This is the schedule for the remainder of the 2009 Moon Walks.

JUNE 6, 2009 - THE ROCKERVILLE FLUME

This is the meadow adjacent to the Upper Spring Creek trail head, located about 10 miles west of Rapid City, just off Sheridan Lake Road (Highway 228).

This was the staging point for the June 6th Rockerville Flume Moon Walk, sponsored by the U.S. Forest Service.

Amy Ballard with the Forest Service coordinates these summertime events. This was the second Moon Walk of the year, and it's the 14th year that these monthly educational walks have taken place in the Black Hills National Forest.

Amy works out of the Mystic Ranger Station, as does Michael Salisbury (center) who was the featured speaker and trail guide for our June outing.

A native of Colorado, Michael served in the U.S. Air Force, and now works as an archaelologist for the U.S. Forest Service.

He said he considers himself basically a historian, and his research into the Rockerville Flume was a delightful trip into the rich history of the Black Hills.

About 100 folks gathered for the Rockerville Flume Moon Walk.

As you can tell by the attire, our contingent of hikers was prepared for just about any weather -- maybe even snow?

While temperatures were a bit brisk, we were blessed with no wind. There were occasional raindrops, but it was a pretty comfortable environment -- despite the fog.

To enlarge any of the photographs in this gallery, simply click on the image.

For the uninitiated, here's the dictionary definition of FLUME: An artificial channel or chute for a stream of water.

Gold seekers invaded the Black Hills in the 1870s, and the most common method of finding gold was "sluicing," which used inclined wooden troughs with cleats across the bottom. Those cleats would catch the gold from the gravel as water rushed through the trough.

According to Herbert Schell in his landmark book The History of South Dakota, miners used a "primitive rocker" when water supplies were inadequate for sluicing.

These "rockers" gave Rockerville its name. Schell wrote that it was "a boxlike contrivance mounted on a pair of rockers; there were a succession of sieves and tiny riffles on the bottom. The rocker was easily transported to any place where there was pay gravel and sufficient water; two men could operate it, one shoveling the gravel, the other rocking the cradlelike device with one hand and pouring water on the gravel with the other."

The Rockerville area may have had gold -- but not ample water. So a flume was constructed in 1880 to deliver water from Spring Creek (near what is now Sheridan Lake) to Rockerville. In this photo, Michael Salisbury gives a few highlights about the flume before leading a march to the flume trail.

Negotiating this narrow bridge across the creek was a first challenge. Very sturdy -- but fairly narrow -- the bridge provided an early challenge to several hikers.

While this hike up to the old flume trail was a bit steep, the path of the flume itself never exceeded more than a 2 percent grade in order to maintain a proper flow.

Construction of the flume was organized by the Black Hills Placer Mining Company in 1879, but work didn't begin until 1880. Considered something of an engineering marvel, the flume was built at a cost of beween $250,000 to $300,000. In 2009 dollars, that would be well over $4 million.

This is June?

The fog created a rather surreal environment.

Umbrellas, hiking boots, ponchos, and assorted head gear are common for the Moon Walks.

Flashlights were in much evidence for this hike, and they came in very handy later in the journey.