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Here's a page about the local area, home of Mt. Rushmore, Crazy Horse, Deadwood, the Black Hills, the Badlands, Pine Ridge Reservation, the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, and a few dozen other things, too!

What does it take to get through to some people?

No rollerskating!

No tummy rubs! No dancing!

Badlands National Park official site. Lunar scenery and the biggest Oligocene fossil beds in the world.

Bear Butte (links to TripAdvisor) is a laccolith just east of Sturgis.
Bear Butte is sacred to various Native American nations and tribes.

Black Hills and Badlands The official tourism site. Videos of the area so you'll know what to see. A big list of links to local tourist attractions. Too many to list here. They have free South Dakota Vacation Guides, 280 pages worth! Click the link, scroll down, and fill out the form.

Black Hills Institute of Geological Research has a fantastic dinosaur museum in Hill City. Small in area but crammed with dino skeletons including (usually) several T-Rex. Known worldwide, the Institute sponsored the 100 Years of T-Rex seminar in the summer of 2005, with many big name dinosaur paleontologists attending. For even more dinosaurs and other ancient creatures, check out the Geology Museum at the School of Mines and Technology.

Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary "See hundreds of wild American, Spanish, and Sulphur mustangs roaming free across wind swept prairies. Imagine a place where, as far as the eye can see, miles and miles to the horizon, you can view America as it was 300 years ago. Imagine a place, long revered by the American Indians, where the Cheyenne River flows in all four directions, and eagles’ shadows sweep the rocky canyon walls, a place where wild horses run free across endless prairies, hooves striking thunder, manes and tails flying in the wind." Fourteen miles (23 km) south of Hot Springs (home of the Mammoth Site). Visit if you're anyplace close and see this wonderful place for yourself! See their Slide Show and explore the rest of the site, too!

We Are A Horse Nation - short version
A documentary film that shares the voices of the Oceti Sakowin
(the Lakota, Dakota, & Nakota speaking tribal bands of the Great
Plains region), as they honor their relatives - The Horse Nation
(Sunka Wakan Oyate).

Chapel in the Hills, an Authentic Viking Age Stave Church in Rapid City, South Dakota
There's a great short video of the Chapel!

The Chapel in the Hills is an exact replica of the 850-year-old
Borgund stavkirke (stave church) in Laerdal, Norway, the
best preserved stave church still standing in Norway.
The Chapel was built in 1969 at the foot of the Black Hills
in South Dakota. Official Site: Chapel in the Hills

City of Deadwood Home Page in the northern Black Hills sits famous Deadwood.

City of Rapid City, South Dakota Home Page

Custer State Park Huge park and game preserve
in the Black Hills has amazing rock formations, lakes,
hills, resorts, and 1,500 buffalo!
(This is one of only two genetically pure herds of
Bison bison in the world!)

Custer State Park Named as one of the 10 best state
parks in America by Mother Nature Network. A nice
little write up with the de rigueur (but excellent) bison photo.

Crazy Horse Memorial Official site. This huge mountain carving of famed Oglala Lakota leader Crazy Horse will dwarf Mount Rushmore when completed.  The webcams are good for day and night viewing. The site tells the story of Crazy Horse, the sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski, and the ongoing work on the mountain by the Ziolkowski family.  The Memorial is also a Native American education center with a fine museum.

Devils Tower (AKA Bear Lodge) is in the Bear Lodge formation of northeast Wyoming, the northwestern lobe of the Black Hills. It's about 80 miles/130 km from Mount Rushmore. Here's the Devils Tower Wikipedia site. A collection of photos. The NPS site has detailed information about the cultural history and physical geography/geology. A magnet for rock climbers, Devils Tower attracts world class talent. This 7 minute video of French crack climber Catherine Destivelle shows off the Tower to good advantage.

Worm's eye view from the very
bottom of Devil's Tower aka
Bear Lodge.

Inyan Kara Mountain, Wyoming


Like its neighbor, Devil's Tower, Inyan Kara
has plenty of columnar basalt.
Some of it is shown below:
Both photos are from summitpost

Going in Black Hills

Red Butte, Wyoming
This 5,747 foot summit is south of Inyan Kara
in the red rock area that circles much of the
Black Hills of Wyoming and South Dakota.

Red sandstone capped by limestone!
credit = summitpost
Going in Black Hills

"DIGNITY"
DIGNITY - by Dale Lamphere, in honor of the women of the Great Sioux Nation. Dignity sits on a bluff just east of Chambelain, South Dakota. Missouri River in the background, to the west.

Dignity is a metal sculpture of a shawl dancer. It is on a hill by the east shore of the
Missouri River in South Dakota, near Chamberlain, on I-90.

Douglas School District Serving Box Elder and Ellsworth AFB.

Ellsworth Air Force Base public site

Jewel Cave National Monument official page.  135+ miles (217 km) of explored cave (plus 100's of miles/km unexplored), wonderful crystals. Excellent page on local bats!

Journey Museum "The Journey Museum of Rapid City, SD" is an excellent small museum that covers everything cultural, historical, biological, geological about this town and the Black Hills. Definitely worth visiting while you are in the Rapid City and Black Hills!

