Thomas Johnston Grier

Seven weeks before he died, Grier spent most of two days on the witness stand in Lead. From August 2 to 4, 1914, members of the federal Commission on Industrial Relations took testimony here, and he walked them through every benefit Homestake gave: free hospital care, an employee aid fund, the library and the new recreation building. Chairman John R. Commons called it the most remarkable business organization he had come across in the country. Commissioner Austin Garretson called it a despotism, benevolent though it may be. Grier pleaded guilty to benevolence in a high degree.

What the plaque says

To the Memory of Thomas Johnston Grier Born at Pakenham, Ontario, Canada, May 18th, 1850 Died at Los Angeles, California, September 22nd, 1914. Superintendent Homestake Properties 1884 to 1914 Erected by Homestake employees, Homestake Mining Co., Hearst Mercantile Co., citizens of Lead and the Black Hills, friends and business acquaintances.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Homestake Open Cut & Sanford Lab Visitor Center — 0.4 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 — 2.7 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 — 2.8 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 — 7.9 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

• Second Deadwood Gold Discovery — 1.4 mi
• First Deadwood Gold Discovery — 3.6 mi
• Preacher Smith of Deadwood Gulch — 4.5 mi
• Henry Weston Smith — 4.5 mi