First Deadwood Gold Discovery

Near this point in 1875 occurred the first of two initial gold discoveries in the Deadwood area. The more accepted account of the discovery states that in late August, 1875 a party consisting of Frank Bryant, John B. Pearson, Thomas Moore, Richard Low, James Pierman, Sam Blodgett, and George Hauser located gold deposits here paying twenty to forty cents to the pan and built a cabin.

Bryant and a party left to prospect other areas, then returned in early November. On November 8, 1875, Bryant, Henry Coder and William Cudney staked out a ‘Discovery Claim’ just east of the cabin built in August, at the mouth of Spruce Gulch. By January 1, 1876, 50 miners were working Deadwood Gulch with an average take of $10 per day, and on January 5 the entire gulch was occupied by mining claims.

Thus the Deadwood gold rush began in 1875. Residents, however, celebrate the Days of ’76 because the city of Deadwood was laid out by April 26, 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 Deadwood-Lead mining district has produced gold estimated at over $800,000,000.