With the incorporation of the mining company in San Francisco, the aboriginal methods employed by the Manuel brothers were discarded, and the latest in mine machinery was laboriously shipped by train to Sidney, Nebraska, and then by ox team the two hundred miles to the town of Lead (pronounced “Leed”), the precise location of the Homestake, two miles from Deadwood City. The first installation was an eighty-stamp mill, which began its work in July of 1878. Within five years six additional mills were in operation, holding a total of 580 giant stampers. The mine now handles four thousand tons of ore per day and has, in its sighted reserve, twenty million tons yet to work. The two main shafts reach into the earth to a depth of more than a mile, with branching tunnels piercing the mountain at hundred-foot levels; and there are more than a hundred and fifty miles of secondary tunnels, served by more than eighty miles of mine railway. The richness of the Homestake ore has averaged fourteen dollars per ton for many years now. This may not sound like any considerable amount of wealth—but the most active gold operation in Colorado, the Fairplay dredge, is working gravel which pays an average of nine cents per ton. Finally, the records of the company show that it has mined 70,000,000 tons of ore, yielding a total of 18,000,000 ounces of gold, which has brought a gross price, at various standards, of $450,000,000. With the opening of the Homestake, the conquest of the Black Hills was effectively completed, and the region entered into a period of rapid development and expansion. Although the great mine at Lead was run solely as a business enterprise, devoid of glamour and excitement, the town of Deadwood, two miles away, enjoyed a decade of the lustiest history ever to be known by a bonanza town. During its years of activity and arrogance Deadwood contributed to our national folklore several great figures, among them Calamity Jane, Deadwood Dick, Wild Bill Hickok, and Preacher Smith. CHAPTER FIVE History II: Deadwood Days Sam left where he was working one pretty morn in May, a-heading for the Black Hills with his cattle and his pay. Sold out in Custer City and then got on a spree, A harder set of cowboys you seldom ever see. —“Legend of Sam Bass”