Frank Thomson Collection

October 20, 1881 Frank S. Thomson was born to Lewis and Isabelle (Mitchell) Thomson of Rock Valley, Iowa. The family moved to Pukwana, SD two years later and in 1890 moved on to Hill City, SD. Thomson attended Spearfish Normal School (now Black Hills State University). He played on the first football team at the school and graduated in 1902. For the next several years he worked first as a carpenter on the gold mills at Maitland and then as a forest ranger in the Black Hills National Forest. In 1910 he purchased a farm in Spearfish, SD which he worked until 1974. He served for 52 years as the president of the Spearfish Livestock Association. He married Elsie Peterson in 1904 and had two children, a daughter, Edith and a son, George.

Thomson wrote a number of articles on the history of the Black Hills. He is best known for his tireless effort to prove the Thoen Stone to be a genuine artifact. The Thoen stone is a sandstone slab dated 1884 with handwritten script detailing the story of a party of prospectors who had found gold but were then perished, the author Ezra Kind was the last of the party and recorded their story before he followed his fellow prospectors. The stone was found by the Thoen brothers, Louis and Ivan, stone cutters who were quarrying sandstone on Lookout Mountain in Spearfish. Many believed the stone to be a hoax. Thomson painstakingly researched the members of the party listed on the stone and tracked down decedents in order to prove the authenticity of the stone. His research resulted in his book, The Thoen Stone: A Saga of the Black Hills, published in 1966. He donated land to the City of Spearfish to erect a monument, a granite representation of the Thoen Stone.

Thomson also published two other books. One titled Last Buffalo of the Black Hills: A Study and the other is experts of his diary titled Ninety Six Years in the Black Hills. Thomson died at age 93, on April 14, 1975. He is buried in Spearfish's Rose Hill Cemetery.