Mine Your Own Business

The Broken Boot Gold Mine is definitely a tourist business and not so much a mining business but it was charming and cheap so we were happy to take a tour there on our last day in Deadwood. Can you tell who is the most excited to be going into the mine? (HINT: It isn't David John)

Tobias was terrified of going in. He kept pointing and saying "Dark in there. Bad guys in there." and taking off his hardhat. We took him in anyway. He whimpered a little bit at first but he made it through the rest of the tour by repeating the mantra that I gave him, "No bad guys, no bad guys, no bad guys." It was cute and a little Sad.

Everyone got a bag as we went in so you could pick up rocks along the way. Our boys found some pretty cool ones and it made the tour really fun for them.

Of course, there were collapsed shafts and other dangerous areas which were exactly the places our crazy boys wanted to go. We had to pull children out of holes and off of barriers. We were constantly doing a headcount.

At one point, the tour guide turned all the lights off and lit a candle so we could really see what the working conditions were of the miners in the early 20th century. It's crazy that people were using sharp implements and explosives without being able to see much at all. Pretty sure OSHA wouldn't go for that these days.

A couple of other interesting things about the mine: It's called broken boot because they found parts of an old boot in one of the shafts that some poor soul left behind. It wasn't a very successful mine, in fact it made more money selling fool's gold than real gold. It was also the site of some horrible B movie called "Beast from Haunted Cave".

In case you can't read the poster it says: "Screaming young girls sucked into a labyrinth of horror by a blood-starved ghoul from hell." How would anyone resist seeing that?

We also got to pan for gold while we were there which was a lot harder than I imagined. It was too much for David John, he just built his own goldmine from the rocks he had picked up inside.

Gabriel and Elijah were really into it though and very patient. You had to shake the pan so that the gold would sink towards the bottom, then carefully pour off some water and lighter rocks then repeat.

After a long time and many repetitions the only things left in the pan were tiny gold flakes which we collected in small vials of water. The twins are stoked about being owners of real gold.

Elijah thought I should get some credit since I helped him and took this very artistic picture of me with our gold.

It wasn't fancy, but we had a golden time at the old Broken Boot Mine.