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No other South Dakota county boasts so many superlatives.

What's 100 miles east to west, 111 corner to corner, and shaped like a tomahawk, poised above Pine Ridge Sioux Reservation? It's Pennington County, South Dakota's longest and most diverse county. It reaches from the Wyoming border to the Cheyenne River Reservation, a quarter of the way across the state.



Named for John Pennington, the territorial governor who built the house where South Dakota Magazine is published, Pennington County drips with superlatives like "oldest," "tallest," "grandest" and "most historic." For starters, there's Mount Rushmore, America's most famous monument; the Badlands, one of Earth's most eerily beautiful places; Harney Peak, the highest mountain between the Big Horns and the Pyrenees. Before white men came, the Lakota knew the region as the heart of the Hills, the hub of the universe.



The Hills' finest lakes are here -- Deerfield, Sheridan and Pactola, and several of the state's most spectacular caves -- Rushmore, Sitting Bull, Black Hills and Crystal. Rapid Creek and the Cheyenne River flow through Hills canyons, huge ranches, arid plains and Buffalo Gap National Grasslands. Pennington hosts Ellsworth Air Force Base, the S.D. Air and Space Museum and a dozen of our best-known tourist stops.



The county's 100,000 residents inhabit Rapid City (South Dakota's second largest city) remote hills accessible only by gravel road, and a multitude of romantic or historic towns, including Quinn, Wall, Wasta, New Underwood, Box Elder, Rochford, Mystic, Silver City, Hill City, Keystone, Hayward, Rockerville, Farmingdale and Scenic.



My wife, Norma, and I enter Pennington County on Interstate 90, just west of Cactus Flat. To our north is Big Foot Hill. To our south loom jagged Badlands peaks, cut by Big Foot Creek and Big Foot Pass, down which the ailing chief led his band to shelter on Wounded Knee Creek that fierce December day in 1890, the day before the cavalry gunned them down. This is cruel country, inhospitable to humans, a land ruled by coyotes, raptors and rattlesnakes. We are at the edge of the world, no human habitation in sight.



The first exit leads north through Buffalo Gap National Grasslands toward the tiny town of Quinn, named for pioneer and Ft. Pierre-to-the-Hills bullwhacker Michael Quinn. We turn west on South Dakota's pre-interstate east-west road, U.S. Highway 14, and roll into Quinn, population 44, home of the Two-bit Saloon and Steakhouse.



The gas station and other businesses are long since boarded shut, many of the houses haunted by spirits of people past. But believe it or not, on the north edge of town we found an astronomical observatory in the 1950 community hospital. A sign on the door reads "Top Secret Research Facility," but if the Department of Homeland Security has discovered Quinn, it isn't apparent. We fail to rouse astronomer Ron Dyvig, who works under the stars and is probably fast asleep.



Five miles west of Quinn is Wall, likely the state's best-known small town. It is obvious how the town got its name; it stands atop a natural fortress, the long, sheer wall of the badlands rising from the plains.



Downtown is one block long. One side of Main Street is Wall Drug, the business that began when Ted and Dorothy Husted offered free ice water to families in Model A's, and today is advertised around the world. Across the street are complementary tourist places -- bars, restaurants, Black Hills Gold, a photo shop and a museum. Cars from many states clog the street. We revisit Wall Drug for five-cent coffee and to hear the mechanical cowboy band.



A block south is a less-frequented place, the National Grasslands Visitor Center, a small museum of the shortgrass prairie and its diversity of life. Where I-90 skirts town is the Wounded Knee Museum.



We roll on west to Wasta, a town of a hundred souls nestled in the Cheyenne River valley. State Historian Doane Robinson backed the Lakota name for the town; Wastah means good water, the sweet springs in the nearby hills. The old hotel has been restored, and opens on special occasions.



At Wasta we leave the interstate for gravel, and like the DM&E Railroad, follow the Cheyenne River south and Box Elder Creek west toward Owanka, Lakota for good camping place. The Cheyenne valley is a mile wide, hills looming on both sides. It is from Wasta to the coalfields of Wyoming that the proposed new railroad would be built. Three antelope drink from the Cheyenne.



The county road loops and winds, jogs and dips. "Even if you're on the right road," Norma says, "out here it looks as if you're lost." At last we arrive at a scattering of dilapidated houses along the railroad track and creek. This must be Owanka, though we find no sign; apparently Owanka has officially ceased to exist.



Among a dozen deserted houses and two empty stores, we find one inhabited home. The abandoned elevator displays a fading sign, "Rushmore Flour." But for a ghost town, Owanka has hundreds of bodies -- of cars, that is. Beside the railroad is a car crushing operation. Scores of what were once somebody's dream cars are flattened to a few inches thick and stacked for loading on the DM&E; others await the crusher. The "good camping spot" has been transformed to a recycling center, or a junk heap.



