Through the Heart of South Dakota’s Black Hills

South Dakota’s Black Hills are so full of ghost towns you'd need a week of back country exploration to find even 10% of the 1200 ghost town sites that are said to populate the pine forests of these historic hills. This rundown is just a brief foray into what this historic region has to offer.

North of Custer, a busy tourist-oriented town of 1700+ people, we headed north on US 16/385, the main north-south highway through the Black Hills. It connects Deadwood and Custer via a scenic and historic 60-mile drive. Just north of the Pennington Co. line, at mile 8.3, is the site of the OREVILLE CCC CAMP. This is one of several Civilian Conservation Corps campsites we passed on this tour. These camps were active in the mid 1930s, and housed as many as several hundred people.

On the west side of the highway a half-mile north of the historic marker is an abandoned, weather-beaten green mill building. This is all that remains of OREVILLE, an 1890 tin-mining town that never amounted to much. The green structure is an old beryllium processing plant.

5.3 miles north of Oreville is the busy little town of HILL CITY. Here we left the main highway, and turned northwest on Forest Road (FR) 231, a sometimes paved, sometimes graded dirt byway.

5.2 miles northwest of Hill City is TIGERVILLE, nothing more than a collection of scattered mobile homes and recent vintage cabins at the junction of FR 231 and FR 17. In 1880 Tiger City had 200 people, a post office and a couple general stores. Its mines included the King Solomon, the Bengal Tiger and Lucky Tiger.

In a pasture 2.7 miles north of Redfern, the site of the MYSTIC CCC CAMP F-1 is marked by a stone slab west of the road. This camp was home to 200 people, and was in operation from June 29, 1933 until January 6, 1938.

CASTLETON is located 2.6 miles north of the CCC camp, and is the site of an active ranch and several newer homes. Like Redfern and Tigerville, nothing of the old days remains. Castleton was an early placer mining camp, and endured several boom-bust cycles as the placers faded in and out, the railroad came and went, and a dredge reworked the placers. The site was first mined in 1876, when the population jumped to 200. A number of structures remained until the 1920s.

Three miles north of Castleton, is MYSTIC. After several "barren" sites, I wasn't prepared for this neat little ghost. To the east of the road, a small dirt road drops into a meadow where several abandoned structures stand in the tall grass and wildflowers. Off to the east are the foundations of other buildings such as the lumberyard, lumber mill and railroad station.

On the main road, two recent summer homes stand guard over the McCahan Memorial chapel, store foundation, ice house (now a garage), chemical shed, granary, assay office, and blacksmith shop. In the lower part of the town, a large historical marker board pinpoints the various structures for the visitor. This is one of the towns featured in my newest book, GHOST TOWNS: Yesterday & Today^TM^.

Six miles further northwest is the town of ROCHFORD. This tiny town of 25 people is mentioned in almost every book or article dealing with the Black Hills. Today, the downtown core of half occupied structures consists only of an old store, two saloons and a modern modular unit serving as the community center. Friendly dogs and equally friendly people meander its main street while the old store sells cold ice cream cones to weary ghost towners!

Established in early 1877 and named after its founder M. D. Rochford, the gold mining town of Rochford quickly boomed, and by 1880 had 500 people and a solid business district. Twenty years later less than 50 folks remained, along with the post office.

North of Rochford on FR 17 at mile 7.0 (just north of the county line), is the junction with FR 206 and the site of NAHANT (Lawrence Co.). This lumbering and mining town dates to the 1890s when about 500 people lived here. Today only an old house and lots of greenery remain.

Three miles north of Nahant is the barren and unmarked site of DUMONT. I was unable to locate it, but maybe you can have better luck. It was located in the NE 1/4, Sec. 7, T3N, R3E, and was another small lumbering camp/railroad shipping center dating to the 1890s.

Two miles north of Dumont is the junction with FR 196. That road heads west, passing Hanna. We didn't turn there, but continued north, reached US 85, and then turned southwest towards Cheyenne Crossing, and Spearfish Canyon.

HANNA is at the midway point of the six-mile detour that loops back to Cheyenne Crossing. It dates to the establishment of a pumping plant for the Homestake Mining Co. in 1904. Several buildings are reported to remain.

Cheyenne Crossing is at the junction of FR 196, US 14, and US 85, at a point eight miles southwest of Lead. Here US 14, runs downhill along Spearfish Creek past the sites of several old ghost sites that I was unable to locate.

A full day of ghosttowning had ended, and I was a happy camper. Personally I would have liked to have visited more sites with standing buildings, but traveling through the heart of the Black Hills with its 1200 or so ghosts, I realized that I barely scratched the surface of what is available. In this old boy's book, the day ended successfully, and another chapter in Ghost Town USA could be written.

This was our GHOST TOWN OF THE MONTH for November 2003.

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FIRST POSTED: November 01, 2003

LAST UPDATED: July 01, 2017

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