The Homestake Adams Research and Cultural Center (HARCC) has the opportunity to protect and make accessible for the first time ever the history of the Homestake Mining Company. The 10,000 cubic foot Homestake Mining Company archival collection is of national significance. While there are many aspects that make the Homestake Mining Company unique, it is also representative of an industry of iconic proportions that dominated and helped settle much of Western America. Mining deeds, land claims, mineral surveys, annual reports, exploration and production records, photographs, assay ledgers, timber contracts and a plethora of other mining-related documents, dating from 1876 to 2002, detail the company’s 126-year history in Lead, South Dakota and far beyond.

Founded within two years of one of the last notable gold rushes in North America, the Homestake Gold Mine was the commanding economic engine of the Black Hills region as the largest single producer of low-grade ore for gold bullion in the world. Mining magnate George Hearst owned and operated the Homestake Mine with subsidiary mines throughout the Black Hills, the country and eventually around the world. Hearst—a wealthy California businessman, United States Senator and father of famed newspaperman William Randolph Hearst—is one of the leading contributors credited with development of the modern processes of quartz mining, as well as improvements and advances that revolutionized mining technology on a national and international scale.

As the newest entity affiliated with the Adams Museum & House, Inc., HARCC will serve as a destination that will appeal to geologists, paleontologists, archaeologists, genealogists, historians, authors, scholars and the general public. It will be a testament to the mining industry that helped shape America, allowing it to grow into an industrial nation. It will become a research center with a reputation for thoroughness assisting in multi-disciplined fields of study that will expand HARCC’s creditability as a national resource, and, by its very nature, create greater research opportunities on a state and national level. HARCC will become a facility designed to host classes taught by state and national institutions of higher education focusing on the vast array of in-house materials. HARCC will provide museum environmental standards allowing it to host both permanent and traveling exhibits of interest to scholars, tourists and members of the community. Lastly, HARCC will provide a unique perspective of the Black Hills that goes hand-in-hand with the work being done by the South Dakota Science and Technology Authority, Sanford Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory (SUSEL) and the National Science Foundation and its Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory (DUSEL).