Second Deadwood Gold Discovery

Two miles up the gulch from its companion, this bronze marks the claim the Lardner party staked on November 9, 1875, steered here by John Pearson, who had prospected downstream with Frank Bryant that August. Bryant's men staked their own claim a day earlier, and neither party knew the other was so close: the gulch between them was choked with fallen timber. That thicket gave the camp its name. The plaque dates Deadwood's laying out to April 28, 1876; its companion of the same year says April 26.

What the plaque says

Second Deadwood Gold Discovery Near this point in 1875 occurred the second of two initial gold discoveries in the Deadwood area. It was made by the Lardner party of eight prospectors, steered here by John B. Pearson, a man already familiar with Deadwood Gulch. Their "Discovery Claim" was staked near this spot on November 9. The narrow gulch from here to Deadwood proved fabulously rich in placer gold -- by far the richest in the Black Hills. Pearson had been prospecting two miles downstream in August with the Frank Bryant party. Bryant and two others returned in November to their August find, and located their "Discovery Claim" on November 8, just one day before Pearson and Lardner. Neither party knew the other was nearby--the gulch between was so completely choked with dead wood. By January 1, 1876, fifty miners were working Deadwood Gulch with an average take of $10.00 per day, and by January 5 the entire gulch was occupied by mining claims. The Deadwood gold rush began in 1875 but residents celebrate the Days of '76 because the city of Deadwood was laid out on April 28, 1876, and because the great rush of miners into Deadwood came in the spring of 1876. By August 1876 combined digging and building had produced a city resembling a "heap of lemon boxes propped up on broomsticks." In the century since 1876 the Lead-Deadwood mining district has produced gold estimated at over $800,000,000. Erected 1976 by the Lawrence County Historical Society, the South Dakota Department of Transportation and the South Dakota State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Homestake Open Cut & Sanford Lab Visitor Center — 1.3 mi
  A 1,250-foot pit on Lead's Main Street, the visible top of a gold mine that went down 8,000 feet in 125 years and is a physics laboratory now.
• Deadwood Historic District — 1.5 mi
  A gold-rush town on treaty land, rebuilt in brick after the 1879 fire and rescued a century later by a vote to let casinos pay for its preservation.
• Mount Moriah Cemetery — 1.6 mi
  The hillside where Deadwood moved its dead: Wild Bill and Calamity Jane side by side, Seth Bullock looking at his friend's tower, and the Chinese burner of 1908.
• Spearfish Canyon — 8.6 mi
  A limestone canyon nineteen miles long whose waterfalls ran dry for most of a century while the Homestake piped their water to its power plants.

More markers nearby

• First Deadwood Gold Discovery — 2.3 mi
• Preacher Smith of Deadwood Gulch — 3.1 mi
• Henry Weston Smith — 3.1 mi
• 1940 DAR Penny Pines Forest — 4.5 mi