Partnership Saves S.D. Mining Mill
By Danielle Del Sol | Online Only | July 27, 2010
A two-year-old nonprofit is working this summer to preserve a 1925 mill frame in the 1.2-million-acre Black Hills National Forest of South Dakota.
The mill frame, the last of its kind in the forest's public land, has been shuttered since the Gold Mountain Mine closed in 1942. Located near Hill City, S.D., it has been granted a new life thanks to a partnership between the grassroots Black Hills Historic Preservation Trust and the U.S. Forest Service.
"In 2007, one of my neighbors heard the Forest Service was going to tear the Gold Mountain Mine mill frame down because of the safety factor—the structure hadn't been maintained since operation ceased in 1942," says Skip Tillisch, president of the Black Hills Historic Preservation Trust.
After the neighbor posted notices on the garbage cans around his neighborhood, alerting residents to the impending demolition, 27 locals volunteered their help, and the preservation project was born.
Neighbors met with Forest Service officials at a public meeting at the mine that year to discuss alternatives to demolition. Over the years, several people had stripped lumber from the mill, leaving it in a precarious condition.
"At that point, the mine structure was wasting away rapidly," says Michael Salisbury, archaeology technician with the Forest Service and project manager of the Gold Mountain Mine restoration project. "It was a pretty daunting structure to take on, and after the public meeting, we talked about just putting a fence around the site to keep people away, for the safety factor, and to let the structure fall on its own."
Tillisch changed Forest Service officials' minds after a visit to a restored coal tipple in Wyoming. They agreed to restore the mill frame if his group could raise the funds.
Tillisch joined forces with a South Dakota artist named Jon Crane, who hoped to save the neglected Meeker Ranch, outside of Custer, S.D. Together, Tillisch, Crane, and 18 others established the Black Hills Historic Preservation Trust in 2008.
The Forest Service's partnership with the group has been a successful collaboration. The federal agency has given approximately $21,000 and 1,700 hours to the Gold Mountain Mine project so far. It matches contributions to the trust and supplies labor, equipment, and technical support for the Gold Mountain Mine project, while the trust supplies volunteers and materials. (The Black Hills Preservation Trust has raised more than $56,500 for the project, and was awarded a $25,000 matching grant through the Deadwood Historic Preservation Commission.)
The Forest Service's Passport in Time program has also helped the Gold Mountain Mine project. The program, which arranges short-term volunteer work on Forest Service restoration projects, recently sent 16 people to the site. They worked with five volunteers from the Black Hills Preservation Trust and 18 Forest Service employees.
The groups are striving to make the renovation as historically accurate as possible. Although much of the mill frame is salvageable, it needs a new roof and 15 tons of new material, Tillich says.
"It has really been an amazing project," Salisbury says. "We went from having a contract to take the structure down to having a completely stable structure now."
Tillisch hopes to transform the Gold Mountain Mill into an interpretive site—with signage and walking paths—by next year. To learn more about this project or the organization's work on the Meeker Ranch, visit bhhistoricpreservation.org
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