Hill City, a century-old mining camp-turned-tourism mecca, is ideally located in the heart of the region’s most popular destinations. Gold panning, fairburn agates, and searchin the hills for unique and interesting rocks an dminerals is still a unique way to spend a vacation for visitors.
The earliest recorded discoveries of mineral resources in the Missouri River West area were made by explorers in 1875, who alerted the general public to deposits of gold in the northwestern Black Hills. Coal discoveries were first reported in 1877, just northwest of the Black Hills. By 1928, the gross value of coal production in the Missouri River West area was reported at $31 million. Most of the coal found in the Wyoming part of the Black Hills was used by railroads to power their coal-fired steam engines. Other minerals that have since been discovered and mined in the region have included mica, silver, tin, tungsten, quartz, iron and petroleum.
It has been gold, however, that has proven to be the area's greatest lure and has accounted for around two-thirds of the total mineral production in the Black Hills. Although numerous reports regarding the existence of gold in the Black Hills had been floating around along the 'moccasin grapevine', it was Lieutenant G.K. Warren who supplied the first official statement of its existence after he had commanded an expedition of western Dakota in 1857. Further official reports followed, but it wasn't until the government had sent out Lieutenant Colonel G.A. Custer on an expedition through the Hills, in 1874, to investigate communication routes and possible military posts and which found gold, that the rush to the Black Hills began in earnest.
Area Chamber of Commerce
