DECA/Office of History
For more information: Jeff Mammenga, 773-6000

PIERRE—Sparked by news from George A. Custer’s 1874 expedition, gold-hungry prospectors poured into Dakota’s Black Hills. Gold Rush: The Black Hills Story, a new book from the South Dakota State Historical Society Press, recalls the exciting and turbulent "Days of ’76" in five separate essays.

National attention centered on the Black Hills when Custer announced there was "gold among the roots of the grass." The country expected the newly discovered resources to boost it out of economic depression, according to John D. McDermott, the volume’s compiler. In the ensuing struggle for control of the Black Hills, the Lakota Indians lost a significant portion of their reservation to non-Indian settlers. An authority on the western Indian wars, McDermott is a historian and heritage tourism consultant from Rapid City.

Eager to cash in on the gold rush, promoters declared Yankton the best starting and outfitting point. Harry H. Anderson gives insights into the efforts of frontier capitalists to build transportation networks to the gold fields through Yankton. A retired historian and former Pierre resident, Anderson also presents excerpts from the journal of surveyor George Henchel, who helped lay out one of the first roads to the Black Hills.

In his essay, James D. McLaird shares the impressions of journalist Leander P. Richardson, who camped with Wild Bill Hickok and Colorado Charley Utter in Deadwood in 1876. Richardson vividly described their personalities and lifestyles for newspapers back east and in dime novels, says McLaird, a history professor at Dakota Wesleyan University in Mitchell. McLaird is also author of a forthcoming biography of Calamity Jane.

Mining, the premier industry in the Black Hills, spawned other enterprises that continue to make the region economically important. Bob Lee, a retired newspaper editor and historian from Sturgis, reviews the development of logging, agriculture, tourism and other industries from the start of the gold rush to the closing of the Homestake gold mine.

The event that originally generated excitement about the potential of the Black Hills—the 1874 Custer expedition—still commands attention. Rapid City writer Ernest Grafe and Custer photographer Paul Horsted, members of the Custer Expedition Project, describe how they used new technology and the 125-year-old expedition photographs to hunt for trail sites.

Gold Rush: The Black Hills Story is available in book stores and from the South Dakota State Historical Society Press, 900 Governors Drive, Pierre, SD 57501-2217; telephone, (605) 773-6009.

-30-