Fish & Hunter Company

Fish and Hunter Company. . “A good twenty horse power saw mill would pay big here" appeared in a Letter to the Editor of the Minneapolis based Star Tribune newspaper on June 4, 1877. Canadian born John Hunter took those words to heart. During the 1870s Minnesota lumber boom, Hunter gained experience working as a blacksmith and sawmill operator in Minneapolis. On July 4, 1877, Hunter, two business partners and a portable sawmill arrived in Deadwood Gulch. Hunter's party established their sawmill along Polo Creek then relocated to Speigel's Gap, two miles from the booming Crook City mining camp. The partnership dissolved and Hunter was forced to buy out his partners. Despite the financial setback, Hunter's fortune changed as a result of the Deadwood fire of September 26, 1879. Local history credits Hunter's sawmill for having provided lumber for the reconstruction of the Deadwood Gulch mining camps. , Following the fire, Hunter's sawmill prospered. In 1883, he partnered with James M. Fish who also owned a sawmill in Two Bit Gulch. The union of these sawmills created the Fish and Hunter Company. The first business office was located along lower Main Street in Deadwood's Chinatown district. Over the next four decades, the Fish and Hunter Company expanded its business to include mercantile, retail grocery, hardware, retail / wholesale lumber yards and millworks. , In 1891, the Fish and Hunter Company acquired a retail lumber yard once located along Sherman Street and erected a two story brick office building. Fourteen years later the company added a second two story brick building that served as a grocery store. In 1936, the firm expanded again and built a one story brick warehouse that housed a planing mill and woodworking shop. On the night of December 12, 1961, fire destroyed the office building and grocery store with an estimated loss of $500,000 dollars. Though the company recovered and continued to prosper for another 10 years, Deadwood had once again lost a prominent landmark to fire. , In 1990, the City of Deadwood purchased the one story brick warehouse and converted it into the Deadwood City Hall. , Captions: , 1930 insurance map providing an overview of the Fish and Hunter Company on Sherman Street. , In 1990, the City of Deadwood purchased the one story brick warehouse and converted it into the Deadwood City Hall. , Fish and Hunter Company business office and grocery store along Sherman Street, circa 1953.