We ascend from the valley, and the panorama of the Black Hills unfolds, Harney Peak prominent to the southwest. Back on the interstate, we cruise west to New Underwood. A two-block street hosts RK's Saloon and Saloon # 2, a tax service and a taxidermy, a small city park and community center, a day care center, a post office, a tiny bank, a church or two, a school where the New Underwood Tigers study, two service stations and three residential neighborhoods with older frame houses in the core, newer houses on the east and mobile homes to the west.



A massive B-1 bomber floats toward the Ellsworth Air Force Base landing strip as we exit again. At Ellsworth we examine dozens of military aircraft and other exhibits at the Air and Space Museum, and tour the base, including the state's only intact Minuteman II silo with its disarmed nuclear missile still in place.



On to Rapid City, where we enjoy the high-tech display of natural and human history of the Hills at the Journey Museum before entering the Hills on Rimrock Scenic Highway 44, and then heading north on Highway 385.



Forest Service Road 312 takes us west to the quaint northwestern Pennington County village of Rochford, home of the Moonshine Gulch Saloon. The Moonshine exudes decay, the ambiance that only a century of benign neglect can endow, the atmosphere many a high-dollar city joint tries to imitate but without success. A sign by the door reads, "Never mind the dog. Beware of owner." Another over the bench wishes travelers Merry Christmas, whatever the season.



The screen door screeches open and we enter a dark domain, the ceiling paved with caps from wall to wall. Behind the counter, Betsy Harn calls hello. The little dog is Pokey, the big one Doke.



Betsy and her husband, Roy, have run the Moonshine for 28 years, ever since they left the ranch at Kadoka. They're open from morning to "whenever," 365 days a year. "It's been interesting and educational," she tells us. "We've probably had the most diverse clientele in the state, from billionaires to paupers. We're on the Mickelson Trail, so we get lots of bicyclists, including Europeans. They love to talk about home, so you can almost travel to Europe right here in Rochford." Country singers Big and Rich shot a music video here.



Most of the Moonshine's decor has evolved, like moss, in Betsy's time, including the hats. "Roy had too many for the house, so I brought a couple over and hung them up, and other people wanted to contribute," she says. But a couple of signs she inherited: "Them suffering snake bit served first," and "Carry out your own dead."



Betsy says Rochford's weekday population is about eight, but may swell on weekends and by season. When Vance and Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve and the other two couples who own the Rochford school, dubbed the "University of Rochford," are in town, the headcount nearly doubles.



Between the Moonshine and the school lies the Small of America, an aging gas station that painters and basket weavers Colleen Langley and Jerie Ryestrom salvaged from ruin and crammed full of arts and crafts. The store is open May through Christmas, though most of the business, especially motorcycle art, is in summer. They also sell the work of other South Dakota artists (quilts, woodcarving and more) and like any good mall, they even have a grocery section - a well-stocked refrigerator and a couple of shelves. And the name? "It's because of Minnesotans bragging about the Mall of America," Colleen said. "We couldn't take it anymore."



At Rochford we reverse course, following the north fork of Rapid Creek downstream toward another ghost town, Mystic. Originally it was Sitting Bull, in honor of the Sioux chief, but the Burlington Railroad found the place mystical. All that remains of the 1880s mining and sawmill town is one residence and the simple, log-constructed McCahan Memorial Chapel, lantern hangers and 10 hand-hewn benches. If we'd had time for a hike, two miles down Castle Creek lie reminders of Canyon City, and another two down Rapid Creek is Silver City. We went the long way, by road.



Silver City lies at the head of Pactola Reservoir. It's a charming town on a steep hillside above the creek, a couple dozen log cabins and the Silver Mountain Lodge. Abigail Sherck, a college student from Spearfish who was enjoying her grandmother's cabin as she has since she was a baby, said Silver City is a quiet place. An old church, abandoned by the Catholic diocese, is now a non-denominational gathering spot. A cute one-room schoolhouse on the edge of town has been revamped as a community center; area residents gather there for monthly town meetings and potlucks. We ate lunch by the school and enjoyed water from a well with a hand pump. The town got its name from miners who came from Silver City, N.M. The cabin of prospector John Gorman, who arrived from Quebec, Canada in 1876, was renovated by the U.S. Forest Service in 2002.



We head south on U.S. Highway 385, past pine-ringed Pactola Reservoir and Sheridan Lake, through the heart of the Hills. It is this 10 or 15-mile square that attracts most visitors: The Black Elk Wilderness, Harney Peak, Mt. Rushmore, a host of historic mines with names like Giltedge, Thunder and Holy Terror, and myriad tourist stops, including Keystone, Hill City and Cosmos of the Hills.



We roll into Hill City in time for dinner at the Alpine Inn, the rambling old restaurant and hotel that serves genuine German food for lunch, but just two items for dinner: big steaks and bigger steaks. As usual, there is a waiting line, so while we wait for the crowd to thin, we get a motel room and tour the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research, once the home of the world's biggest and most famous tyrannosaurus, Sue, who now resides in the Field Museum in Chicago.



Early next morning we climb Harney Peak, from which only atmosphere and the Earth's curvature block our view for thousands of miles east. What we actually see are the Cathedral Spires, the backside of Mt. Rushmore, and the Badlands, where Pennington County ends.



