Can we save South Dakota’s dark skies?
Story by John Andrews
Photography by Christian Begeman
Fieldwork kept a teenaged Christian Begeman out after sunset, and he was walking the half mile back to the family ranch house. He had a flashlight to help navigate, but as darkness descended over Dewey and Ziebach counties a full moon rose high in the sky, and stars as bright as millions of tiny flashlights danced overhead. He didn’t need his battery-powered companion. “As my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, I recognized that I could see a lot more than expected,” Begeman recalls. “The dips and ridges cast dark pools of shadows, which caused me pause to step into them. Then I realized it was the same path I already knew and soon I got up to nearly a full run without the aid of any light but the moon. It may have been a foolish thing to do in hindsight, but it was quite a rush.”
Begeman fell in love with dark skies on that West River ranch and today spends his evenings photographing their beauty. The lesson he learned that night has become a main tenet among dark sky advocates today: the artificial light of ever-growing urban areas, oftentimes installed under the guise of improving safety and visibility, doesn’t always accomplish those tasks, and in turn, hampers our ability to appreciate the stars.
South Dakota boasts some of the darkest skies on Earth. Portions of the Black Hills National Forest and the Slim Buttes in Harding County are considered Class 1 locations on the Bortle Scale, a measure of night sky brightness developed by amateur astronomer John Bortle in 2001 that spans from 1 (the darkest) to 9 (inner city). Badlands National Park and several state recreation areas — located far from the lights of our biggest towns and cities — are Class 2.
Organizations like DarkSky International, founded in 1988, aim to slow the spread of light pollution. Diane Knutson is the association’s former president. Today, the Sioux Falls mother of two does volunteer work for the organization as a DarkSky Fellow. “The dark sky is best experienced rather than explained,” Knutson says. “It just kind of grabs hold of you.”
Knutson grew up in Dakota City, Nebraska, just across the Missouri River from Sioux City, Iowa, a city of nearly 90,000 people and a metro area encompassing nearly 150,000. Still, the urban glow didn’t hamper the love for stargazing that began in her backyard. “As a kid I would go outside and see the night sky, run around with fireflies and experience it in its natural state,” she says. “That drew me in, and I’ve always had that inkling to keep that relationship. The dark provides us an invitation to personal solitude, stillness, silence and reflection.”
But it’s disappearing. Knutson says light pollution is increasing about 10 percent a year, and the pace is quickening because of advancements in artificial light technology, such as the development of LEDs. “LEDs are great in some respects, but because they use less energy, we use them more. They are more accessible and not as expensive to use, so we don’t think as much about turning them off.”
Knutson says it’s important to remember that artificial light doesn’t simply stay where the switch is. When traveling east on Interstate 90, she can often spot the glow from Sioux Falls — our largest city at nearly 210,000 people — before reaching Mitchell. “Light pollution is easily solvable. There are so many issues that are big and hard to reverse, but light pollution can be reversed with the flip of a switch, or a timer, or just not using it. It costs less money, it helps our health, it helps our experiences and connections with each other. The night as a whole ties us all together because it stretches across time and space. We can connect with people who lived millennia ago because we each have that sky we can connect with.”
After decades of dark sky advocacy, Knutson thinks South Dakotans are beginning to understand light pollution and are taking steps to address it. Several years ago, Rapid City began celebrating Dark Sky Week in April with festivals, speakers and programs. A section of downtown streetlights is extinguished, a small nod to reducing the city’s skyglow. The Badlands Observatory in Quinn offers night programs and the public is invited to star parties during the summer months hosted by the Black Hills Astronomical Society at the Hidden Valley Observatory just off Hidden Valley Road northwest of Rapid City. Badlands National Park’s annual Astronomy Festival (July 18-20) includes star parties each night, activities during the day and a scale model solar system tour and walk.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and stare.” Fortunately, the heavens are a wonderful, mysterious gift that unfold before our eyes every night — and nowhere more clearly than in the delightfully dark spaces of South Dakota.
Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the July/August 2025 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.