Homestake Gold Mine (Open Cut)

The Black Hills were Lakota land, guaranteed by treaty, until gold changed the calculation permanently. In 1876, Fred and Moses Manuel and their partners located the Homestake claim; a year later, George Hearst bought it for $70,000. What followed was the largest and deepest gold mine in the Western Hemisphere — more than forty million troy ounces pulled from the earth before production ceased. The open cut is what's left on the surface: a hole that tells you everything about what this place cost, and what it made.