Context for Historic Mining Resources in the Black Hills and South Dakota: A Guide for Identification, Interpretation and Evaluating Eligibility to the National Register of Historic Places
Mountain States Historical, Fell J, Twitty E. 2010. Context for Historic Mining Resources in the Black Hills and South Dakota: A Guide for Identification, Interpretation and Evaluating Eligibility to the National Register of Historic Places. South Dakota State Historic Preservation Office
From chapter 1: "The historian Watson Parker caught the region well. "Out of the sea of grass which waves from the Missouri to the Rockies," he wrote, there "rises an island of mystery, promise, and adventure, the Black Hills of Dakota and Wyoming." They lie between the Belle Fourche River and the various southern forks of the Cheyenne River and at some points tower more than 4,000 feet over the grassy high plains - meaning that they are some 7,000 feet above sea level. Thick forests of pine cover the hills at every point, and while they are essentially green in color, they look black from a distance -which led to their name -the Black Hills. [Watson Parker, Gold in the Black Hills (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1966), 3.] Nobody knows when mining began in the Black Hills. Most likely, ancient Indian peoples traveling through the region spied the first gold, saw the first silver-lead outcrops, and picked up the first tin minerals, but metals, mines, and metallurgy of any sort do not appear to have been part of the early cultures in the region. And the first Europeans in the area, the French in the early 1740s, reported no mining of gold or anything else, although reports of shining or glistening mountains in the great sea of grass began to attract interest, and by the early 19th century, chroniclers of the region began to mention the presence of gold and silver, although no one had confirmed these reports. [Parker 6-8]" Funding for this project was provided in part through a 2009 Historic Preservation Fund grant to the South Dakota State Historic Preservation Office (project number SD-09-027, grant number 46-09-21847) administered by the State, Tribal, and Local Plans and Grants Division, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior.
- Type
- Generic Document
- Authors
- Mountain States Historical; Fell, Jay; Twitty, Eric
- Date of Issue
- 2010
- Publisher
- South Dakota State Historic Preservation Office
- Units
- HPF
- Keywords
- Historic Context Statements