The History
During the 1870s, one of North America’s last major gold rushes took place in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The town of Deadwood became legendary as the gold rush camp where Wild Bill Hickok was murdered; while the Homestake Mining Company, in nearby Lead, was destined to be the deepest, longest operating and most profitable gold mine in the Western Hemisphere.
Deadwood’s Adams Museum, founded in 1930, became the repository for thousands of documents related to the history of the Black Hills. The Homestake Gold Mine, as the driving economic engine in the region for 126 years, meticulously saved hundreds of thousands of records related to operating the largest single producer of low-grade ore for gold bullion in history.
The two worlds--the museum and the mine--converged in 2005 when Barrick Gold Corporation donated the Homestake Mining Company archival records to the Adams Museum.