Historically, Whitewood Creek flows through the towns of Lead and
Deadwood in the northern Black Hills and into the Belle Fourche
River. Homestake began dumping waste from its gold-mining business
into Whitewood Creek in about 1877. Until 1984, mining activities
by the Homestake Mining Company and other smaller mines have
resulted in many changes to this stream. For many years, this water
as well as City sewage was then discharged, untreated, directly
into Whitewood Creek. Whitewood Creek was a dead stream, heavily
polluted with city sewage, fine mine tailings, heavy metals,
arsenic, and mercury.
In 1981, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency declared the
creek a Superfund site and ordered Homestake to clean up the creek.
The company spent over $100 million on that project. By 1984,
Homestake had taken care of the most serious problems resulting
from mining, a water treatment plant went into operation to remove
cyanide from mine water discharge and all City sewage was now being
treated. Gradually, pressured by the Environmental Protection
Agency, the State of South Dakota, and many private interests, the
stream was cleaned up.
A reclamation plan was developed for an approximately
1,100-meter-long, placer-mined reach of Whitewood Creek near
Deadwood, South Dakota. The objectives of the design were to
provide a geomorphically stable system that would require minimal
maintenance, maintain water quality in the creek, and enhance the
habitat-limited trout fishery. The objectives of the project were
met by designing an integrated landscape in which both the valley
floor and channel of Whitewood Creek function to pass a range of
flows and their sediment loads, while maintaining the reach in a
dynamically stable condition.
This was accomplished by providing a two-stage channel that
maintains reasonable velocities and depths at low flow, but allows
the flow energy to dissipate at higher, flood flows by spreading
over a wider area. Principles of hydraulic engineering and
engineering geomorphology provided a sound basis of design for the
project. In spite of at least two flood flows since completion of
the project in 1996, the design has proven to be successful in
stabilizing the channel, while significantly improving the fishery
and riparian habitat conditions within the reach. Damage that
occurred during the recent floods was primarily related to overbank
erosion that occurred in areas where the revegetation had not had
sufficient time to become fully established.
The EPA delisted the site from the Superfund National Priorities
List on August 13, 1996.
Whitewood Creek, which was once horribly polluted by runoff from
Homestake Gold Mine, is quietly blossoming into one South Dakota’s
better streams and trout fishery.
Other points of interest along this path are:
Walk-in Fishery (N 44'24.556 W 103'41.767)
View of Arch (N 44'25.022 W 103'41.695)
Old Railroad Tunnel (N 44'25.168 W 103'41.856)