Flash in the Pan Blog

Not too long ago, I was working in our Goldbar store, when an older gentleman sallied in through the door to take a gander at some of our new sluices. As he poked and prodded the new gear, I took the chance to strike up a conversation. A note to all you younger prospectors: take every opportunity you can to listen to older prospectors. While they might bend the truth a bit (what prospector doesn’t), they are often full of prospecting experience and often willing to share it with a with up and comers. This old timer was no exception.

Ok. Have I ever found a great article for you today! It’s not your everyday mamby-pamby gold prospecting article talking about how I waddled out into the boonies and came back with some shinny stuff. No. Today's blog post is in fact, a deep look into a long dark grizzly chain of events that happened some 133 years ago in the shady gold-laden history of the Black Hills Dakota Territory. It is in fact, the story of Big Nose George and a stage coach robbery that netted some 700 pounds of gold dust and nuggets from the famous Homestake Mine, roughly 6500 ounces of which (or 406 pounds) was never recovered. Today, that unrecovered gold would be worth nearly $8,800,000.