Black Hills Ghost Towns

The Black Hills have been famous ever since the gold rush days of the 1870s when General George A. Custer’s expedition in the summer of 1874 found and advertised placer gold in the Black Hills valleys and a rush to the Hills began. Indian claimants to the area were placated, defeated or ignored and by 1875 a gold rush that continues to the present was under way. 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. This book takes a look at the remains of those ghosts: the camps, the stage stops, the communities, the people who made the Black Hills famous. In extensive gazetteer fashion, the authors detail 600 towns and enrich the text with a lavish layout of historical and contemporary photos. Also included are maps and tips on how to locate the ruins of those ghost towns.

Watson Parker by residence and research is a recognized authority on the Black Hills. Author of Gold in the Black Hills, Deadwood and numerous articles and papers on the subject, he is now retired from the University of Wisconsin in Oshkosh where he served as Professor of American Western and Military History. Returning to live in the hills, he continues to research the historic area. Hugh K. Lambert has been interested in the area since the late 1930s. An artist and a photographer, he makes Albuquerque, New Mexico his home base. He is Senior Vice President of Graphics Services with Promotional Marketing, Inc. in Chicago, IL.