Homestake Mining Company

Lore & Background

The Homestake deposit was discovered in 1876 by settlers Fred and Moses Manuel, Alex Engh, and Hank Harney during the Black Hills Gold Rush. The Black Hills had been guaranteed to the Lakota Nation by the Fort Laramie Treaty, but the land was stolen for its gold. George Hearst reached Deadwood in October 1877 and took control of the mine property. Hearst consolidated and enlarged the property by fair and foul means.

He bought out some adjacent claims, and secured others in the courts. Hearst purchased newspapers in Deadwood to influence public opinion, and an opposing newspaper editor was physically attacked on a Deadwood street. By the time Hearst left the Black Hills in March 1879, he had added claims including Giant, Golden Star, Netty, May Booth, Golden Star No. 2, Crown Point, Sunrise, and General Ellison to the original two claims, totaling 30 acres. The ten-stamp mill had become 200, and 500 employees worked in the mine, mills, offices and shops.

Reader's Guide

The Homestake Mining Company was the corporate entity that operated the Homestake Mine in Lead, South Dakota. Key figures include George Hearst, who took control in 1877, and partners Lloyd Tevis and James Ben Ali Haggin. Arthur De Wint Foote worked as an engineer. Hearst owned the Boulder Ditch and water rights to Whitewood Creek, monopolizing the region, and his railroad, the Black Hills & Fort Pierre Railroad, gave him access to eastern Dakota Territory.

The mine used compressed air locomotives by 1901, fully replacing mules and horses by the 1920s. Charles Washington Merrill introduced cyanidization to augment mercury-amalgamation, achieving 94 percent gold recovery. The gold was shipped to the Denver Mint. The mine ceased production at the end of 2001 due to low gold prices, poor ore quality, and high costs.

The mine later became the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF), hosting experiments like LUX, the Majorana Demonstrator, and DUNE.

Did You Know?

• The Homestake Mine was the site where the solar neutrino problem was first discovered, in what is known as the Homestake Experiment, conducted by Raymond Davis Jr. in the mid-1960s.
• The mine produced more than forty million troy ounces of gold during its lifetime, about 2,500 cubic feet or roughly 18,677 US gallons.
• A disastrous fire struck the mine on March 25, 1907, which took forty days to extinguish after the mine was flooded.
• The mine released arsenic into the Cheyenne River for decades, and although the area was designated a Superfund site, water was still contaminated in 2017.