We ate breakfast at the Lee Street Station in Deadwood. It was a converted Phillips 66 gas station and it was good food. It also took awhile to get served due to its obvious popularity.
After breakfast, we visited the Adams Museum. This is a museum dedicated to Deadwood and the Badlands.
We then strolled down Main Street Deadwood and visited some of the shops we missed yesterday. It was around 10:00 am, but the streets were mostly deserted.
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| Our Hotel Room. Building on left, second floor, corner room with shade mostly closed |
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| The Hickok Hotel front |
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| The current No 10 Saloon |
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| The original location of the No 10 Saloon where Wild Bill was shot |
We then got the car and drove off to Leads (pronounced "leeds"). This is the home of George Hearst's Homestead Mine. It is only about 3 miles west of Deadwood, but about 1,000 feet higher.
Upon arrival in Leads, we stopped at the Black Hills Mining Museum and took the tour. In their basement, they have an extensive reproduction of the Homestead Mine. This was built back in the 1980's when liability concerns forced them to stop tours through the actual mine. Before ending mining operations in 2001, the mine had reached a depth of over 8,000 feet with shafts and drifts totally over 400 miles. Between 1876 and 2001, over 41 million ounces of gold had been recovered from 167 million tons of rock. On average, it took over 4 tons of extracted rock to generate one ounce of gold.
Then we went to the site of the Homestead Mine open pit. Surprising to me was the fact that the majority of the surface mining was done in the last twenty years of the mines operation, i.e., between 1983 and 2001. Between 1880 and 1983, the mining operations were all below ground.
After the mine was shut down, the Sanford laboratory was given the opportunity to use the extensive facilities to build their neutrino collection system. This research facility continues to operate today.
When finished in Lead, it was only about 1:00 pm, so we decided to drive off to Spearfish taking the scenic route over the Terry Peak Summit (6,200 feet) and down through the Spearfish canyon. It was a beautiful drive. Spearfish is at an elevation about 1,000 feet below Deadwood (~3,500 feet). Once there, we drove through town and decided to visit the D. C. Booth Historical Fish Hatchery. It was very interesting and the only historical hatchery in the country.
Trout are not native to the Black Hills and were imported from eggs gathered from trout in Yellowstone National Park.
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| Trout |
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| The Booth Home |
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| Replica of the No 3 Fish Train |
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| The boat used to harvest trout eggs in Yellowstone |
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| Lots of BIG trout (Brown, Rainbow, Cutthroat, Brook) |
We got back to Deadwood around 4:00 pm. We went to the hotel and relaxed for a bit before going across the street to the Legend Steakhouse in the Franklin Hotel. T had a 24 oz bone-in prime rib plus a salad plus a 6 oz lobster tail plus a loaded baked potato. I had a 14 oz rib eye plus salad plus loaded baked potato. We split a platter of bang-bang shrimp as a starter. Needless to say, neither of us were able to eat it all. T brought part of her prime rib to the room.
Tomorrow we check out of the Hickok Hotel and head toward Billings, MT. On the way, we plan to swing by the Devil's Tower in Wyoming and then the Montana Pictograph Cave State Park outside of Billings.
