Founded in 1974 and based in Hill City, South Dakota, the company is most famous for excavating and selling replicas of some of the most complete specimens of Tyrannosaurus rex, including "Sue", "Stan", and "Trix".

[citation needed] In May 1992, the remains of "Sue" were seized from the BHI by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and were auctioned off five years later to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Illinois for US$7.6 million – the highest price ever paid for a fossil at the time.

[3] In 2012, President Peter Larson fired his brother, Neal, from the Black Hills Institute amid personal differences.

The court ruled that Neal’s shareholder rights had been violated when he was not invited nor allowed to speak at the meeting where he was fired.

Several years later, the court ruled that Neal would receive the Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton "Stan", which was appraised at a value of $6 million at the time.