We’re excited and intimidated to see that 10,000 have logged on and found the time to read our blog!

Excited because we love talking to people about mining… intimidated by the sheer number. Please take the time to comment at hillshistory1876@gmail.com if you have a subject of interest, a claim you want researched, or any question you might have about information we post.

We’ve promised a couple of time to “tell you a story” about some of our research ventures. One was outlined in our last blog. There are so many “characters” in the Black Hills (probably including ourselves!) that there is an unlimited supply of stories to tell…

One of these characters suits the profile of the old-time Black Hills prospector to a tee. He’s a little gruff and rough, a little grizzly and a lot evasive when you talk gold. We’re sure of his knowledge as to where to find gold; we’re not so sure of his ability to stake a claim and hold it!

We have a claim on Rapid Creek. We found that claim about eight years ago using BLM to verify it was available. The problem was that a sign on the property stated it was already claimed. We checked at the county… yes, a location certificate had been filed in May. It was June.
We checked again at BLM, but it hadn’t been filed there yet. That’s okay, you’ve got 90 days from date of location to file with BLM.

We kindof forgot about it… already staked. Then one day 90+ days hence, we decided to check again with BLM. Hadn’t been filed!

What we found was this. The party who had the claim located did the same thing each year. He’d file a location certificate with the county each year which held the claim for 90 days. He never followed up with BLM.

We obtained the claim by locating in April of the following spring!

A friend of this guy must have taken his advice! We helped a group of friends find a claim on California Gulch last year, or was it two years ago! We had an eye on adjacent Friday Gulch for ourselves.
Winter arrived and we didn’t get to the area that fall. The following spring we couldn’t make it down that way but asked a friend, in exchange for including him on the claim, to take a location certificate with him, make discovery and hang paper.

We found out a month or so later he never made it, wasn’t interested.

We finally made it to Friday Gulch despite some wrong turns, engines overheating, weather allowing!
What we saw when we got there made our hearts stand still. Rim-to-rim of the gulch there were signs posted, “Mineral trespass”. At first we were disheartened – a wasted trip. Then we started thinking… BLM showed no claims here since 2005. Is it a valid claim? If it is… it’s gotta be 160 acres (maximum allowed) plus!

We found he had filed a 40-acre claim in June with the county. So we just worked around that 40 acres! We posted a location certificate. When the 90 days was up and he hadn’t filed at BLM, we helped some friends stake more claims!

So let us take a look… if you know specifically where you want a claim we might be able to find one of these exceptions for you!

We’ve still got an excellent location available in a highly acclaimed gold region… we need at 4-wheel drive! Wanna trade? Maybe your car dealer might want a claim? Email us at hillshistory1876@gmail.com

Location... certificates!

        We’ve created several hundred location certificates. It all started with a large claim block in the Tinton region in the late 1980’s  .

        We’ve looked at a bunch of certificates also… they range from pretty straightforward (a minority) to so vague or so contradictory that it is mind boggling!

        This past week was just one example of many… the claim location didn’t have a clear starting point for the claim and it just got worse as vague directions left us wondering not only where does it start but where does it end!

        A phone call to the Bureau of Land Management confirmed what we had concluded, “Go with what’s on the ground.  If there’s nothing on the ground go with the map!”  Many trips to the area had already confirmed that there is nothing on the ground.

        Technically that makes the claim invalid, but we try to be good stewards and don’t really want to take the time or spend the money to fight it in court! 

        We’ll take a minute here to urge claimholders to have their location certificate on the claim as required, to mark corners of their claim with substantial posts (not PVC pipe please!), and post a copy of current affidavit of assessment.  Contrary to our frequent complaint of claim jumpers, it does slow the tide to a somewhat manageable trickle! 

The old-timers didn’t want to do that… they didn’t want the “rushers” to swarm onto their claim!  Technology is such these days that not only is it wise to have your claim posted, you may be challenged based on various factors if it isn’t!

        Now we fall back on the map which was created and filed in the 1970’s.  I guess there must not have been townships, ranges and sections at that time J because the map shows none of the above!  A good tie point to start description of your claim is a section corner or an existing benchmark… not a bridge on a road that floods and is re-built every few years, not (like the old-timers did) from the corner of the local sawmill or cabin or blazed tree!  Luckily, again, we are familiar with the area, the roads, the creek…

        From this map we were able to verify that not only was the claim we were researching for a friend available, we were able to see another 20-acre claim is possible! 

