Without any planning or announcement, towns suddenly sprang up within days when gold was discovered in the Black Hills.  Suddenly, tents and small shacks were established where recently only trees, bushes, rocks, and grass could be found.

Herbert Schell, in his History of South Dakota wrote:  “An estimated ten thousand people were drawn to the Black Hills between November 15, 1875, and March 1, 1876 . . . . the townsite was covered with a number of tents and hastily built log cabins.”

He reported that: “Prospectors reached Deadwood Gulch in the northern part of the Black Hills as early as August, 1875, but it was not until the end of the year that they located rich deposits . . . . When news of the rich discoveries reached the southern camps in May, there was a stampede that almost depopulated Custer City.  The Spring Creek diggings were so completely abandoned that Hill City was left for a time with a population of one.”

The mining activities in the northern hills was heavily concentrated within a ten-mile radius of Deadwood.  By the end of 1876, at least twenty thousand people had been enticed to the area.  The city of Deadwood was organized on April 26, 1876.

With the sudden and unexpected arrival of thousands of new residents in the northern Black Hills, a plan and system had to be developed to provide the necessary food supplies, resources, materials, and mining equipment necessary to meet their needs.

In the early days of gold mining in the Black Hills, there were no railroads in South Dakota west of the Missouri River.  In 1875, the railroad had only reached the South Dakota communities of Vermillion, Gary, Yankton, and Watertown.  It was not until 1880 that the railroad reached Chamberlain and Pierre.  In 1885, the railroad from Chadron (Nebraska) reached Buffalo Gap and in 1886 it steamed in to Rapid City.  A year later it reached Whitewood.  In 1890, Deadwood finally had a railroad.

Both the Northwestern and Milwaukee railroad had reached the Missouri River by 1880.  However, they were precluded from extending their lines further west by the Great Sioux Reservation between the Missouri and Black Hills.

The “Dakota Boom” had subsided and there was less pressure to continue building westward from the Missouri River.  Consequently, rail lines leading into the Black Hills were constructed through Nebraska.  It was not until 1905 that the Dakota lines began serious preparation to build to the Black Hills.

In the meantime, those prospectors and others who came to the Black Hills in the mid-1870s needed to be provided with provisions, clothing, supplies, and mining equipment.  To meet this need the “Fort Pierre to Deadwood Trail” was established which stretched for about two-hundred miles from Fort Pierre in Dakota Territory to Deadwood and the goldfields in the Black Hills.

This trail was originally established by fur traders as access between the Black Hills and the Missouri River.  Later, it became an important thoroughfare for fortune-seekers after the Black Hills Expedition’s discovery of gold in 1874.

The movement of supplies into the Black Hills started with the beginning of the gold rush.  Railway towns nearby promptly realized the benefits from the traffic in provisions and supplies which would flow through the main routes into the remote Black Hills.

The rivalry was especially keen between Sioux City and Yankton.  Their business interests used the overland route from Fort Pierre.  In August of 1876 they shipped their freight by steamboat to Fort Pierre.  Other hopefuls for a share of the business were Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Sidney, Nebraska — both located on the Union Pacific.

During the winter months, the route through Sidney was favored until the Northwestern railroad reached Pierre in 1890.  It was then that the Fort Pierre to Deadwood trail was used primarily by hundreds of “Bullwhackers” as they moved tons of supplies and materials to Deadwood.  This was a rough and rugged route that often required every ounce of strength which those twenty oxen possessed to pull their three wagons.

In the summer of 1899, several individuals brought to Pierre what they called a motorized wagon (automobile) which had been secured from a foundry in the east.  To test its usefulness, they decided to drive this contraption to Deadwood.

It is too bad that we were not all there to witness this experiment which they hoped would demonstrate its usefulness in traveling across the prairie.  After leaving Fort Pierre and going west, they quickly found out that the vehicle was unable to climb the hills on the trail to Deadwood.  The power of the engine was insufficient to overcome the challenge of those steep hills.  It was OK on the fairly level prairie, but those hills were something else!

The owners of the automobile hoped to exhibit it at the nearby fairs later that summer.  The plan was to make a profit by charging passengers to ride in the first motorized vehicle in South Dakota.  However, everywhere the authorities were hostile to the plan.

Both Mitchell and Yankton refused to allow the car within their city limits.  The editor of the Yankton Press and Dakotan wrote:

“It is a dead moral certainty that that infernal machine will frighten horses and endanger the lives of men, women, and children.”

 

Author Clarence Shoemaker, originally published in the Gregory Times-Advocate on July 6, 2022