Before the struggling village developed as a successful river port, though, argonauts passed by on paddlewheelers en route to the bonanza regions on the upper Missouri without creating much excitement. On May 12, 1863, for instance, the Weekly Dakotian printed just a single paragraph to note an incident relating to the quest for the yellow metal.

"The steamer Shreveport lies below Yankton, as we go to press, fast on a sandbar. She has on board nearly a hundred passengers bound for the Idaho gold mines, besides an immense amount of provisions and miners' tools. Until she meets the June rise, her progress up the river will be slow and tedious."

By the end of the Civil War, the recurrent rumors of valuable gold deposits in the Indian-held Black Hills stirred the citizenry, and local businessmen envisioned the territorial capital as an ideal outfitting point for prospectors heading westward. The interest and aspirations were premature, however.

On April 20, 1867, the Union and Dakotaian rekindled enthusiasm with the announcement of a local discovery:

"We learn that an old Montana miner [James Ferguson] found a small quantity of gold under the bluff just above the foot of Broadway a few days since, and several others have been recently prospecting in the vicinity. We advise our readers not to allow themselves to get excited on the subject as there is very little prospect that the precious metal will be found in paying quantities this side of the Black Hills."

It turned out just as the newspaper predicted, and even though someone reputedly found 50 cents worth of gold dust in the craw of a chicken which had grown up on the banks of the Missouri, Yankton's rush did not materialize. The still-tiny town had to wait several more years before gold was to play an important economic role in its development.

By 1872 it was reported that a committee -- consisting of Gov. John A. Burbank, former territorial chief executives Newton Edmunds and Andrew Faulk, General William Henry Harrison Beadle and Judge Wilmot W. Brookings -- was named to petition Congress and the Secretary of War to permit a gold-seeking party from Yankton to enter the Black Hills despite treaty restrictions. This, too, was premature.

Two years later, when Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer led his Seventh Cavalry on an exploratory expedition into the Hills, two prospectors with the troopers -- Horatio N. Ross and William T. McKay -- found the first traces of gold in French Creek near present-day Custer on July 30, 1874. Custer -- a favorite of many Yanktonians because of his encampment in their town during the previous year -- then announced the discovery, and the news quickly generated wide attention.

In Yankton the town's newspapers fanned the flames of interest in the potential new El Dorado. The Press and Dakotaian -- then owned by W. S. Bowen and the ever-present George Kingsbury -- began to issue a daily edition of a sheet they called the Yankton Black Hiller which promoted Yankton as the most logical jumping off point for the gold country. By this time the Dakotan Southern Railroad had reached the capital (in 1873), and its rivalry with Sioux City, already strong, grew more intense as the two of them competed for the lucrative business of outfitting prospectors and sending them on their way.

The Iowans championed a route to the Black Hills through Nebraska to deny use of Yankton's railroad connection. At the same time, the Yankton papers castigated the "sandhill route" and called it "longer, tedious and more expensive." Yankton, they said, offered a much better choice: by Dakota Southern to the capital, then by luxurious packet boat or overland trail to Fort Pierre and from there westward by stage or wagon.

Unfortunately, it was all illegal because of the treaty commitments, but that didn't stop the gold-seekers, despite attempts by the Army to stem the tide. An estimated 10,000 of them entered the Black Hills between mid-November of 1875 and the first of March, 1876. For Yankton that was a bonanza of another type.

Two locally-based firms profited most from the gold rush. The Coulson Packet Line provided the steamboats for the river portion of the trip, while Bramble, Miner and Company -- which owned and operated the Excelsior Flour Mill and also sold a full range of mining camp necessities through its mercantile outlet -- organized the Merchants Transportation Company, one of two major firms to offer overland freight and passenger service.

For a time Charles T. Campbell and John Dillon operated a stage line out of Yankton with four Concord coaches, which followed a route up the James River Valley by way of Scotland, Rockport, Firesteel and then to Fort Pierre. The travel was almost all gold-related.

As mining activity grew, Yankton banks had to provide scales to weigh gold brought in by miners as the territorial capital was the first major stop for them as they headed eastward from the diggings. On July 1, 1876 (less than a week after the Custer debacle at Little Big Horn), the Press and Dakotaian noted the local transactions in raw metal:

"Of the gold dust recently brought to Yankton from the Hills, Bramble and Miner have received 300 ounces; Weixel's and Baer, 14 ounces; John Bates, eight ounces; S. Eiseman and Co., three and one half ounces; Charles Sponsler, one and a half ounces; John Ross, one ounce. Besides this, our banks have purchased gold of miners as follows: First National, 60 ounces; Edmunds and Wynn, 157 ounces; Mark M. Parmer, 50 ounces. This makes a total of 595 ounces." (Gold was being traded at $20 an ounce at the time.)

By 1880 Bramble and Miner's freighting company was said to be employing 300 men and 2,000 oxen, but that year marked the end of the gold heyday for Yankton. The Chicago and North Western Railroad reached Pierre in the summer that year, signaling a death knell for the overland freight companies and the river traffic. The flood of 1881, which literally destroyed the steamboat fleet, came after the Black Hills mining trade had dwindled away.

Like the territorial capital's loss, the cement works failure and the hoped-for industrial development which faded when the artesian wells dissipated, Yankton's gold rush interlude ended because of developments previously unforeseen. Still, it was one more maturing experience in the young town's quest for a lasting economic under-pinning.

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Originally published March 3, 1997