USA Guide
The Great Plains
South Dakota
The wide-open spaces of the Great Plains roll away to infinity on either side of I-90 in South Dakota. Though the land is more green and fertile east of the Missouri River, vast numbers of high-season visitors speed straight on through to the spectacular southwest, site of the Badlands and the adjacent Black Hills – two of the most dramatic, mysterious, and legend-impacted tracts of land in the US. For whites, they encapsulate a wagonload of American notions about heritage and the taming of the West; to Native Americans, they are ancient, spiritually resonant places.
The science-fiction severity of the Badlands resists fitting into easy tourist tastes. The bigger, more user-friendly Black Hills, home of that most patriotic of icons, Mount Rushmore, have been subjected to greater exploitation, but encourage more active exploration, via hiking trails, mountain lakes and streams, and scenic highways.
Time and Hollywood have mythologized the larger-than-life personalities for whom the Dakota Territory served as a stomping-ground: Custer and Crazy Horse battled here for supremacy over the Plains, while Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane were denizens of the once-notorious Gold Rush town of Deadwood.
Sioux tribes dominated the plains from the eighteenth century, having gradually been pushed westwards from the Great Lakes. To these nomadic hunters the concept of owning the earth was utterly alien. They fought hard to stay free: the Sioux are the only Indian nation to have defeated the United States in war and forced it to sign a treaty (in 1868) favorable to them. Even so, they were compelled, in the face of a gung-ho gold rush, to relinquish the sacred Black Hills, and ultimately the choice lay between death or confinement on reservations.
Today Native American traditions are celebrated by music, dance, and socializing at powwows, held in summer on the reservations; the state tourist office can supply dates and locations. The outdoors-minded state also has 170 parks and recreation areas for hikers and campers. In winter, downhill skiing is limited to Terry Peak and Deer Mountain, outside Lead in the Black Hills; cross-country skiing and snowmobiling are more prevalent.
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