Local Weather Courtesy of Wunderground

Lakota Winter Counts - An online exhibit from the Smithsonian. Who are the Lakota? What's a Winter Count? Who made them? What art media were used? Listen to Lakota elders explain the records of the years. See surviving winter counts from as far back as 1701. The gallery of winter counts is awesome. (To scroll right or left, put your mouse arrow in the upper left or upper right side of the picture.) Bonus: Native speaker pronounces Lakota words for you! Click on the tiny white words "Audio Glossary" that are underneath the main site.

Mammoth Site Located in Hot Springs in the southern Black Hills, The Mammoth Site is an ancient sinkhole full of dozens of mammoth skeletons! Click on the menu bar along the top to take the Virtual Tour and check out the Education Department.

Mount Rushmore National Memorial This is the official
Parks Service site. Plenty of information, sections on history
, nature and science, areas for kids and for teachers.

Mount Rushmore - State of South Dakota tourism site. Another
site with a good History section, tourist info, links to other attractions.

Mama and three cubs. From a trail cam photo near Deadwood,
South Dakota, November 2021.

Maybe they were heading into Deadwood to play the slots?!

Two Black Hills residents having a conversation.

Museum of Geology, SDSM&T (South Dakota School of Mines and Technology). This great science and engineering school (one of the world's best) has their world-class collection of fossils and minerals online! Their unique Dino Cam lets your watch one of best mosasaur skeletons anywhere while it and a nearby plesiosaur check out the tusks on a Columbian mammoth! (Not your normal scenario.) Read the brag about their thousands of specimens on exhibit!

The Native American Drum "The drum is not just a musical instrument. To the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota people, it holds great cultural and symbolic power. They believe the drum has a life of its own, as well as its own powerful spirit. The drum is the heartbeat of the Indian Nation. It carries the heartbeat of Mother Earth and calls the spirits and nations together." Read this page to learn more.

Click on the pic to see Santa Claus dancing at a powwow (video)!

Click here to see a short video of the Oglala Lakota Nation PowWow, from NatGeo.
The Lakota word for powwow is wacipi (wahcheepee).

A "drum" is a team of drummers who play at powwows. Powwows.com once had
a list of 1,432 drums from all over North America. Much like rock bands,
some drums constantly change people and names; others go on for years just
adding younger family members.

There are two main types: Northern and Southern styles. For more information,
Powwows.com is a good place to start.

FYI, Native American/First Nations people DO NOT LIVE IN TEEPEES!!!
We can't say that enough!! They live in houses. Around here,
they wear jeans and tshirts in the summer. Add a sweater, boots,
gloves, a hoodie or a coat in winter.
Just like everybody else who lives here.

Oglala Lakota College A tribally controlled institution serving the educational needs of the Lakota Oyate, focused on the Pine Ridge Reservation but with a branch campus in north Rapid City. Click here to see their Native American resources links.

Pennington County, South Dakota Web Page

Plains Milky Way - the famous YouTube video was shot here in South Dakota, near the Missouri River, by a farmer! Beautiful, show it to classes on an Elmo or a Promethean.

Rapid City and Black Hills Convention and Visitors Bureau

Rapid City Journal Local daily newspaper

Rapid City Municipal Parks System has 32 (yes, 32) named parks and a bicycle path that runs from the east end of town up into the Hills. Seriously. Enjoy mountain bicycling, golf, scenic views, hill climbing and hiking, children's playgrounds, running, basketball, tennis, flower gardens, fussball/futbol/football/soccer, or walk along the paths for a while.

Rapid City Public Library  Excellent site, lots of access to sites for kids, research of all kinds, activities, online catalog, lots more. Go get your library card!

Rapid City School District

South Dakota Air and Space Museum Located in Box Elder near the main Ellsworth AFB entrance. Features a B-1, B-52D, B-29, many more aircraft.

South Dakota From Above a video by Toby Brusseau Productions almost six minutes of stunning and beautiful views of western South Dakota. Animals, geology, the Black Hills, and an amazing soundtrack!

Storybook Island for children. Free admission, but good people make a small contribution. Train rides, a playground, a special section for the very young, a playhouse with plays and singing, small animals, fairytale houses, a castle, ducks, ... Oh, there is so much. Parents can sit in the shade and watch their children play nearby.

Sturgis Rally. We like the Rally, really we do, but this site is "for kids". Google "Sturgis" and you'll easily find the best Motorcycle Rally sites. Some years the Rally has 500,000+ bikers, in early August.

The Vore Buffalo Jump, one of North America's most important and spectacular Plains Indian archaeological sites, is a stone's throw from I-90, in Wyoming just west of Spearfish SD. See the excavation and learn the history, science and culture. There's another jump (unexcavated), the Sanson Buffalo Jump, within Wind Cave National Park.

Wind Cave National Park official site.  A huge cave, a large bison herd, deer, mountain sheep, prairie dogs, fossils. All in the beautiful Black Hills. (Remember - bison are dangerous. Not very bright, they prefer to be peaceful, but they anger quickly and they can move like lightning. Do not approach, do not walk up to bison, do not try to take selfies, and NEVER attempt to touch a bison calf, or get between a calf and its mother. Stay in your car and you can safely look all you want to.)

Youth and Family Services  Featuring Head Start, Child Care, Girls Incorporated, Health Connections, counseling services, and much more. Providing essential services to hundreds of underprivileged kids and their families in western South Dakota.

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