Ghost Town Tour

Saturday Ron and I joined the Black Hills Gold Prospectors on a tour of Black Hills ghost towns. We all met at Stampers Black Hills Gold, where Ron posed by the giant miner (we thought he looked awful clean for being a miner - even had Harley Davidson decor on him!) We traveled northwest past Deerfield Reservoir to the sand caves. Turns out these caves were sand mines which was shipped east to glass manufacturers in the past. After a sack lunch I caught the butterfly on the tansy flower - posing just for me! We drove north along Castle Creek to the spot where Custer and his 1000 men and 300 cattle camped for a couple of days back in 1876. The valley was beautiful with all the yellow fall colors from the aspen trees. I even found bright red rose hips, which could be turned into jam if I had time! Then we moved north again past historic places where Custer and the Deadwood stage had presences in the past (Custer found a pile of elk antlers in the field which we passed) and went to the ghost town of Myersville, which only had 300 people at its height. It was the community that supported area gold mines. Wally was pushing the only remaining building over a bit with his one hand! The other remains was part of a gold processing plant - the roof was very rotted. The road back to the car was beautiful and Ron and I had our picture taken, and I took one of Ron - fall colors were exploding!

This last picture is Ron's most recent gold find. He bought a hearing enhancer for the metal detector and now is finding these tiny little gold nuggets with his big machine - quite an accomplishment! This was Ron's first nugget found in the Black Hills. He found another one last week. Hopefully he's on a roll and we'll find that $50,000 nugget in Arizona when we get there! I think the next time you hear from me we'll be in Arizona's gold country!