Homeland Security has found Rushmore, and so have the entrepreneurs, from the high-dollar parking garage to the gift shop and restaurant. But the presidents still gaze serenely across the Hills as they have for generations, a marvel that draws more visitors than any spot in the Great Plains.



We descend from the Hills toward Rapid City on Highway 16A, passing the gravel road to the Stratobowl, from which in 1935 men first ascended by balloon into the stratosphere and floated half way across the state. We visit three of the Hills' fabled tourist stops, Cosmos, Bear Country and Reptile Village.



Is Cosmos a hoax, or is there really some mysterious magnetic power here? We have to know, along with 20 or so others, mostly kids. Our tour guide, Lyle Scandretti leads us up a hillside on which aging pine plank buildings lurch in disorienting angles to the horizon. He balances a carpenter's level between two cement slabs, one of which appears much higher than the other. The bubble swims to center.



We ascend to a crooked shack on a steep slope, where Lyle places a tennis ball on the floor. It seems to roll uphill. "Wow," one kid yells. "How does that work?" Only a mysterious glance from Lyle. But logic and science aside, I was feeling woozy, maybe a beer away from becoming a believer. After all, the place was founded by creative graduate students from the School of Mines.



At Bear Country, what you see is what you get. Lots of black bears and scores of other animals in pens large enough to simulate a greater sense of wildness than your average zoo, and here, it is people who remain safely in cages (their cars) as they idle around the loops. The advantage of off-season is that crowds are thin, but in spring you see frolicking cubs and babies of every stripe.



The last Hills stop is Reptile Gardens, the tourist landmark that began in 1937 when 21-year-old Earl Brockelsby escalated his business from entertaining tourists by pulling off his cowboy hat to reveal a coiled rattlesnake, to opening a one-room display. Today's huge dome is home to a four-foot iguana and exotic and poisonous snakes, not just our prairie rattler, but reptiles from around the world, including the world's deadliest, the Inland Taipan from Australia. As the billboards along I-90 put it "This ain't no petting zoo."



The perimeter of the dome is "Death Row," but the garden is more than snakes. It is a hothouse of exotic plants, flowers and birds - finches, quail, parrots, macaws and more - some of them flitting about the dome at will.



For 25 cents you can try to beat a caged chicken at tic tac toe. "How does it feel to be outwitted by a hen?" I ask Minnesota visitor Jan Pabst. "Not good," she says. "Of course the chicken has been practicing."



Amidst flower gardens outside are other displays, including Methuselah and four other giant tortoises from the Galapagos Islands off the coast of Peru, Melville's "enchanted islands," Darwin's exhibit A in the study of evolution. Methuselah munches lettuce, drinks for several minutes, raises his head to gazed about and emits a guttural groan - a sigh of contentment, or the expression of supreme boredom with what he's witnessed in 120 years of life?



The exit from the dome takes visitors through the gift shop, of course, the "Jungle Outpost," where manager Linda Mitchell offers art from tribal peoples around the world, countries from which the vipers come. Sales help support the animals, she says.



We cruise past the Hills' caves--leaving those for a winter day--and follow Rapid Creek back to the plains, mindful that well over half of sprawling Pennington County still lies ahead. But out of the Hills, we travel faster, Harney Peak diminishing in the rear view mirror.



We cruise through the small collection of houses that is Farmingdale, its cottonwoods golden with fall, past a herd of horses and a smaller herd of antelope and through the Cheyenne River breaks. Where we cross Rapid Creek for the last time, we stop to admire the huge cement dinosaur that Ed Burgess and Bud Murphy built long ago to stop travelers at the now-extinct Creston Store.



We cross the Cheyenne River, enter the Badlands at Kube Table and head for Scenic, Pennington County's southeast outpost, population 12. It is Scenic's centennial, but there is no celebration. The best-known stop is the Longhorn Saloon, the counterpart of Moonshine Gulch in the county's opposite corner. The sign advertises "whiskey, beer, wine, soda, tobacco, lunch, dancing." The "No" of "No Indians Allowed" has long since been painted over.



Twila Merrill arrived in 1963 to buy the bar and a home. Her parents moved up from their Pine Ridge ranch a few years later, and her father, Halley, helped run the bar. "Throughout the years I've bought most of Scenic," she says, though competition wasn't always fierce. She opened stores next door and across the street 30 years ago.



Twila's daughter, Lee Ann, now runs the Longhorn much of the time. Besides a few groceries, the store features Native American art - paintings, clothing, jewelry, cradle boards, blankets, beadwork, even cedar walking sticks carved by Harry Bush from Porcupine.



We leave Scenic for the county's biggest town, the Badlands prairie dog town in Conata Basin. Thriving on thousands of black-tailed prairie dogs are their predators, black-footed ferrets, coyotes, eagles, owls and hawks.



Two days, a tank of gas and 250 miles later, we again cross the Pennington County line. I recall the sign on the Longhorn Store in Scenic. The sign might, it occurs to me, serve as a motto for the county: "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. If we don't have it, it isn't a must."

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