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Historic place

Holy Terror Mine

Base of Mount Aetna (Keystone), Keystone, SD

Legend says a Black Hills prospector named his richest strike after his own wife — not as a tribute, but as a joke about how often she had to drag him home from the saloon.

📅 1894–1942🏛️ MineClosedBuilt 1894
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The story

The Holy Terror Mine was discovered in 1894 by prospector William B. Franklin and his adopted daughter Cora at the base of Mount Aetna near Keystone. Its name comes from a well-worn local legend: Franklin had promised to name a big strike after his wife Jenny, but instead named it after her habit of hauling him home from saloon benders — reportedly musing, "Ain't she a holy terror?" Combined with the neighboring Keystone Mine, it became the largest gold producer in the southern Black Hills, helping push Keystone's population past 2,000 — briefly larger than Rapid City. It closed in 1903 (over lawsuits and water infiltration at 1,200 feet, not fire) and reopened for a final run from 1938 to 1942.

Everything that was here

Did you know?

Franklin promised to name his big strike after his wife Jenny — then called it "Holy Terror" as a backhanded joke.
Combined with the Keystone Mine, it helped push Keystone's population briefly past Rapid City's.
Its 1903 closure came from lawsuits over miner deaths and water at 1,200 feet — not a fire or explosion.

Connected places

Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF)

Lead, SD
Black Hills

Spearfish Canyon Scenic Byway

Spearfish, SD
Black Hills

Roughlock Falls

Savoy, SD
Black Hills

Galena (silver camp)

Deadwood, SD
Black Hills

Nemo (Homestake timber camp)

Nemo, SD
Black Hills

Explore the full web of connections on the map.

Nearby history

Mount Rushmore National Memorial

13000 SD Highway 244 · 3.2 km away
Sculptor Gutzon Borglum blasted 450,000 tons of granite off a Black Hills peak to carve four 60-foot faces — and died in

Iron Mountain Road

US Highway 16A (Iron Mountain Road) · 4.3 km away
Senator Peter Norbeck built three wooden "pigtail" bridges that spiral drivers back over their own road, and aimed each

Spokane (ghost town)

Spokane townsite (~16mi NE of Custer) · 7.1 km away
Deep in Black Hills National Forest sits one of South Dakota's best-preserved ghost towns — a mining camp that didn't hi

Rockerville (gold camp & flume)

Old US Highway 16 (Rockerville Rd) · 8.3 km away
A New York-financed company sank a fortune into a 20-mile wooden flume to wash gold out of the gulch at Rockerville — an

Sheridan (drowned townsite)

Sheridan Lake (US-385) · 9.1 km away
South Dakota's very first Pennington County seat spent its last decades as a dying gold camp of about 10 people — then v

Needles Highway

SD Highway 87 (Needles Highway) · 11.7 km away
Governor Peter Norbeck personally walked and rode horseback over every foot of the route before a single machine touched

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Sourceshttps://www.keystonehistory.org/keystone-history