The Girls of the Gulch  

by Bob Hayes

Every mining town in the west was started by prospectors and miners, who were followed by the support group of merchants, saloon keepers, dance hall girls and prostitutes. Keystone, on Highway 16-A near Mount Rushmore, began as one of the those early mining towns.

Bismarck Annie was Keystone's "soiled dove" whose escapades became legend in the small mining town. Arriving in Keystone sometime between 1894 and 1900, via Custer and Hill City, Annie Parks opened "The Palace" brothel which was located near the present-day Subway sandwich shop, at the intersection of Reed Street and Speck Road (the road that goes to the old Keystone community hall.)

Keystone didn't boom until two decades after gold was discovered near present-day Custer by members of General George Armstrong Custer's l874 Black Hills expedition. The gold rush started in Custer and, as prospectors moved north, they established new settlements at Hill City, Sheridan, Tigerville, Sitting Bull, Pactola, and Rochford, before finally striking the big bonanza in Deadwood Gulch.

There was also gold mining activity in Hayward, Harney City, Glendale and Crossville, surrounding present-day Keystone. Located in l883 for mica, the Etta Mine also yielded up cassiterite (an ore of tin) and began a "tin boom" in the Black Hills. Etta Camp developed along Grizzly Bear Creek.

First production from a gold lode deposit came from the Keystone Mine, located in l891 by William Franklin, Tom Blair and Jacob Reed. Reed laid out the original Keystone townsite, named for the mine. When Franklin located the Holy Terror Mine on June 28, l894, Keystone's growth spurt began.

Franklin was hiking with his adopted daughter Cora at the base of Mount Aetna when she picked up a piece of quartz. As an old prospector, "Rocky Mountain Frank" recognized his daughter's find as gold-bearing quartz. He walked 20 miles into Rapid City to file his claim, then celebrated in Rapid City saloons for several days. When he finally came home, Franklin soothed his enraged wife by telling her he had named the new mine after her. The fireworks must have started again a few days later when Jennie Franklin learned the name of the new mine was the "Holy Terror."

By the turn of the century, Keystone was larger than Rapid City and considered the most promising community in the Southern Hills.

Few written records exist about prostitutes, especially in Keystone, where stories of the world's oldest profession come mostly through oral history, although western author Stewart Edward White wrote about Bismarck Annie in his novel, The Westerners.

White, who lived in the Keystone area around 1900, portrayed his Bismarck Annie as young and slender, an attractive, abundantly vital girl with dark skin, black hair and black eyes. He wrote of her riding into mining camps on a pinto pony, with a red rose in her hair and wearing a fancy ball gown.

Martha Linde of Custer depicted Annie Parks much differently in her book, Rushmore's Golden Valleys. Linde's Bismarck Annie was a much older woman who had lost all traces of beauty and had a pronounced chorea, a nervous disorder characterized by incoordination and spasmodic movement of limbs and facial muscles.

Since there are no known photographs of Bismarck Annie, the conflicting pictures presented by White and Linde may point out the difference between fact and fiction. Or perhaps White was describing Annie in much younger days.

Annie operated the Palace for 10 or 15 years, ruling her girls with an iron hand. She was heartily disliked by the respectable women in Keystone who deplored her methods of taking young farm girls into her business.

Led by Mrs. Emma Wasson, a group of women plotted to rescue three young girls from Annie's den of iniquity. They created a disturbance to lure the madam away from the Palace long enough to bring in a minister and three willing miners. A hurried ceremony joined three young girls and the miners in the bonds of holy matrimony.

In Keystone and its Colorful Characters, Beverly Pechan said Annie and her girls would dress up on Sundays and ride through town in fancy buggies, while irate wives yanked down window shades to block the view from peeping husbands.

Stories of Annie's blunt expressions were laughingly repeated among the men in Keystone. On one occasion, when Bismarck Annie attempted to take Al Shoemaker's hack to a July Fourth celebration in Hill City, the other female passengers climbed off the hack as Annie boarded. Her resentment was loudly expressed in unladylike terms as she flounced out, saying she wouldn't deprive Mr. Shoemaker of his passengers.

After the Holy Terror Mine ceased operations in June 1903, Keystone lost much of its glitter, but Bismarck Annie continued her illegal business for at least a few more years.

A life-long Keystone resident, Edith Hoy Peterson, remembers living across Battle Creek from the Palace as a little girl.

"Edith, you stay away from that place because those girls are naughty, " Nell Hoy told her young daughter. But Edith was often in trouble for venturing over to the Palace where the girls would give her candy. Among Mrs. Peterson's prize possessions is the china cup and saucer given to her by one of the beautifully dressed "ladies" from the Palace.

Edith's comment about Bismarck Annie was: "She certainly was a nice lady. She was nicer than some of the ladies who tried to run her out of town."

One of the unfortunate fabrications that made its way into print links Annie Parks with the Bismark Mine near Keystone. A 1973 publication, South Dakota Geographic Names, indicates the mine was owned by and named for Keystone's notorious madam who had moved to the Hills from Bismarck, North Dakota. "Bismarck Annie" may have come from North Dakota, but the Bismark Mine (spelled without the "c") was owned by two Germans, August Engel and Fred Sierth. Annie had nothing to do with the mine, other than supplying the miner's need for feminine companionship.

Bismarck Annie Parks disappeared from Keystone sometime around 1910. She may have moved west to another boom town in another state, or perhaps she retired from the business. Like many other prostitutes of the era, she faded into oblivion.