam Moran. Lee found a miner’s frying pan.
vices were also tamed. “Gambling always existed in Deadwood. In 1989 we decided to make it legal,” Bill Walsh said. Walsh owned and operated the historic Franklin Hotel on Main Street for many years and served as Deadwood’s mayor and on its Town Council. He was one of the people responsible for bringing legalized gaming to the city. With it came gold prospecting of a different sort, sifting through tourist dollars at slot machines and roulette wheels that increased tax revenues. Gaming enabled the city to modernize and embark on important historic preservation projects that not only saved the town, but helped create a history center and museum preserving important documents and photographic records of this unique place and period in American history. History was made in the Black Hills. Native peoples believe the strip of land that runs from Rapid City, South Dakota, 120 miles north and south and some 60 miles wide, is a www.LostTreasure.com June 2013 11
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sacred place. Mountains were considered holy to these first peoples of the land. Many tribes came to seek vision quests at Bear Butte. “Mato Paha,” translated from the Lakota name, means “Bear Mountain.” The mountain is under the jurisdiction of South Dakota’s Department of Game Fish and Parks and is open to all people to enjoy. Bear Butte is just outside Sturgis, about 20 miles from Deadwood. Native tribes came to the Black Hills to hunt buffalo and camp during warmer months. Tribes used forest products, fished the streams and took food as needed from the land. Gold and silver had no value for these first peoples. The lands were held sacred for as long as memory prevailed. Aricara and Lakota vied for the Black Hills until smallpox, brought by the whites, annihilated Aricara, leaving the Lakota people dominant in the area. The U.S. government entered into a treaty with the tribes in 1868 at Fort Laramie. The treaty granted ownership of the Black Hills to the Lakota. Whites were prohibited from encroaching. Persistent rumors of gold caused prospectors to risk hostile encounters with native warriors and violation of federal law. George Armstrong Custer, an ostentatious Union general during the Civil War, was assigned to lead a party of the Seventh Cavalry into the Black Hills to explore the area ceded by the Ft. Laramie Treaty. His orders were to keep the peace by excluding white prospectors they encountered. One of Custer’s men discovered gold in a creek near what is now Custer State Park. The flood gates were opened. Nothing could contain the influx of miners. The U.S. government condoned violation of the treaty, greedy to acquire lands it protected. The Ft. Laramie treaty was dishonored by the U.S. government. Gold was so plentiful in South Dakota that California prospectors left their mostly played out claims. Dudes from the East traveled by foot and mining associations were formed to exploit areas like Deadwood and Keystone. American criminals bought up gold at $20 an ounce, held it until
Jon Mattson holding an antique draw pull he unearthed using a Garrett metal detector.
it was scarce, then resold it for $400 an ounce. The Gould-Fisk gold price fixing scandals simmered in the East, creating an economic depression in 1874, about the very time gold was discovered in Deadwood Gulch. Invasion into their sacred lands lands protected by treaty created foment among native tribes. Protection of treaty lands turned to exploitation and persecution of native peoples by the U.S. Army backed by corrupt government in Washington. Seeking fame and glory with designs on running for President of the United States, Custer led his Cavalry troop into the Little Big Horn River area on June 25, 1876. The gold rush was in full swing. Thousands of miners and prospectors swarmed over the Black Hills with the protection of the U.S. Army. Army units were set about removing and eliminating native peoples. Lust for this yellow metal in the Black Hills would change history forever. The U.S. Army set about eradicating native peoples. Troops were sent to destroy their villages. In one sortie Custer saw what he believed to be an unarmed Indian village. He prepared his troops to attack, but the village was not helpless as Custer supposed. Wave after wave of warriors were sent to oppose the attack. The defeat of Custer at the Little Big Horn had repercussions throughout the U.S. It enabled government action to eradicate native populations, move survivors of the war against them to reservations, and end their way of life. The defeat of Custer created an atmosphere of unbridled hatred that evolved into the end of the end for
Native Americans. The Black Hills were now open for exploitation. With the influx of prospectors, placer gold soon played out. Flakes of pure gold, nuggets easily washed out of sand in creek beds, and bits of gold in dry gulches became scarce. It was only by hard rock mining that claims could be exploited. Gold contained in ore had to be extracted by crushing then the use of mercury and cyanide to remove it from the slurry. Once pristine, streams in the Black Hills flowed with poisons. Miners died from mercury poisoning and the result of silicosis, breathing dust caused by drilling. The town of Lead, Deadwood’s neighbor on the hill west of town, saw a gigantic open pit created. The Homestake Mine also dug deep shafts and tunnels into the earth, reaching 8,000 feet underground. Not far away, the town of Keystone became known as the City of Gold. Two hundred mine shafts were struck into the mountains surrounding Keystone. “You see a lot of holes all around,” Jon Mattson smiled. He used a Garrett metal detector to find a site where miners lived and worked their claims on his property. “The Golden Rewards Mine operated here into the 1940’s. This is the site of old railroad tracks. They went to Terry Peak on the other side of Lead, six miles away. The railroad brought ore down here to the smelter,” Mattson explained. He got a signal with the Garrett detector and dug it. When dirt was rubbed off, an antique drawer pull was revealed, probably from wooden furniture that graced a miner’s cabin . “The railroad ended there, probably where the new highway is,” Mattson pointed. “I found a lot of old horseshoes here. Old stuff from the houses. I haven’t looked that much. The ‘crik’ came down along the old highway. It used to be pretty good for gold. With gold prices the way they are, there is quite a bit of interest prospecting. Tailings used to go into the ‘crik’ down there,” Mattson added. Wally Slattery is an inveterate prospector. He uses his metal detec-
