After four wonderful nights at our camping spot in the Black Hills, we decided it was time to go to town. We were running low on a few essential items like toilet paper and Oreos😁 So, we got out the wash bucket, heated up the last of our water and cleaned ourselves up, we felt like the old trappers going to Rendevous, packed our stuff and headed to Custer, SD to stock up.
We hit all the important spots in town: we wandered the aisles of the grocery store choosing our staples and treats for the next week, snuck into a state park to refill our 5 gallon water jugs, sat outside the town library for free wifi so we could pay bills, order some things off the internet to pick-up at a later post office and reload books onto our tablets, treated ourselves at the local bakery, and hit the nearest lake for a swim with the fisherman, who were not at all thrilled to have us there.
Now to the most important part of our day, choosing a new camping spot. As you can tell by the map in the previous post there is a lot to choose from. We wanted to stay close to Custer because we wanted to visit Jewel Cave, but we wanted to be far enough up in the hills to ‘get away’. We chose our area, drove up in, and scouted for about an hour until we found the right spot. While we were scouting we noticed a few dug holes in the area, since this was gold country, we decided someone must be trying their luck. We thought nothing more of it, set-up, cooked supper and went for our nightly ramble.
As it turns out, we are camped right in the middle of the original Black Hills Gold Rush area where in 1874 Col. George Armstrong Custer, the same who would die shortly at the Battle of Little Bighorn, found gold in the French Creek River (near where we took the afore mentioned swim). During our ramble around our camping area we found at least a dozen old mines and another dozen shallow pits (no mom, we didn’t get too close).
We spent the evening reading about the gold rush and learned it was a very small, quick gold rush with the biggest impact being the Lakota’s loss of land to miners and the future battles it created between the new nation and the Lakota people.
We also tried to imagine what the miners life was like living in these hills. While the scenery is beautiful, living here year round in a tent or shack and working through the rock by hand must have been a very hard existence. I wonder how many actually found gold?
So, tonight we sleep in this beautiful spot amongst the shadows of the past. How cool is that?
P.S. If we don’t come home, we found gold is them thar hills! If not, perhaps we’ll try our luck in the Yukon!
