The Hideaway Hills neighborhood of South Dakota is facing a growing threat

Stuart and Tonya Junker loved their quiet neighborhood near South Dakota’s Black Hills — until the ground began to crumble around them, leaving them wondering if their home might collapse into a gaping hole .

They blame the state for selling the land that became the Hideaway Hills subdivision, despite knowing it was perched on top of an old mine. Since the sinkholes started opening, they and about 150 of their neighbors have sued the state for $45 million to cover the value of their homes and legal costs.

“Let’s just say it changed our lives a lot,” Tonya Junker said. “The worry, the lack of sleep, the ‘what ifs’ something happens. It’s all, all of the above.”

Sinkholes are fairly common, from collapsed caves, old mines or dissolving material, but the circumstances in South Dakota stand out, said Paul Santi, a professor of geological engineering at the Colorado School of Mines. The combination of such large sinkholes endangering so many homes makes the Hideaway Hills situation one to remember.

“I can only say after teaching case histories with geological issues that this would be a textbook case,” Santi said.

Crews built Hideaway Hills, located a few miles northwest of Rapid City, between 2002 and 2004 on an area formerly owned by the state, where the mineral gypsum was mined for use at a nearby state cement plant .

Attorney Kathy Barrow, who represents residents living in 94 subdivision homes, said the state sold the acreage but kept the acreage and did not disclose that it removed the soil’s natural ability to support the acreage.

Part of the land sank slightly over time after the subdivision was built and a hole opened up under a back porch, but the situation escalated after a large sinkhole opened in 2020 near where a man was mowing his lawn. This led residents to connect with Barrow, and tests revealed a large, poorly sealed mine under the northeast part of the subdivision and a 40-foot (12-meter-deep) pit mine in a another corner of the neighborhood, Barrow said.

Since the first giant collapse, more holes and sinkholes have appeared and are now “too many to count,” Barrow said. Unstable terrain affected 158 homes plus destabilized roads and utilities.

In one spot, an old truck can be seen in a hole under a house’s porch, still resting where a landowner pushed it into a mine cavern in the 1940s, Barrow said.

The area near the 2020 collapse has been cleared and sealed off, but people still live in many of the other houses, usually because they can’t afford to leave.

Residents are panicked but stuck, Barrow said.

“They are worried that the school buses will fall into a ditch. They worry about their houses collapsing on their children in their beds at night,” Barrow said. “I mean, you spend your whole life putting money and building equity in your home. It is your most precious good, and the good of these people had become not only worthless, but almost negative, because it is dangerous to live.”

An attorney for the state declined to comment, but the state asked a judge to dismiss the case.

In court filings, the state entities being sued said they “would like to express their sincerest sympathies to many of the property owners” and called the sinkhole formation “tragic.”

However, the state argued that it was not the officials’ fault.

“The real culprits in this case are the developer, the original realtor and the many homebuilders who knowingly chose to build over an abandoned mine, purposely hiding their existence from homebuyers purchasing in Hideaway Hills,” said the state.

In court documents, the state traced the area’s mining history back to the 1900s, citing a company that mined underground and surface before 1930. Beginning in 1986, the state-owned cement plant operated for several years.

The state argued that it was not liable for damages related to the underground mine collapse because the cement plant did not mine underground and the mine would have collapsed regardless of the plant’s activities. Around 1994, a horse farmer bought the land and then sold the property to a developer who encountered a deep hole, the state said in documents.

The state said it could not have known the developer, homebuilders and county would move forward with development of the neighborhood, despite knowing about the past mining and underground voids.

In 2000, the South Dakota Legislature approved the sale of the state cement plant. A voter-approved trust fund created from the proceeds of the sale totals more than $371 million.

For the Junkers, the lawsuit is their best hope of escaping a nightmare.

Tonya Junker said her husband will retire this year, but now has to work more, taking on two jobs to save money in case they are evicted.

“It’s a tough pill to swallow,” she said.

The Junkers lived together in the neighborhood for 15 years in a home built in 1929 and moved into the subdivision as one of the first homes in the neighborhood. They gutted and remodeled the structure and planned to make the three-bedroom, two-bath home their retirement base.

Stuart Junker said he simply wants to be paid what his house is worth.

“It’s just kind of disappointing that the state won’t take care of us,” he said. “I mean, that’s their problem.”

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Dura reported from Bismarck, North Dakota.

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