Albert N. Williams

“ High as it is, Harney Peak is by no means the typical mountain which tourists come to expect after a trip through Colorado, for example, or western Wyoming. It is older by ages than the precipitous and craggy Rockies, and the winds and waters have worked their slow erosion on it, cutting away what high shelves and escarpments might originally have existed and leaving it, except at the top, a gentle and easy mountain that may be climbed over a trail which will scarcely tax the laziest tourist. ”

“ Men had all but forgotten what a gold rush was like. It had been so long since the last great hegira to the Pikes Peak region that a new generation had come into manhood, a generation that knew California only as a state, Colorado as a prosperous territory, and the Union Pacific as the proper way to cross the empty West. ”

“ Before the California gold rush life on the Great Plains had proceeded pretty much on an even keel. The mighty Teton Sioux, all seven tribes of them—the Oglalas, the Unkpapas, the San Arcs, the Brules, the Minniconjous, the Blackfeet, and the Two Kettle—roamed the prairies at will, from the Missouri 50 Valley to the Rocky Mountains. Of course they had their misadventures with the fur companies, but just as often their dealings with the Mountain Men were profitable, for the Indians, when in the mood, scouted, trapped, and hunted, all for the white man’s pay. ”

“ Spearfish has, however, carved for itself a fame and renown even larger, in many quarters, than that enjoyed by the gold rush towns of gustier memories. It is the home of the Black Hills Passion Play. ”

“ Detailed information on the various other scenic features is easily to be had at any of the hotels and tourist courts in the Hills, and brochures covering practically every landmark are available gratis, thanks to the enthusiasm of the local chambers of commerce, the Black Hills and Badlands Association, and the state of South Dakota. The area is crisscrossed with good roads, and no matter which route one takes to his eventual destination, every mile will be marked by breath-taking views and natural wonders. ”

“ Collecting his brother Fred, who was fruitlessly panning the sands of the Last Chance Gulch in the high border country of Montana, Moses started east, passing of course through the Black Hills, to scout down this one last ray of rumor—that a new strike was in the making. Setting out their camp in Bobtail Gulch, a mere pistol shot from certain placer claims in Deadwood Gulch, they went to work in midwinter, hoping to find, the legend has it, just enough blossom rock to give them a stake for their homeward journey. ”

“ As the tourist enters the town he will immediately be amazed by the wide main street; but if he ponders for a moment the problems of turning a freight wagon behind sixteen oxen, the reason will become clear. Custer, the western gateway to the Hills, was, until the coming of the railroads, a major way station on the busy Cheyenne-Deadwood stage and freight route; and for fifteen years the great bull wagons teamed into this busy center where, in most cases, the goods were unloaded and trans-shipped by lighter wagons into the various mining centers throughout the northern and central Hills. ”

“ The eastern gateway to the Hills is Rapid City, a metropolis of thirty thousand people which lies on the level prairie just to the east of the final ring of foothills. Founded, like Spearfish, not as a mining center but to serve the near-by gold regions, Rapid City has developed a maze of industrial and commercial enterprises. ”

“ All he needs to know is here—the highways to take into the Hills, the towns with their historic plays and celebrations, the peaks and lakes and caves he will find, the sports he may enjoy, the places where he may stay. A trip so guided cannot fail to be filled with the excitement the author himself has found in the Black Hills, of which he says that in his opinion “no other resort area in the United States possesses such a wealth of tourist attractions.” ”

“ Long burned the council fires in the dark nights, and all up and down the great plains the war raged. To protect the wagon trains the government sent its shrewdest and most experienced Indian agent, Thomas Fitzpatrick, a veteran fur trader since 1823, the famed “Broken Hand” of western legend. Summoning the tribes to Fort Laramie in 1851, Fitzpatrick managed to subdue them, but only by promising that he would confine the settlers to specific ranges and would keep them steadfastly out of the Dakotas and the Black Hills. ”

“ One might expect such a man as Wild Bill Hickok to meet his nemesis in open battle with a murderous cutthroat seeking to pay off an old score. Western legend is filled with such fitting come-uppances. ”

“ Estes Park, [1] in the Rockies, is only seventy miles from the city of Denver. Glacier Park is easily served by the Great Northern Railroad on its overland run, and Yellowstone enjoys direct service by three railroads. But the Black Hills lie beyond the privileges of railroad stopovers, and in order to visit them the tourist has no choice but to plan a vacation trip for the sake of the Hills themselves and not as a side venture from any of the traditional tours of the West. The Hills are worth the effort. ”

“ The Owens party was merely the vanguard of the great army of brave men and women who have ever since made their dangerous ways into the remotest distances of the mountain and desert West, seeking neither riches of gold nor riches of land, but only more minute bits of the knowledge of the world of our past. ”

“ Actually, much of the high western plain abutting on the Rocky Mountains is basic badland formation, and small pockets of distinct erosion can be seen all through eastern Colorado, western Nebraska, and eastern Wyoming, in addition to the vast depression in the valleys of the White and Cheyenne rivers in South Dakota. This one region, though, sixty-five miles long and five to fifteen miles wide, is the largest and from the geologist’s point of view the most important of all such regions in the world. ”

“ By 1876 the Indian problem had come to a head with the defeat of General Custer on the Little Big Horn in eastern Montana; and as one phase of retaliation the federal government redrafted the Sioux treaty, allowing American citizens to enter the Black Hills, until this time reserved for the Indians. Although for some time the tribal leaders could not be persuaded to sign the revised agreement, the restrictions on settlers were removed, and back into the Hills rushed the prospectors—this time to the new strikes in Deadwood Gulch, in the north. ”