Interested?  We’re between a rock and a hard place here.  We can’t locate any more claims under our name because we want to maintain small miner status.  Also, we desperately need a reliable 4-wheel drive vehicle to take the resident grandkids to and from school!  Email details of the vehicle to hillshistory@gmail.com if you want information on locating this available claim and we’ll start discussion on a trade!   We won’t disclose location here, but there’s a year-round creek, gravel bars, proven gold because we’ve panned there.  If certain parties knew of the location it would be advertised as two 10-acre claims at $20,000 each! We’re willing to guide you through the claim process at this location.

        We urge anyone with old locations to contact us.  A location certificate can be amended within certain criteria and filed for a few dollars.  That sure beats the cost of a court battle!

        My brother asked me this past week if, with warm temps and creeks breaking through the ice, I was doing any panning?  I just shivered! 

The pleasure and reality of prospecting....

Creekside... no way!  Deep hillside diggings.

    We seem to be experiencing a little winter… temps hover around the 20s and 30s for a high each day.  We’ve also been getting a little snow here and there… not enough to really slow things down but enough to make you shiver when you go out to run errands!

        Here and there on the internet and among friends we see explanations of “why we look for gold.”  The consistent thread seems to be a difficulty of expressing the why… it’s not for money, it’s not for fame.  It’s like playing golf, or gardening, or hunting.  All I can contribute, I think, is that it’s for the experience!

        My sister, who doesn’t prospect, expresses the feeling of us who enjoy being here and "experiencing" life or even a visit to the Hills.  She refers to the simple pleasure of,“a beautiful view each day of God’s magnificent creations, the Black Hills, the South Dakota prairie and the sun rising beside Bear Butte.” A special hug of appreciation for this sister who lost her husband the past weekend.

         A friend and customer of our website and blog reminded me this past week of something I want every Black Hills prospector to think about. We were discussing an available claim that has limited creek access but some really promising hillside diggings. This person is not a veteran prospector but has read enough information to respond: “Your find is exciting, having enough of the creek for sluicing would be great since it sounds like there is plenty diggings and gravels to work with. And as you have mentioned in your blog and I have read in old books about placer mining, a big section of creek is not always where it’s at.”

        We understand a beautiful, gurgling creek as a backdrop for a wonderful weekend in the Hills.  However… the creeks have been worked repeatedly, by each generation since the gold rush.  The really good gold was “picked” out of the creek by Johnny and like gold rushers who were the first to work a creek.

        Throughout our research we find reference to dry diggings, diverting water, hauling gravel to creeks.  These guys were using donkeys, carts, digging ditches and still felt the gold justified the work!  The modern day prospector in this age of 4-wheel drive, 4-wheelers, established roads and trails, recirculating equipment such as highbankers, spiral panners… has no excuse to sit on a worked-out creek and complain of no gold!  Like our friend said… that’s not where it’s at!

        There are acres and acres of dry diggings out there, many documented as serious finds… think about it!

'A' Mine names

We’ve had a mild winter here… especially compared to last year when blizzards started before Thanksgiving and seemed like they didn’t stop until May when it modified to rain!
Our temps hover in the teens today, but our low of -2
degrees F could easily be the high temp for the day this time of year!

I used some excerpts from an old document about Black Hills mine names a few weeks ago.

Some of these names are well known… there were a few that we hadn’t heard or we found a cross reference that helped us solve a few of the mysteries we encounter.

Here’s a sample of names and their origin:
*Addie Mine (Pennington Co., gold) was discovered in the 1890s by John Remington, who later established a hardware store in Hermosa. He named the mine for his daughter, Addie, the only girl in a family of six.
*Adelphi Mine (Lawrence Co., gold and silver) was located July 7, 1881, by Charles Miller and A. Danielson. The origin of the name is believed to be that of a society of which both partners were members.
*African Mine (see Grant Mine).
*Ajax Mine (Lawrence Co., gold) derived its name directly from Greek mythology.
*Alpha Mine (Lawrence Co., gold) was located May 12, 1876 by James Wolsay, a Californian, W.E. Jones and M.V. Roland. The Alpha was the first quartz mine discovered in Lawrence County and consequently was given the name of the first letter in the Greek alphabet.
*Apex Mine (Lawrence Co., gold) was located in 1878 by High and Thomas McGovern and was named because it lies on a ridge near the head of Nevada Gulch.
We’ve visited the name *Aurora Mine before, scene of the murder of Cephas Tuttle. At the time the mine was discovered, there was a brilliant display of the northern lights, or aurora borealis.

We like unique names and often incorporate them into claim names… the Backyardiggan was a fun one when the grandkids watched the same-named show about dinosaur and gold hunting in the Black Hills. Several claims of ours are named as private jokes (I’m guessing they’ll go down in history as no origin known for the name). There’s gonna be a few people who know that the Bronco and Bronco II are named in reference to a friend who preferred to buy a Bronco over staking a claim… and then there’s the Section 8 (that’s a story worthy of a campfire and a beer at the end of a long day of sluicing!).

