Black Hills Gold Mines
The Black Hills are a group of rugged mountains of southwest South Dakota and northeast Wyoming rising to 2,208.8 m (7,242 ft) at Harney Peak. The Black Hills received its name from the heavily forested slopes that appear black from afar. Native Americans, white settlers, and railroad companies depended on wood from the Black Hills for fuel and building material. more info
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Gold was discovered in the hills in 1874 by an expedition led by General George Custer, and the resulting gold rush drove out the indigenous population.
White settlements grew rapidly after 1876, chiefly in such mining towns in South Dakota as Custer, Deadwood, Lead, Spearfish, and Rapid City, the largest city in the Black Hills. Gold is still mined in the area.
Other important minerals found in the hills are uranium, feldspar, mica, and silver.
The Homestake Mining Company in the Black Hills is today one of the largest operating gold mines in the world. Thousands of unknown miners, merchants, gamblers and soiled doves have come and gone during the century past. And hundreds of towns have boomed and busted, most of them before the beginning of the twentieth century.
The Black Hills are also the location of Mount Rushmore National Memorial. Here, carved on the face of the mountain and visible for 60 miles (97 km), are the enormous (60ft/18.3m high) heads of four U.S. presidents—Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt. The sculpture was designed by Gutzon Borglum, who had even more ambitious plans for the site. These were abandoned when he died in 1941. The work was finished later that year by his son Lincoln. In all, it took 14 years to complete the figures, which during the summer months are visited by more than 20,000 tourists daily.
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