Back to Lead and Deadwood.

Today, we decided to go back to Lead and Deadwood to visit several museums we missed on our last visit.

In Lead, Sanford University has an exhibit of information on the scientific studies being done in the mines.  They even have a three dimensional model of the mine itself. The model is 1:5000 scale.

The displays had a lot of information on the mine.
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The mine had as many as 1,000 miners working at a time,​ 370 miles of tunnels, 331 miles of railways, and an average of 750 gallons of water flow into the mine every minute. It is very difficult to pump water up 6,000 or more feet so instead it is pumped up to tanks about every 1,200 feet and then up to the next level until it reaches the surface.

Currently more than 700 scientist work in the mine each year. The area where scientist work looks nothing like it did when gold was being extracted.

Out on the observation deck, you can look down into the open cut and even hit a hole-in-one. I don't know if it is even possible to miss that hole. 

Back in Deadwood, we visited the Adams museum.  They say that the best way to make money from a gold rush is to sell food and supplies.  That was definitely true for Mr. Adams. For many years he had the only grocery and mercantile in Deadwood and quickly became very wealthy.

The museum is filled with memorabilia from the early days of Deadwood and includes examples from the days of the wild west attitude of the town.  They even have an 8 oz nugget of gold.

Lunch time.  We stopped in the Naked Winery for some pizza and for Shawna to have a wine tasting.  You may guess from the number of Trump supportive shirts, bumper stickers, and flags that this area is VERY supportive of the President.

Next we visited the '76 museum in Deadwood. Half of the museum is focused on the annual rodeo they have here.

The rest of the museum was about tribes from the area and stagecoaches, wagons, carriages, and other horse drawn transportation.  They even had some horse drawn fire fighting equipment.  They even included what we immediately recognized as an early version of an R-Pod which is a small RV trailer with a kitchen in the back.

Our parking pass was not quite out of time so we walked around downtown deadwood for a couple of hours visiting stores.

One hotel/casino (everything here is a casino -  no really everything is a casino) has display cases from movies and musicians.