Spearfish Canyon preserves traces of its frontier past even as recreation became the area’s main attraction, and visitors can still find signs of an old roadway or railroad bed among a landscape shaped by many changes. A railroad built in 1893 opened the canyon to the public and brought fishermen, sightseers, picnickers, and berry pickers to a place popular with locals and tourists in the late 1890s, but automobiles became the preferred mode of travel by the early 1900s, leading to abandonment and removal of the rail line in the 1930s and the creation of a roadway along the same route. During the frontier years, the canyon also supported mining and logging, supplying timber for the underground openings of the Homestake Gold Mine while Spearfish Creek provided electrical power for gold processing machinery and helped electrify Spearfish, Lead, Deadwood, and Central City. The canyon’s timber and hydroelectric power continue to aid the Black Hills today.