DAKOTAS ON OUR MINDS: PART II

July, 2019

So, did you get the bonus point?  Could you name the 3 National Parks, 2 National Monuments, 2 cities you have to visit, a highly recommended State Park, the world’s largest mountain carving, most advertised and famous apothecary in the U.S., and the city that has memorialized every U.S. President with statues on their downtown street corners that are all in or near the western Dakotas? Bonus points for territories and non-state commonwealths?

You’re more than halfway home from our times in the Dakotas.  Hope you enjoy the ride!

Korczak Ziolkowski was the sculptor for the memorial, and Oglala Lakota leader Crazy Horse is the model.  Commissioned by Lakota Elder Chief Henry Standing Bear on behalf of the Ancient People of the Plains, Crazy Horse is a hero to all Ancient Peoples, representing their fierce independence and pride.  He was never known to have signed a treaty or touched a pen; he never surrendered to the U.S. Government.

The monument is the world’s largest mountain carving; standing at 564 architectural feet from its base, it is taller than the Washington Monument, and well over two football fields wide.  The carving was started in 1948, and it continues as a work in progress.

Once we were through the fee gate and had parked the car, we were directed into the Indian Museum of North America.  The museum is an educational opportunity for visitors to explore the culture of Ancient Peoples through preserved artifacts including clothing, everyday tools, weapons, artifacts and other necessary community implements, pictures and sculptures of daily life.  Busts of many great chiefs as well as stories related to the customs of the various tribes were also on display.  Everything is told in honor of those who have come before us, and to bring to light cultural values and tribal dignity.  This might be considered a small museum, but is so fascinating and competently thought-out that we found ourselves well engaged.

The sculptor’s vision and model is on display and gave us a  chance to imagine what the monument will look like when completed.

The directions from our campground in Rapid City to Deadwood (Brian loved the TV show) were pretty simple:  drive 10 miles to Interstate 90, then go 29 miles west to the exit for Sturgis (!!), then go 13 miles south on US-14A.

The discovery of gold in the southern Black Hills in 1874 set off one of the great gold rushes in America.  Legend has it that the earliest miners came across a gulch full of dead trees and a creek full of gold…Deadwood was born.  Practically overnight the tiny gold camp boomed into a town that played by its own rules and attracted outlaws, madams and their ladies; gamblers and gunslingers along with the gold seekers.

Wild Bill Hickok was one of those men who came looking for fortune, but just a few short weeks after arriving he was gunned down while holding a poker hand of aces and eights – forever after known as the Dead Man’s Hand.  Calamity Jane also made a name for herself in Deadwood, and she is buried next to Hickok in Mount Moriah Cemetery.

Closed to burials since 1949, Mount Moriah Cemetery has served Deadwood as its boothill (potter’s field) and city cemetery since 1878, and it is the resting place for 3,267 deceased.  In addition to the preponderance of Christian graves, sections of Mount Moriah Cemetery were set aside for Chinese and Jewish interments.  Mind-boggling that Jews were living in the Old West in numbers great enough to have so many burial sites.

…and last, but not least, we understand from our son-in-law, Ben Bullock, that one of Deadwood’s founders, Seth Bullock, is not a relation…

2019 marked the 79th annual motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota.  For 10 days beginning the first Friday in August, the historically small town of 6,800 souls becomes the motorcycle capitol of the United States with a population estimated by the South Dakota Department of Transportation of more than 500,000.

We’re grateful that our nephew, Manual Ayala, who, upon hearing the timing of our plans alerted us we’d be in the neighborhood during Rally Week.  We changed our plans so that we’d be out of the area when the shenanigans kicked off.  We did drive around town as the merchants and townsfolk were in process of setting-up for the onslaught…

Theodore Roosevelt National Park earned its name for 2 reasons:  it honors the President who, more than any other leader of our Country,  believed in the conservation of our Country’s natural beauty, and he assured the preservation of the pristine nature of enormous tracks of land by initiating our National Parks system; the man actually owned a ranch in the Park.  As President, Theodore Roosevelt established the U.S. Forestry Service, signed the 1906 Antiquities Act which directly lead to the proclamation of 18 National Monuments, created 5 National Parks, and 150 National Forests; over 250 million acres of protected land.  Theodore Roosevelt NP was originally established in 1947 as a national memorial park to honor the man.

There are 3 distinct sections of the park, each with its own visitors center:   The Painted Canyon, South Unit and North Unit.  The Painted Canyon and South Unit are along Interstate 94 and approximately 16 miles apart; the South Unit being farther west.  The North Unit is 68 miles away.  Each offers a topography unlike the other 2; the North and South Units have scenic drives with pullouts and parking areas for viewing, and all of the Park’s sections offer hiking trails, and the chance to see wildlife.

