Sign up to receive email notices of recent acquisitions.

The Black Hills Their Wonderful Mineral Wealth and Products: Rapid City The Gateway and Distributing Point - Facts and Figures of Interest to All.

Chicago: Poole Bros., Printers and Engravers [ca. 1883]. 8vo, original pictorial wrappers. 16 pp., illus., fold out bird’s eye view, 11.25” x 19.75”.

A promotional pamphlet issued by the Chicago and Northwestern Railway, touting the virtues of Rapid City and the Black Hills region, intended to market railroad company lands.

Reprinted here are several press reports describing the area’s advantages, including geography, rail connections, the business climate, and perhaps most alluringly, mineral wealth: “There are veins of gold, silver, tin, copper, iron, lead, abestos [sic], plumbago, cinnabar, nickle [sic], zinc, mica, platinum and salpetre. Uranium, a metal of great value and useful in coloring porcelain and chinaware, is found, this being the only point of discovery on this continent.” Founded by a group of miners in 1876, Rapid City was a town of three hundred when this pamphlet was published. Heralded as “The Coming Metropolis of Dakota,” it would fulfill its promise, developing into an important regional trade center. Illustrated with views of the city’s buildings and streets, including an attractive fold-out bird’s eye view of the city, enlivened with horse-drawn wagons and stage coaches, as well as inset views of the Rapid City Public School (also pictured on the upper wrapper) and the Pennington County Court House, by W.J. Herancourt, dated 1883.

Scarce. OCLC records only five copies.

REFERENCES: Eberstadt 134:239 and 167:183.

CONDITION: Very good, light toning and edgewear, loss to outer margin of last leaf, with no effect on printing.

Item #2877

Sold