Browse by town · Northern Hills
Lead, SD
A mountain mining town built around the Homestake, once the deepest gold mine in North America.
Lead sits up the hill from Deadwood and was built around the Homestake Mine, which produced gold for 125 years before it closed in 2002. You can look down into the Open Cut from the edge of town, and the old mine's deepest tunnels now hold a physics lab studying neutrinos and dark matter. The houses still climb the steep hillsides the way they did when this was a company town, so it's worth a slow drive through.
About 55 minutes from Rapid City by car.