The panoramic views from the overlook at the Painted Canyon visitors center are a great introduction to Theodore Roosevelt National Park, and we started to imagine that this park might out badlands the Badlands!

Entering the South Unit and beginning our travel along the scenic drive, to Brian’s delight, we found a prairie dog town!

Finally looking up from the antics of these playful creatures, a harras of wild horses could be seen in the distance.  The coolest thing about the group was the foals; couldn’t be more than a month or 2 in age.

Roosevelt’s Maltese Cross Ranch was near the South Unit’s visitor center.  The cabin is all that remains of this ranch.

Roosevelt’s other homestead within the Park was the Elkhorn Ranch.  The buildings no longer exist, but standing in the space once inhabited by Roosevelt and looking out onto the grasslands, it’s not difficult to imagine cattle ranching in the early 20th century.

The scenic drive afforded views of the terrain.  Perhaps we’ve become jaded with all of the beauty, geography and topography we’ve seen during our travels and the hikes we’ve taken and maybe we didn’t know what to expect, but while the South Unit was indeed beautiful and much more green than expected, it failed to leave an “oh wow” impression.  Trails intersected and branched off of each other, and trails were much longer than we were comfortable hiking.  We were interested in seeing the petrified forest areas, but these, too, were well off the beaten path out in the Park’s wilderness area, requiring a good 6-8 mile hike in (and eventually back out) before reaching any of the petrified forest trails.

In contrast, the North Unit was immediately impressive.  We found ourselves easily drawn into several hikes.  The first brought us to the wonderful River Bend overlook.  Here’s a great spot to view the Little Missouri River floodplain, and to see the river as it flows eastward on its journey eventually northward to Hudson Bay (!).

Not sure why we didn’t know this before, but badlands were formed by glacial activity.  Views from the Oxbow Overlook of the badlands were pretty cool.

By far the best attraction of the Park is its most unusual:  the Cannonball Concretions.  “Cannonballs” were formed when sand grains from ancient river deposits were cemented together by minerals dissolved in the groundwater…or… a concretion is a hard, compact mass of matter formed by the precipitation of mineral cement within the spaces between particles, and it is found in sedimentary rock or soil.  Yeah, right…why spheroid?   We may try to explain Mother Nature, but us mere mortals just can’t do her justice.  Check it out…

We might have rushed our time at Theodore Roosevelt National Park, not given the South Unit a proper amount of time, and maybe we should have taken a hike.  The North Unit is well worth the visit, and the vistas from the Painted Canyon Overlook are worth the stop while traveling through the area.  Most of all stopping to honor the father of our national parks is a must.

Devils Tower National Monument is in Wyoming, 49 miles from the South Dakota border and 40 miles to the border of Montana.  Devils Tower is a butte composed of igneous rock that rises 1,267 feet above the Belle Fourche River, standing 867 feet from summit to base, and it is 5,112 feet above sea level.  Geologists believe the butte has remained unchanged for tens of thousands of years.

Devils Tower might look familiar. The Tower features heavily in Steven Spielberg’s 1977 film “Close Encounters of The Third Kind.”  In the climax of the film, several characters — who have been so unknowingly obsessed with the structure that they have sculpted it in mashed potatoes and repeatedly sketched it — descend on Devils Tower, where they greet a gargantuan alien mother ship.

It is an incredibly impressive monolith that, because of the vast prairie and relatively flat topography in the region, can be seen from miles and miles away.

In 1906 President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed Devils Tower our first National Monument.  We walked the 1.3 mile trail around the base of the Monument amazed at the ridged face of the structure – Ancient Peoples of the Northern Plains Tribes believed that those ridges are the claw marks of a giant bear.

Barbara had a jones to visit the Tower, and she was right-on. Devils Tower is spectacular!

We had a day to kill before pulling out of the Dakotas and decided to take a little trip into Rapid City to check out the line-up of U.S. Presidents on the downtown’s street corners.  This is a project begun in 2000 to honor the legacy of the American Presidency.  Each of the sculptures is privately funded, and the pattern of placement was chosen to maintain a coherent structure and eliminate any sense of favoritism or political gain.  Check on-line or visit one of the merchants on Main Street to get a map.  Here’s a sampling of the statues.

We were very busy during our time in the Dakotas.  The Black Hills are beautiful, and during summertime, even with tourists, it’s easy to do and see the sights at your pace.  There is just so much to see and do that we found our days to be very full.

Barbara and Brian