Rockerville South Dakota

Gold is where you find it and in 1876 William Keeler, supervising a batch of burros, en route from Sheridan (now in the bottom of a big lake) to Rapid City, bedded down about 1,500 feet east of here where Captain Jack's Gulch leads to the South. His bed proved to be a gold mine and the fabulous Rockerville gold rush was started. These Hillsides were dotted with tents and miner's shacks. Civic enterprise, which closely followed the discovery, centered down just above Captain Jack's Gulch. Main Street followed the creek line which crossed it whenever it felt like it. The main N and S street was Ascension Street and there is a sign down there to prove it. Right here, was a leading residential section and the log house near-by was its most impressive and substantial mansion. It was 1880 when the great ditch from Spring Creek, with its 14 miles of twisting turning side hill canal and high flumes brought water to Rockerville's fabulous placers. Up to then, a man with a barrel of water used repeatedly, and his little rocker, had made Rockerville a place where a man might make a quick dollar of lose this shirt.

ERECTED 1955 BY TERRY MCCULLEN AND STATE HIGHWAY COMMISION