If we could hear again the sounds of the 1876 gold rush, one of those sounds would be the rumble of a stampede. The biggest Black Hills stampedes were not caused by cattle or thundering buffalo, but by the prospectors themselves!
Stampedes to new diggings were fairly common in the Black Hills gold rush. Prospectors were always ready to try their luck elsewhere, and rumors of a big strike over the next hill could stampede miners in a new direction.
There were stampedes to Bear Gulch, to False Bottom Creek, and to the Bear Lodge Mountains. But strangest of all was the ill-fated Wolf Mountain Stampede.
This Stampede started in the streets of Deadwood in November of 1876. Winter was coming, Hay was scarce, and that meant slow times for livery stables which bought and sold horses. The one exception was Red Clark's stables, for Clark was busy buying up horses at bottom dollar.
It is now believed that Clark also arranged for an accomplice to circulate false rumors of a fabulous gold strike in the Wolf Mountains. Rumor spread like wildfire and the Wolf Mountain Stamped was on. Saddle horses were suddenly in great demand and stable owners like Red Clark wore big smiles.
Historian Watson Parker estimates that 1500 prospectors used countless horses in a mad dash to the Wolf Mountains. Incredible as it seems, few that joined the rush knew the exact location of the Wolf Mountains. Popular opinion held that the mountains must be in the vicinity of the distant Bighorn Range. An alleged "bald peak" was said to mark the new diggings, but neither peak nor gold was ever found.
The Wolf Mountain Stampede may have been the greatest deception in the Black Hills history-perpetrated for profit on the sale of horses. In the long winter that followed, many hoaxed and haggard stampedes filtered back to Deadwood. Some returned with frozen limbs. Some never returned.
10/01/03