“ Deadwood’s summer festivals, the gay “Days of ’76,” are built around a town-wide re-creation of the gold rush, with the natives chin-whiskered, booted, and costumed within an inch of their lives. During this gusty week otherwise sober and retiring citizens turn themselves out as stage coach drivers, Indians, and pony express riders, and the nights are filled with such a bubbling halloo that the tourists, who come in ever larger droves, are able to go home and report that 93 they have honestly spent time in a frontier town. ”

“ After exhausting the many plot possibilities of the Black Hills, Dick, who had become as real to his readers as George Washington, began to work both backward and forward in time and space. In one set of adventures he is shown to be an active Indian fighter; in another he turns up with Calamity Jane in the 92 town of Leadville, Colorado, which came into its glory not long after the strike in Deadwood. ”

“ Shipping, of course, has been a basic form of commerce from the earliest days, with the two most heavily traveled trails into the Black Hills, that from Fort Pierre and that from Sidney, Nebraska, on the Union Pacific, entering the gold area at Rapid City. Lumbering, manufacture, banking, and livestock quickly became prominent as the gold fever subsided and the more permanent settlers began coming into the region to take up the rich cattle and farming lands in western South Dakota. ”

“ There are, as a matter of fact, a dozen or more well-known large caves; but outside of Wind Cave, only Jewel Cave has been opened and fully prepared for public visit. The expense of exploring, lighting, and carving trails in the others has kept them off the market, so to speak, for in a region so packed with scenic delights two great caverns are about as much as the traffic will bear.
Jewel Cave lies some fourteen miles west of Custer on U.S. 16, almost at the Wyoming-South Dakota border. It is a small cave, with only two tours marked out in it, one a mile long and the other two miles. ”

“ This tidy metropolis, called the Queen City of the Black Hills, never knew the heady history that marked the early days of Custer, of Deadwood, of Rapid City, or even of fashionable Hot Springs. Lying outside the magnificent natural bowl of mineral deposits, Spearfish was founded and exists today for the simple purpose of supplying the inner Hills with food and produce. It 12 has a population of between three and four thousand people, most of whose energies are devoted to agriculture and livestock. ”

“ Of a somewhat different character from Wild Bill, but, it is good to report, no less revered in the Hills, was Preacher Smith.
Frontier towns have been notorious for their hallowing of persons, both male and female, who were either expertly good or expertly bad. This strange compounding of affections would suggest that the vice or godliness in itself was unimportant, but that the rough and crude citizens who populated our earlier settlements held a genuine admiration and regard for anyone of any calling who demonstrated authority and accomplishment. ”

“ Archeologists, geologists, and paleontologists from universities and learned societies the world over have spent liberally of their time, energies, and personal safety to scout out the secrets of mankind’s past in such remote corners of the earth as the Badlands. Year after year additional expeditions, both governmental and privately organized, made their way into this particular area, seeking out the fossil remains which turned up in great numbers. ”

“ Early California, for example, is today known less as the scene of the accomplishments of James Fair, Charles Crocker, and Leland Stanford than as the arena for the armed forays of Joaquin Murietta, Black Bart, Dick 79 Fellows, and various other gunmen. Since this is the accepted practice, it is entirely appropriate to introduce the gold-rush days of the Black Hills with a brief account of the banditry and thuggery which accompanied the early growth of that last frontier. ”

“ The man who plays the Christus, an inherited responsibility through many generations, is Josef Meier, who fled from Europe in 1932. For six years, with a reassembled cast, he toured the United States, performing a much trimmed-down version of the historic morality on college campuses, in civic auditoriums, and at summer encampments. It was at such a performance at the Black Hills Teachers College that the citizens of Spearfish were inspired to offer the touring company a permanent home. ”

“ For those entering the region from the north, U.S. 12 from Miles City, Montana, is in all probability the best route.
The gateways to the Black Hills are the towns of Hot Springs in the south, Rapid City on the eastern edge, Spearfish or Belle Fourche at the north, and Custer in the west. All these towns offer entirely acceptable accommodations for a touring family; in fact, no one need drive more than twenty or thirty miles from any point in the area to find suitable lodgings at a desired rate. ”

“ It was originally set aside as a state game refuge, and it was not until the advent of summer touring as a national pastime that the state of South Dakota purchased additional private lands which contained scenic wonders, incorporating all of them into the one large area.
Today the park is the center of all tourist activity in the region. A number of excellent lodges, camp grounds, and tourist courts along every road make it particularly easy for the tourist to stop at will for a day or more to enjoy the various recreational facilities as his fancy dictates. ”

“ The Mississippian period, however, was a time of great depositional activity. A layer of limestone between five and six hundred feet thick was set down over the entire section. In later periods this limestone 23 underwent much decay and water erosion, which formed the amazing caverns for which the Black Hills are known. Wind Cave, now the site of a National Park, Crystal Cave, and Jewel Cave are the best-known tourist attractions among the many, although there are a number of lesser ones, some even today only partially explored. ”

“ During the Cambrian period the land subsided again, perhaps because of the weight of the uplifted sedimentary formations. During this subsidence the waters once again covered vast portions of North America, and additional muds and slimes were deposited on the bottom. It was at this period that life first appeared on the earth, in the form of simple marine organisms which have left fossil remains. These deposits made in the Cambrian period can be seen in outcroppings all through the region, although they are most notably found in the area about Deadwood. ”