The most unexpected museum item in the Black Hills is an ancient receipt for a dead animal. We’re talking really ancient, like 4,350 years old. It’s found in an unlikely spot, on the Black Hills State University campus, on the first floor of the library, right next to the Einstein … Read More
If you’ve never considered yourself a bird-watcher, there’s no better place to start than Spearfish Canyon. It’s home to 130 bird species, including some you’re unlikely to find in your backyard. This is where eagles launch themselves from the high rimrock and glide on canyon air currents, then suddenly drop … Read More
Nothing lasts forever except maybe Black Hills granite, some of the planet’s hardest rock. But everything else disappears eventually, including some Black Hills summer attractions you may recall from your youth. Remember summer nights spent watching greyhounds run at the dog track between Rapid City and Black Hawk? Yes, you … Read More
This is Sylvan Lake, a movie setting fans will recognize from National Treasure II a few years ago. Since the 1920s, when Hollywood discovered Russ Madison’s ranch in the heart of the Black Hills, the region has been a favorite on-location site for movie shoots. Major films shot here include … Read More
World’s biggest mountain sculptures, world’s biggest motorcycle rally, western hemisphere’s biggest gold mine, two of the planet’s biggest caves, and probably the number one biggest cave once we determine where Jewel and Wind caves intersect. If you’ve missed it, the operative word here is “biggest,” a Black Hills obsession, whether … Read More
When Wild Bill Hickok got shot in Deadwood in 1876, it wasn’t a classic Old West showdown. It was plain, unadorned, John Wilkes Booth-style, bullet-to-the-back-of-the-head assassination. It’s a safe bet that no community on earth has embraced and celebrated assassination quite like Deadwood. You can’t get out of the place … Read More
Shhh! It’s kind of a secret. Black Hills streams are perfect trout habitats, as fishermen know, but these fish aren’t native to the area. When immigrants swarmed to the Black Hills in the late 1800s, they were surprised to find no trout. All trout caught here today are descended from … Read More
If you grew up in Iowa or Minnesota in the 1960s, and your next door neighbors took a Black Hills vacation, you maybe didn’t recognize their car when it returned. The car would be plastered with bright bumper stickers from every cave, gravity house, and curio shop the neighbors visited. … Read More
You reach Thunderhead Falls by pulling off highway 44 west of Rapid City, feeling lost on a gravel road that’s not well marked, buying a ticket, and trudging unguided into an old horizontal mine drift. A cold stream rushes along the underground path for a couple hundred yards, fed by … Read More
Bridal Veil Falls can embarrass you. It’s visible from the Spearfish Canyon highway (there’s even a new observation deck) and when it cascades full in spring it’s spectacular. It roars and sprays mist, cascading a hundred feet. So a few weeks later you decide to take out-of-state friends up there, … Read More