July 17, 2012 Deadwood & Lead, South Dakota

These two towns are gold mining towns deep in the Black Hills of South Dakota. It was a rainy, thundery kind of day so we went to a mine museum and there Bubba finally got a chance to pan for gold!











The Homestake Gold Mine operated for 125 years before it had to close because the cost of getting out the gold was higher than the price of gold - back when it was $300 an ounce. They sold the mine to the State of South Dakota with the provisio that it would never be mined for gold again. I bet there are some regrets about that now, since there is still quite a bit of gold down there.....











The last photo is one small end of what's dalled the Homestake Open Cut Mine. The underground portion of the mine goes 8000 ft. deep. Over 40 million ounces of gold were produced between 1877 and 2001.











The last stop for this day was Mt. Moriah Cemetery, located on a mountainside and the final resting place of Wild Bill Hickock and Calamity Jane. This place had a lot of old-old graves, and an abundance of chipmunks!