Thursday (6/18)  We are still in Rapid City.  We headed south to Hill City to the Wade Gold Mine Mill.   This is a gold mining operation started in 1979 as the retirement project of Les and Idella Wade. It was Mr. Wade's lifelong dream to build a gold mining operation.   Most all of the mining equipment is made from parts of other equipment (e.g. cars, steam engines, etc.)   If a piece of needed equipment that could be purchase but was expensive, Mr. Wade just made it. Mining for gold is extremely labor intensive and a multi-layered process.   It looks like an awful lot of work for a very little reward.  They pulverize one ton of stone to get one quarter to one half ounce of gold.  

From there we headed north to Deadwood, SD, a gold-rush boomtown.  In the late 1800s it was a haven for gunfighters and gamblers like Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday.  Wild Bill Hickok was killed there in 1876.  It looks very much the same as it did in 1879.   They have any re-enactments of various gun fights several times during the day.  Today, it is the home of 80 victorian style gambling halls. We went to Adams Museum which has a vast collections of artifacts from the late 1800's many of which relate to some of its more famous residents.