For more than a century, the Homestake Gold Mine carved drifts deep beneath the rugged mountain town of Lead, South Dakota.
But the price of gold faltered in the late 1900s. Massive layoffs and the mine's closure left the town adrift, searching for a new identity.
The Price of Gold: Stories from the Homestake Gold Mine is a collection of portraits of former miners, electricians, hoist operators, receptionists and chemists alongside their stories of humorous pranks, harried rescue operations and the loss of loved ones to mining accidents.
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Created by South Dakota natives Erin Lorraine Woodward and Nick Hubbard, this collection offers "a rare window into an underground world" and tells of lives lived above and below the city of Lead.
Meet the Creators
Erin Lorraine Woodward
Writer and creator of The Price of Gold, Erin Lorraine Woodward grew up in the Black Hills of South Dakota. After graduating from Black Hills State University, she was a science writer at the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF). There, as she wrote about advancements in science and engineering, she began to overhear stories about the facility’s mining past, which led to the creation of this collection.
Erin lives in Berkeley, California, with her husband David. They met underground at SURF, where David worked as a physicist with the LUX-ZEPLIN dark matter experiment.
Nick Hubbard
A photographer and videographer based in the Black Hills, Nick Hubbard captured the photos included in this collection. An alum of Black Hills State University, Nick worked at Sanford Underground Research Facility before founding his own multimedia company, Frontier Creative.
Nick lives in Rapid City, South Dakota, with his wife, Kaylee, and their children.
