Largest Gold Nuggets of the Black Hills
There seems to be much confusion amongst the general public when it comes to which gold nugget found in the Black Hills sets the record for being the biggest ever found. Somehow the rumor has persistently stuck around over the years that Potato Creek Johnny (whose real name was John Perrett) unearthed the largest nugget ever found in the Black Hills. While Potato Creek Johnny did indeed have a decent-sized 7.346 troy ounce nugget, it was not the biggest ever found in the Black Hills if we are to believe local historical records. In fact, there has been some debate over the years amongst local old timers that his nugget consisted of a few Alaskan gold nuggets that were melted together that he had ‘acquired’ from a miner who wandered into his camp and later ended up going missing – but that’s another (unproven) story!
Anyone who is somewhat familiar with gold distribution and basic geology in the Black Hills of South Dakota (and Wyoming) will tell you that some of the best placer gold deposits ever discovered in the Black Hills are over in the Tinton area near the South Dakota and Wyoming border. It is theorized by some that an ancient river carried paleoplacer gold from the area near Cement Ridge to the north and that the gold was then distributed into some of the drainages in the broad area surrounding Tinton. Regardless of how the gold got there or what its source was, that area has inarguably produced some of the largest finds in recorded history since the Black Hills Gold Rush began.
Back in the early days of the gold rush, nuggets were recorded and listed by flat dollar figures and typically not by their weight! This is probably for a couple of reasons: first, the miners were fairly familiar with the gold to dollar ratio because the price of gold was fixed by the United States government in those days and its monetary value rarely ever changed, and second, unlike today’s precise digital scales the miners and merchants back then used balancing scales with fractional weights to get a somewhat approximate idea of the gold’s weight. So to find out the approximate weight (of the nuggets found in the Black Hills’ mining boom days, we need to take the price realized for the nugget in the historical records and divide it by the set price of gold for whatever year the nugget was found.
Here is our comprehensive list based from historical records:
- .29ozt – 1885 – P.D. O’Brien – African Hill
- .32ozt – 1878 – unknown – Deadwood
- .33ozt – 1882 – Henry Baier – Bear Gulch
- .48ozt – 1880 – Swan – Potato Creek
- .48ozt – 1880 – Swan – Potato Creek
- .48ozt – 1884 – Lewey – Potato Creek
- .53ozt – 1876 – Epenger – unknown
- .72ozt – 1880 – unknown – Newton’s Fork
- .72ozt – 1880 – unknown – Deadwood
- .72ozt – 1884 – Pat McLaughlin – Potato Creek
- .87ozt – 1875 – Portuguese Frank – Bear Gulch
- .87ozt – 1887 – W.H. Gates – Potato Gulch
- .96ozt – 1876 – E.B. Parker – Bobtail claim
- 1.? ozt – 1886 – Spicer – Spring Creek
- 1.? ozt – 1888 – W.L. Henwood – Spring Creek
- 1.01ozt – 1876 – Frank George – Bear Creek
- 1.01ozt – 1879 – unknown – Central City
- 1.06ozt – 1880 – unknown – Deadwood
- 1.09ozt – 1890 – Otto Grantz – Deadwood Gulch
- 1.11ozt – 1875 – unknown – near Sheridan
- 1.11ozt – 1890 – unknown – Deadwood
- 1.16ozt – 1876 – unknown – African Gulch
- 1.26ozt – 1878 – Mr. Whipple – Newton’s Fork
- 1.29ozt – 1881 – Jensen – Potato Gulch
- 1.30ozt – 1876 – Haserodt – African Gulch
- 1.30ozt – 1876 – Frank George – Bear Creek
- 1.30ozt – 1890 – Samuel Moll – Ruby Gulch
- 1.36ozt – 1876 – Siddons – Gold Run
