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Historic place

D.C. Booth Historic National Fish Hatchery

423 Hatchery Circle, Spearfish, SD

Congress funded this fish-culture station in 1896 to stock trout across the West — and for a decade it ran a satellite operation inside Yellowstone National Park, gathering cutthroat eggs straight from Yellowstone Lake.

📅 1896–present🏛️ HatcheryRepurposedBuilt 1896
Open on the mapSlide back to 1896
D.C. Booth Historic National Fish Hatchery, 423 Hatchery Circle, Spearfish, SD
D.C. Booth Fish Hatchery, Spearfish · TCMemoire, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

The story

Congress appropriated $5,000 in 1896 to establish a fish-culture station at Spearfish; the hatchery was completed in 1899, with superintendent D.C. Booth arriving that year for a 34-year tenure. From 1901 to 1911 it ran an egg-gathering substation inside Yellowstone itself, collecting cutthroat trout eggs from Yellowstone Lake for hatcheries across the West. Federal operations ceased in 1983 and it reopened as a museum in 1989. It's still a working hatchery, releasing 20,000-30,000 rainbow trout a year, and houses the largest collection of fish-culture artifacts in the country.

Everything that was here

Did you know?

It ran an egg-collecting station inside Yellowstone National Park from 1901 to 1911.
Its archives hold over 185,000 fish-culture artifacts — the largest such collection in the U.S.
The original 1899 building could incubate 2 million trout eggs at once.

Connected places

Busse Forest Elk Pasture

Elk Grove Village, IL
Yellowstone National Park

Explore the full web of connections on the map.

Nearby history

Burlington Spearfish Line

Old CB&Q grade, Spearfish Canyon · 326 m away
For 40 years a Burlington branch line hauled lumber, farmers, and $2.50 excursion tourists through Spearfish Canyon — un

Black Hills Passion Play

N Meier Ave (Lookout Mountain) · 491 m away
For 69 seasons, a German family who traced their Passion Play tradition to a 1242 monastery performed it nightly on what

The Thoen Stone

Thoen Stone Dr (Lookout Mountain) · 537 m away
A small sandstone slab found near Spearfish in 1887 claims to be a dying prospector's 1834 confession — and if genuine,

Homestake Hydroelectric Plant No. 1

S Canyon St (mouth of Spearfish Canyon) · 604 m away
To avoid buying coal, the Homestake Gold Mine paid for a 5-mile, 8-tunnel water diversion through solid canyon rock — en

Spearfish Historic Commercial District

600 block N Main St · 995 m away
Founded in 1876 as "Queen City" by prospector-brothers Alfred and William Gay, Spearfish grew into the gold rush's bread

Matthews Opera House

612 N Main St · 1.0 km away
Built by a Wyoming rancher who fell in love with the town, this 300-seat opera house spent decades as a movie theater, t

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Sourceshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D.C._Booth_Historic_National_Fish_Hatchery