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Historic place

Black Hills Mining Museum

323 West Main St, Lead, SD

Built by more than 100 retired Homestake miners themselves, this museum lets visitors walk through a recreated underground gold mine built by the men who actually worked one.

📅 1986–present🏛️ MuseumStill hereBuilt 1986

Open on the map Slide back to 1986

Black Hills Mining Museum, 323 West Main St, Lead, SD

Black Hills Mining Museum, Lead · Magicpiano, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

The story

Founded in 1986 by former Homestake employees who pooled their own money and firsthand experience, the museum's centerpiece is a walk-through, simulated underground mine tour meant to replicate Homestake's real tunnels. Operating as a nonprofit on Lead's Main Street between the Homestake Opera House and the Hearst Library, its exhibits include historic photographs, equipment, and a 3-D model of the workings from the surface down to the 8,000-foot level.

Everything that was here

1986–present · still open
Black Hills Mining MuseumMuseum
Built by more than 100 retired Homestake miners themselves, this museum lets visitors walk through a recreated underground gold mine built by the men who actually worked one.
See the map in 1987 →

Did you know?

The underground mine tour was designed and built by more than 100 actual former Homestake miners.

The 3-D model shows the mine's full depth — 8,000 feet below the surface.

It sits directly between two Hearst-era landmarks: the Opera House and the Hearst Library.

Connected places

Hearst Free Library

The Latchstring Inn

Homestake Hydroelectric Plant No. 2

Nemo (Homestake timber camp)

Historic Homestake Opera House

Homestake Hydroelectric Plant No. 1

Explore the full web of connections on the map.

Nearby history

Hearst Free Library

315 West Main St · 15 m away

Phoebe Apperson Hearst gave the miners of Lead a free public library stocked with 10,000 books in dozens of languages —

Historic Homestake Opera House

313 West Main St · 54 m away

A $250,000 gift from the Homestake Mining Company gave Gilded Age gold miners their own opera house, heated swimming poo

Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF)

160 West Main St · 278 m away

The world's most productive gold mine became the deepest underground physics lab in the U.S., where scientists hunt for

Central City

Central City (US-385, Deadwood Gulch) · 1.9 km away

Once a booming gulch town of 3,000 that nearly rivaled Deadwood and Lead, Central City absorbed half a dozen neighboring

Broken Boot Gold Mine

1200 Pioneer Way · 2.9 km away

Opened the same year as the gold rush itself, it barely made money on gold — its real product was fool's gold, sold for

Homestake Slime Plant (Deadwood Mountain Grand)

1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive · 3.8 km away

A gold-processing plant built with Douglas fir beams railed in from Washington State ran until 1973, then sat as a count

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Sourceshttps://blackhillsminingmuseum.com/learn/history