I’ll share some more names another day… you can see I only made it through the As today!

So to wind it all up, when a normal winter would have had us shivering for weeks now, we’ve been enjoying more days in the 40s than around 0. We look at January and February as the months for coldest temps, so being more than ½ way through January and the short month of Feburary ahead of us, it looks as if we’ll make it through another winter!

Setting up a sluice...



An easy set-up... plenty of water but not too much; a couple
flat rocks build in drop!



 　

How long does it take you to set up your sluice… so it’s actually working right?

We’ve experienced every problem imaginable: too much water, too little water, no drop, too much drop, flow fluctuation… it boils down to experience and knowing your equipment.

Now I could take from 15 minutes to 2 hours to properly set up a sluice… that’s because Bob usually takes care of it and I am virtually inexperienced. He usually takes about 15 minutes under almost any condition to get us up and running.

Here is Bob’s step-by-step on locating a sluice spot and setting up:

We let the deposit dictate location within 20-30 feet up or downstream. If you’re lucky enough to have drop, placement of bottom rocks and rocks under funnel help stabilize. The trick is to keep the end of the sluice just contacting the water. Sometimes that’s hard to achieve, resulting in flooding of last couple riffles. This requires more manual labor cleaning out tailings from end of box.

I usually throw a small shovel of fine gravels/sands to see if the box cleans out property and if it is level from side to side. Material should wash uniformly across the funnel and riffles. If you need more drop, raise the funnel if you can. Try to drop the bottom of the box as little as possible because it will create a larger load for tailings removal.

The box is in place… if water is low, slight channeling can easily divert flows into the box. Fill in around the funnel and put enough rock/dirt in front of funnel (level with funnel) to seal leaks under the funnel. If water is high, raise box with larger rocks and anchor. A couple of good-sized rocks where the funnel and box meet will keep the sluice box from drifting off! Allow water to continue leaks under and around funnel if you don’t need the extra flow. If creek is running strong, find an area where channel comes to a riffle for set-up.

That’s the word from Bob… happy sluicing!

Mine names...

　

We seem to have attracted several history buffs to our website and blog… which brings up the question of how much undiscovered history of the Black Hills is still out there, maybe in a family album, a box of old documents tucked in the back of the attic?

We are not looking to buy artifacts, but we’d sure love to photograph them! Did your prospector ancestor keep a journal or photo album, have maps of old workings? That could be scanned or photographed!
Quite often someone tells us, “You should talk to ‘Joe‘, his dad worked in all the old mines!” We’re not real aggressive people, and unless they want to introduce us we’re not comfortable going door-to-door soliciting mining memorabilia!

But… there’s always more isn’t there? If you know of someone, or are someone who treasures this memorabilia and would be willing to have it documented, we would love to hear from you.
Please get permission from the individual before contacting us. It would then be up to their discretion if they wanted the information made public on our website or if they just wish to have it documented.

Funny how life works…I had started this blog and we were at Spearfish Coins and Antiques talking with Dean about mining, past and present, in the Black Hills.

He walked over, pulled out a binder and showed us a report someone had given him about Mine Names in the Black Hills. Bob kindof elbowed me when I said we have offered to document (copy or scan) old documents. Dean then graciously told us we could borrow the report if we wanted to copy it! I’ve seen bits and pieces of this before, but acquiring a copy gives time to really READ it!

Here is just a teaser of some of that info that I am in the proesss of scanning and transcribing:


“Mine names differ from other place-names in several particulars. In the first place, they are attached to a comparatively small territory. A butte may be seen for miles and a creek or river may cross several counties, but the name of a mine designates a few hundred square yards of earth. Again, a canyon or river is of vital interest to a number of people who perhaps depend on the one for shelter and the other for water. A mine, on the other hand, is of principal interest to one or, at most, a few men. It follows that the name of a natural feature often represents the general consensus or opinion on the part of a whole community, while a mine is frequently named by one person. It is therefore much more difficult to trace the origin of mine names then that of other place-names. The owner of the mine may have died or moved away; the mine itself may have been abandoned for many years, the very location of it choked with underbrush. The reason for the naming may be buried in the forgotten annals of pioneer days. Obviously the best source of information regarding mine names lies in the memory of old-timers. But these sources do not always agree. Sometimes the very location of the mine is in doubt. In one case the owner of a mine committed suicide in a state of despondency over its prospects, and the chances for discovering his reason for naming it are exceedingly slim.”

Couldn’t have said it better! So please email us if you know someone or are in possession of historic information… we want to help preserve mining history for ourselves and others!