creek gold it cook city gold at central city gold on the mountains in the rivers and in the dark depths far below the surface of the earth for centuries uncounted men have sought for than died for gold as they did in the black hills when the west was young brave men came from the north the east the self the west by the tens the hundreds the thousands they tunneled the mountainside they combed  strain the rivers creeks and streams in their wild quest for go but the romantic day of the placer miner was short lived no more could gold be washed from the course gravel of a creek bed the platters were worked out agriculture insults the code among the men who sought for gold in those daring days was moses manual he was interested in the scientific mining of hard rock formations getting gold out of courts or so hard it could not be chipped by a miner's pick manual and his polity prospected the winner of eighteen seventy five without success and then on april ninth eighteen seventy six they discovered a ledge an outcropping of or that then was termed a lead they sank their discovery shaft in the side of a draw and they called it home the stake lead and the mining camp which leapt to life took the name of leeds city the original site of the homestake mine has disappeared and in its place has risen a thriving industry geared to modern progress today lead is still a mining camps but a mining camp with twentieth century trimming the homestake mine is still air for leaders homestake and homestake is lead but mining in the glamorous days of yore is a far cry from the complicated and scientific methods in use today it takes more than a pick and shovel to get gold all out of the ground now and more than a gold pan to get the gold out of the or would you like to mine for gold today gold mining means raw materials man and construction combined with the science of chemistry and the wonders of modern engineering all of which are necessary to make homestake or pay new construction which will take two years at a cost of about three million dollars to complete complex steel structure the head frame rises from a manmade mountaintop plateau to reach nearly one hundred fifty feet skyward in this massive building made with more than eight hundred thousand  bricks steel and concrete giant equipment will control the hollies thing in lowering of cages which carry men and materials this model of the shaft shows would have to be done the great construction work underground blasted out of the solid rock but it isn't done from the top down the shafts are cut from the bottom up tunnels or drifts as the miners call them are blasted from the solid rock to connect the workings with the exact location of the new shafts then the latter moves upwards in many separate segments all links which one by one are merged into a single vertical opening precision engineering make sure the drifts meet the new shaft at the right places but it's not as easy as that opening up a level and placing it in proper condition for mining requires many months of work drilling blasting ditching hauling waste rock more than three and one half million feet of timber or enough to build a more than two hundred five room houses go into the shaft this drift leads to  bodies two years to finish the job hundreds of men at work under the ground on the surface high in the air two years of work through the toughest kind of rock millions of feet of timber hundreds of tons of concrete and steel thousands upon hundreds of thousands of dollars for equipment before one single ton of or can be taken else that's what gold mining is today where is that all time t levels are spaced one hundred feet apart down to eleven hundred feet then one hundred fifty feet apart to the bottom of the mine an hour after goal down legal eight one that's the signal we heard a moment ago the marvels of shortwave radio used for slate the in the mining of gold or these great and powerful drums each holding more than a mile of start steel avoiding cable in one layer wind and unwind rapidly as the cages speed up and down the shaft carrying their cargo to a safe haven vertical transportation lowering human cargo over four thousand feet into the earth four times as deep as the height of the empire state building flashes of light are level and indicating arm is good with micrometer finest and tells the operator exactly where the cage is at all times thirty six hundred fifty feet thirty eight hundred feet thirty nine hundred and fifty feet forty one hundred feet below the sir that's at a speed more than three times as fast as a modern elevator in perfect safety over two thousand men work for a homestake the miners work in shifts which are rotated changes in hours for every man at home stakes safety is a first consideration helmets of like material tougher than steel work lamps with a battery to keep them lighted for eight hours steel toed shoes with spikes those for safety but above all it is a thorough understanding of their job and an unfailing observance of safety practices on the part of the men themselves that are brought home state record to its remarkably low accident rates prospect ings shap thinking drifting raising cross cutting diamond  drilling preliminary to actual mining of the arts here is the air driven diamond drill outlining the gold bearing rock gold or is mind by two minutes the shrinkage stope method without timber as the roof of the opening or stone becomes higher the miners use a broken or as a platform on which to work loose rock hanging overhead is pried off with a long steel bars miners call this boring down pneumatic drills bite deep into the top hard or to make holes for blasting ten feet into the solid rock every day three thousand steel drills go into the mines every day three thousand steel bits are taken out for sharpening prying down loose rock drilling holes deep into the or and loading the holes for blasting require an eight hour working cycle three million sticks of dynamite every year one million blasting caps to set off a million blasts or nearly a million and a half tons of all our mind annually in the homestake mine it's the blasting is done at the end of the day i'll go the tools and all go the men to a safe place far from the blasts they light the fuses the smoke curls up it's all over until another ship repeats the cycle when the shrinkage stope is mind up to a height of one hundred twenty five feet the chamber is filled with broken or which must be drawn through shoot into one ton car it's strong timber planking and steel guards protect the loaders from flying or one ton of or to a car twenty cars to a train twenty tons of solid or another flake of gold insights locomotive is powered by electricity locomotives powered by compressed air all run on tracks from all points underground run regularly on a complete railway system eighty miles of steel track to carry equipment materials and gold or or mined by the square set method  consists of timbering to take out the or which was left in place to support the roof and side walls during shrinkage stopped mining it's these men are working under the pillar you saw in the picture a moment ago the process is the same here as in the shrinkage stope method drill blastin remove the or water runs through a rifle drilled hole in the center of the drill steel the water does three jobs cools lubricates and prevents do down goes the or to the low reading level below and what punishment that timber takes it has to be strong to stand that sounding wrong foot square some timber from the black hills this model shows you what the mine actually looks like a massive underground structure of sturdy timber the higher up the miners drill and blast away the farther down the or fall the miners go up and the or comes down in this sub drain in caverns our supplier is ready for use timber for extending the squares that structure tools drills and extra equipment standing by on the job for the time it is needed airpower and therefore helps every minute of every day fire hundred thousand cubic feet of fresh air go into the mines and five hundred thousand cubic feet come out clean fresh air every minute of  for every man underground these men are working in a hitting a dead in the way from the main drifts and cross cuts of the mind but they get plenty of clean air through kansas or galvanized iron ventilating  four thousand feet underground but still there is air for the miners and air for power but why air power to drive five hundred air drills thirty eight air locomotives small ventilating fans another equipment where does it all come from why it comes from the air these great compressors running day and night for any higher pressure air for many machines one hundred for spraying to keep down the water from in filling worked out shrinkage still rather from the earth water for the drills six hundred gallons of water pumped from the mine each minute or another for a city of twenty thousand people and it all  to go someplace heated tunnel leads directly from the shaft to a modern change how the miners pass from the shaft to this room without going outside hear modern facilities guard against sudden changes in temperature safety precautions on the surface as well as underground here's the gold or again and water beating is in store for that rock the owner is on its way now to the gyro tory crusher the first of a series of crushing machines it's no one machine can do the job so the simons crusher now breaks the rocks down to about two inch sides like this it's it takes power and plenty two inch pebbles from chunks of solid rock but it's only the beginning from the crusher to the spam mail one hundred and eighty stamps each with a falling weight of fifteen hundred and fifty pounds three hundred thousand tons of water are used every twenty four hours in the process to reduce the order to our finest sufficient for the removal of the go