Gold in the Black Hills drew the rush of 1876 — and one of the richest mines in American history.
The people in this story fill our public-record database. Search a surname and filter to South Dakota.
Search South Dakota records →The rush of 1876
When gold was confirmed in the Black Hills, prospectors poured into Sioux treaty land, and Deadwood exploded into a lawless boomtown — the world of Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane — almost overnight.
The Homestake Mine
At Lead, the Homestake Mine became one of the largest and deepest gold mines in the Western Hemisphere, operating for over a century and drawing Cornish, Scandinavian, and Eastern European miners into company life.
Settling the rest of the state
While the Hills drew miners, eastern South Dakota filled with German-Russian and Scandinavian homesteaders farming the prairie — two very different frontiers inside one state.
Finding your South Dakota ancestors
- Company, union, and census occupation records tie a family to this industry — start with the occupation column and the local company’s payroll and union rolls.
- Census records (free through 1950) list occupation and residence — placing your family in a specific South Dakota county and town, decade by decade.
- Death & cemetery records — search our South Dakota database for the people in this story and the generations around them.
- The South Dakota State Historical Society in Pierre holds the deeper collections — company, church, military, and county records.
- Newspapers on the Library of Congress’s Chronicling America carried the obituaries, accidents, and milestones of these communities.
We work back from you to the ancestor who lived this history — census, vital, church, and cemetery records, written into a book and an interactive family site. Flat rate, no DNA test.
See how it works →Frequently asked questions
When was the Black Hills gold rush?
It began in 1876 after gold was confirmed in the Black Hills, drawing thousands of prospectors and creating boomtowns like Deadwood.
What was the Homestake Mine?
A gold mine at Lead, South Dakota that became one of the largest and deepest in the Western Hemisphere, operating from 1876 until 2002.