Rockerville Ghost Town

Rockerville was one of the many placer gold camps established during the Black Hills Gold Rush. Initial discoveries were in 1877, and a post office opened in 1879. Rockerville was known for its extensive placer deposits and was the site of numerous flumes built to bring water to some of the Black Hills' first hydraulic mining operations. At its peak, around 1,000 people called it home.Unlike most post-gold rush ghost towns, the community was revived as a tourist destination in the 1950s because of its location off Highway 16 between Rapid City and Mount Rushmore. Gift shops, melodrama live theaters, motels, and a museum drew in the plentiful traffic headed to see the monument. But when Highway 16 expanded, rerouting around the town rather than through it, tourists stopped coming and the town was mostly abandoned by the 1990s. Today the Gaslight Saloon is the lone survivor, said to be haunted by the ghost of a former Rapid City hotel owner.