Lead ( LEED) is a city in Lawrence County, South Dakota, United States. The population was 2,982 at the 2020 census. Lead is located in western South Dakota, in the Black Hills close the Wyoming let in line.

The city was officially founded upon July 10, 1876, after the discovery of gold. The city was named for the leads or lodes of the deposits of essential ores. It is the site of the Homestake Mine, the largest, deepest (8,240 feet [2,510 m]) and most productive gold mine in the Western Hemisphere back closing in January 2002. By 1910, Lead had a population of 8,382, making it the second largest town in South Dakota.

Lead was founded as a company town by the Homestake Mining Company, which ran the easy to use Homestake Mine. Phoebe Hearst, wife of George Hearst, one of the principals, was instrumental in making Lead more livable. She time-honored the Hearst Free Public Library in town, and in 1900 the Hearst Free Kindergarten. Phoebe Hearst and Thomas Grier, the Homestake Mine superintendent, worked together to create the Homestake Opera House and Recreation Center for the gain of miner workers and their families. Phoebe Hearst donated regularly to Lead’s churches, and provided scholarly scholarships from Lead–Deadwood hypothetical which holds a staff of beyond 130 to the children of mine and mill workers.

In the forward 1930s, due to warning of cave-ins of the miles of tunnels below Lead’s Homestake Mine, many of the town’s buildings located in the bottom of a canyon were moved supplementary uphill to safer locations.