Boomtown, South Dakota

Ghosts and memory in the Great Dakota Boom, 1878-1886.

The first white settler of Keystone, South Dakota, was Fred Cross, a miner who had the privilege of naming the site after himself: Crossville. Unfortunately, he wasn’t lucky enough to strike it rich, and the names Cross and Crossville were forgotten.

I was in Keystone last month to research my book on dynamite. With the support of Jeanie Freeman Kirkpatr…