- 1.45ozt – 1878 – Moyer and Wells – Oro City
- 1.45ozt – 1888 – unknown – Bear Gulch
- 1.46ozt – 1880 – unknown – unknown
- 1.50ozt – 1881 – unknown – Potato Gulch
- 1.69ozt – 1881 – Edgar St. John – Bear Gulch
- 1.69ozt – 1881 – T. Hooper and Portuguese Frank – Bear Gulch
- 1.81ozt – 1883 – Jones – Spring Creek
- 1.93ozt – 1879 – Burdett and Co – Two Bit Gulch
- 1.95ozt – 1885 – Dan McClain – Bear Gulch
- 2.00ozt – 1877 – Pat Casey – Whitewood Creek
- 2.03ozt – 1878 – unknown – Bear Gulch
- 2.08ozt – 1899 – Lee and Chas. Carr – Lightning Creek
- 2.15ozt – 1876 – D. Cannon – Bobtail Gulch
- 2.19ozt – 1882 – Mr. Kerr – Bugtown
- 2.41ozt – 1881 – Henry Petit – Ruby Gulch
- 2.41ozt – 1890 – unknown – Newton’s Fork
- 2.46ozt – 1876 – John McTigue – Bear Gulch
- 2.46ozt – 1882 – Edgar St. John – Bear Gulch
- 2.47ozt – 1881 – Wm. Cole – Potato Creek
- 2.56ozt – 1887 – Jas McCoun – Bear Gulch
- 2.61ozt – 1879 – David Gillespie – Bear Gulch
- 2.63ozt – 1878 – Moyer and Wells – Oro City
- 2.66ozt – 1876 – unknown – Potato Creek
- 2.66ozt – 1877 – unknown – Potato Creek
- 2.70ozt – 1877 – Edgar St. John – Bear Gulch
- 2.75ozt – 1877 – Edgar St. John – Bear Gulch
- 2.75ozt – 1893 – Heavirlan and Mulheisen – Poplar Gulch
- 2.69ozt – 1890 – John White – Bear Gulch
- 3.04ozt – 1893 – M.R. Hydliff – Sand Creek
- 3.46ozt – 1878 – Moyer and Wells – Oro City
- 3.62ozt – 1878 – unknown – Sunday Gulch
- 3.64ozt – 1876 – E.W. Keplinger – Potato Creek
- 3.65ozt – 1890 – Charles Finch – Bear Creek
- 3.77ozt – 1881 – William Bell – Sand Creek
- 3.87ozt – 1883 – unknown – Bear Gulch
- 3.91ozt – 1878 – John Majors – Mallory Gulch
- 4.? ozt – 1890 – Charles Finch – Bear Gulch
- 4.20ozt – 1877 – unknown – unknown
- 4.35ozt – 1877 – Frank Mantz – Potato Creek
- 4.35ozt – 1882 – unknown – Strawberry Gulch
- 4.83ozt – 1878 – unknown – Potato Gulch
- 4.83ozt – 1878 – unknown – Sunday Gulch
- 5.27ozt – 2010 – Charlie Ward and Byron Janis – Rockerville
- 5.61ozt – 1888 – unknown – Bear Gulch
- 5.66ozt – 1883 – M.R. Hydliff – Mallory Gulch
- 5.73ozt – 1879 – unknown – Central City
- 5.80ozt – 1878 – Peter Thorson – Centennial Gulch
- 5.93ozt – 1877 – unknown – Centennial Gulch
- 7.? ozt – 1884 – unknown – Gold Run
- 7.06ozt – 1876 – Frank Mantz – Potato Creek
- 7.11ozt – 1876 – unknown – Bear Gulch
- 7.34ozt – 1929 – John Perrett – Potato Creek
- 7.35ozt – 1884-85 – unknown – African Hill
- 12.09ozt – 1877 – unknown – Potato Gulch
- 22.49ozt – 1879 – Doc Wing – Bear Gulch
As this list denotes, a man by the name of Doc Wing is credited with finding the largest gold nugget ever found in the Black Hills. Not much is known about Doc Wing himself, and like all but two of the nuggets in this list, Doc Wing’s incredible find did not knowingly survive and was probably smelted. The Black Hills have never been known for producing large nuggets like other states known for their paying quantities of gold, such as California or Alaska.
Most of the nuggets listed above that were found in the Tinton area near the South Dakota and Wyoming border were well-rounded chunks of gold that were mostly free of any excess rock attached to them, the exceptions to this are the nuggets found by Doc Wing and M.R. Hydliff’s 1883 find which apart from their gold content also consisted of a large volume of quartz. It is worth mentioning that Bear Gulch is said to have produced many course nuggets, perhaps suggesting a different source of gold than that mentioned at the beginning of this paragraph. The references to Spring Creek above are to that of Pennington County, not the creek of the same name in Deadwood.