South Dakota's Oldest Works of Art

Jun 19, 2013

Ancient South Dakotans left their mark on the landscape by pecking, chiseling or carving images into the rocks and cliffs around them. These images, called petroglyphs or pictographs, can be found all over the Black Hills.

Tony Diem, a California native who works for bicycle power meter manufacturers Quarq of Spearfish, recently re-discovered and photographed one petroglyph-rich site near Hermosa. “I had visited the site about 8 years before, but my friend Mike Runge, the City Archivist for Deadwood, forgot the location. My girlfriend and I set out and drove many a road to find them off of Highway 79, including LH Road and Cobb Road, and saw some beautiful country, but we came up empty. I called Mike one more time and out of the blue he gave me the directions that had eluded his memory, verbatim.”

If you’d like to see them for yourself, Tony says, “They’re located just south of Hermosa where French Creek crosses Highway 79. Turn west and follow Downen Road for about a mile and a half.”

Photos by Tony Diem.