The gold rush to the Black Hills of South Dakota in 1876 produced a dozen or more mininamps which sprang up almost simultaneously at the several diggings. Deadwood Gulch alone saw several of these hastily laidout camps, including Gayville and Central City.

Deadwood and Lead, built around the famous Homestake properties, are prosperous industrial cities today, with little about them that recalls their feverish beginnings, but two miles from Deadwood stands Central City, a town whose older buildings and crumbling fire-blackened foundations date from the days of its prime

Gold was first found in the Southern Hills, and the town of Custer was made up of prospectors. In the fall of 1875, word of rich placers farther north caused a mad scramble to the new diggings. By summer of 1876, Deadwood Gulch was swarming with 25,000 people, all of whom were squatters on Indian land for the Black Hills were not legally ceded and opened to the Whites until February 28, 1877. But the lure of gold was stronger than the fear of Indian attack and men continued to pack in over the trails from Pierre, Bismarck, Sidney, and Cheyenne. It was wild, rough country. But there was gold and there were hordes of determined men ready to hunt for it.

On Nov. 9, 1875, Wm. Gay, Alfred Gay, J. B. Pearson, Dan Muckle, Wm. Lardner, Ed McKay, Joe Englesley James Hicks, and a man named Haggard camped on the banks of a creek and named the gulch Deadwood after all the fallen timber.

In July 1876, C. V. Gardner, one of the first prospectors to the region, took 700 pounds of ore from the Hidden Treasure mine to Cheyenne where a company of 10 men was organized and he and a Mr. Jones were commissioned to obtain a mill for the property. Gardner ordered a 20-stamp mill which was erected at the upper end of Gayville, but before it could operate, his mine was in litigation and it was some time before he could prove his rights to it. The first mill therefore to drop stamps was brought in by Milton E. Pussey to handle ore from the Alpha mine.

As early as August 1876, Gardner built the first arrastra in the Northern Hills, one mile above the mouth of Blacktail Gulch, and with it extracted ore from the Chief of the Hills claim. The first cleanup was valued at $21.

Henry Keets located the Comstock (or Keets) mine in Hidden Treasure Gulch in 1876. The following spring, Cephas Tuttle located the Aurora mine, its lines overlapping ground already located by Keets. Tuttle decided to claim jump the Keets mine by dynamiting it. Keets watched Tuttle push wheelbarrows loaded with boxes of powder towards the shaft of the Aurora mine and asked what he was up to. “Just going to blow everything to hell,” Tuttle replied, tying a rope around the boxes of powder and lowering them into the shaft. Since both mines were connected by a long tunnel, Keets rushed word to his men who were underground to get out fast.

All but one named Norris ran to Keet’s cabin or to his blacksmith shop. As Tuttle lit a fuse and started to lower it into the shaft, a shot extinguished the light. Tuttle relit the fuse and hurried off but not before men on both properties began shooting at each other. A couple were hurt and Tuttle was killed. Norris was knocked unconscious by the blast and was deaf the rest of his life. Although some of the Keets men were arrested and charged with Tuttle’s murder, there was insufficient proof to convict anyone.