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tor to hunt in hills and ghost towns. He pans for gold in streams, gathers sand and earth from claims and uses a sluice box to extract the precious metal. Born in Chandron, Nebraska, Slattery’s father did a lot of prospecting all over the west. “Dad found a lot of oil wells throughout the western states. I went into teaching and moved east. When I retired I moved out here immediately and settled in Spearfish, about 20 minutes from Deadwood,” Slattery said. He is Vice President of the 900-member Black Hills Prospecting Club. Slatery’s finds include Spanish gold coins and gold and platinum nuggets. His club and the Gold Prospectors Association of America have filed claims that members can work in the Black Hills. This was the first time Slattery was given permission to detect on Jon Mattson’s land. He got a hit and came up with a buffalo nickel. The date was obliterated, but it was a good find. It surely meant people lived in the area. Slatery searched around the remains of miner’s cabins and discovered iron tools. “Coins stay near the surface. The ground here is so hard. I sent an assortment of gold nuggets to my grandson back east. He asked, ‘Can we eat them’?” Slattery laughed. His grandson likely echoed the philosophy of Native Americans, disdaining white man’s obsession with the yellow metal. “The Black Hills are very old. Gold nuggets tend to be small. The sluice box is my instrument of choice to extract gold from sand. First I classify it, get rid of big rocks, then examine smaller rocks, eventually classifying them.” Slattery took a pan of sand and washed it in Whitewood Creek. He sat on a boulder that likely saw the same procedure done thousands of times during gold rush days 138 years before. As Slattery washed, dumped then rotated his pan he kept a careful lookout in the riffles. “I like to use a green pan. Gold shows up better,” he said. Our green pan was obtained from
the Big Thunder Gold Mine in nearby Keystone along with other mining equipment needed for the work. “In the 1930’s, the average prospector in the Black Hills was making 50 cents a day. That’s when gold was worth $35 an ounce. At today’s price prospectors are making $50 a day. Enough to keep ‘em in beans,” Slattery said. He paused in his labors and examined the pan. Bright gold flakes, placer gold, lay in the riffles. “Wet your finger. Dry your finger and touch the flake. Drop it into the water filled vial.” The clean flake of pure gold settled to the bottom of the vial. Its bottom was soon covered with the precious metal. Wally Slattery had plenty of gold tales to tell so the work went along apace. “My dad partnered up with Franklin Mills from Hill City. There was a rumor that a neighbor stashed 1,020 gold coins, died and they were never recovered. My dad and Mills searched for those gold coins but never found them.” Slattery paused to wet his finger, dry it and pick up more flakes of placer gold from his pan. “A widow woman bought the ranch. Soon she began buying up other ranches. My dad saw one of her sons in town and asked him, ‘Did you find the old man’s treasure?’ The kid answered, ‘Not where you were looking’.”
Wally Slattery with the buffalo nickel and miner’s artifact he dug on Jon Mattson’s property.
A big smile crossed the prospector’s face as he reached into his pan and gathered more placer gold panned out of the wash. Whitewood Creek runs through Deadwood Gulch. Deadwood Creek runs into it. The modern Deadwood Mountain Grand Hotel is built in town on Deadwood Creek. The hotel, casino, event center and restaurant have been created from Homestake Mine’s original slime plant where ore was treated to remove gold. Right above Whitewood Creek, at a place where John Mattson donated land for a new museum, is a statue and historic marker. The marker proclaims this as the site where the first of two initial discoveries of gold in Deadwood occurred in August 1875. “Thar’s gold in them hills,” means more than a vain proclamation. The Black Hills of South Dakota continue to yield the precious metal. With every rain placer gold is washed into streams. Tailings, once thought unworthy of further search, continue to yield discoveries. Prospecting clubs with valid mining claims offer members the chance to recover gold from digs along dry river washes. Ore that was once too expensive to extract is now feasible and profitable with increased gold values. For those with a yearning for adventure and a love of history, the Black Hills offers the chance to find gold and enjoy one of the most beautiful areas on earth. For more information, contact the Homestake Adams Research and Cultural Center at (605) 578-3724 or visit their website at www.adamsmuseumandhouse.org. The Deadwood Chamber of Commerce can be contacted at (800) 999-1876 or by visiting www.deadwood.com. Information about Keystone can be had by calling their Chamber of Commerce at (800) 456-3345 or visiting www.keystonechamber.com and www.keystonehistory.com Sources: Interviews with prospectors Wally Slattery and Jon Mattson. www.LostTreasure.com June 2013 13
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