Category: outdoors

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Fly-fishing in the Black Hills

By Ron Robinson

On our first morning of fishing the outlet basin below Pactola Dam, Bill landed his first big brown trout, let him go, and pointed to the sky. “Look there.”

I squinted upward. Spiraling high above was a bird of enormous wingspan. “What is it?”

“Osprey.”

“You sure? A fish hawk?”

Bill nodded, then waved his hand toward the top of a high-line tower a hundred yards away, where a collection of sticks had been fashioned into a large nest. We’d seen such nests before, along with the birds that built them. Last Chance run on Henry’s Fork in Idaho had plenty of ospreys, distinctive white markings bright in the sun, soaring high, circling, then folding their wings and plunging like meteors into the water, emerging in seconds with their catch firm in their talons and flapping off, their trout streamlined nose first to carry back to their nest. But in the Black Hills?

“Have you ever seen them here before?” I asked.

“Never,” Bill said. “But we haven’t done the Hills thoroughly in quite a few years.” It was, I thought, a significant admission. Bill Geyer was raised in the Black Hills, in Lead and later in Sturgis, and had been fishing its streams and impoundments since he was old enough to wave a bamboo rod. If he had never seen an osprey at Pactola before, I reckoned it a relatively new experience. Yet there it was. And later we saw another, perched at the tip top of a spruce over the pond below Hanna, watching rising trout with predatory interest.

Seeing ospreys wasn’t the only new experience during our two-week sojourn back in 2000 to what had been the earliest fly-fishing ground for both of us. On our 13th early morning jaunt up Spearfish Canyon, we spotted a mountain goat trotting along the road. He was in molt, the white fur hanging in clumps form his back. When he heard our pickup, he wheeled, took a defiant stance in our lane, and glared as though daring us to come closer.

Finally, after a few seconds, the standoff ended. The goat, apparently satisfied that he had called our bluff, turned and trotted casually across the road and into the brush. Bill put the pickup into gear and drove on.

“You ever–?”

“Nope.” Another first.

Then of course there were the big fish. Years ago, when I first wet a line in Rapid Creek below Pactola, I remember catching what was the largest trout I’d yet caught, a heavy-bodied brown that rose to a dry fly in a pool formed where the stream bent against a granite cliff. I think I still have the outline of that fish, proudly traced on butcher paper, somewhere among my memorabilia. My recollection is that it ran something in excess of 14 inches.

I caught larger trout later, of course, but in the Hills that one was then close to what they call on those TV fishing shows”a good fish, nice fish, big fish.” On Henry’s Fork, however, 16-inch trout are considered average. And on the Green River below the dam at Flaming George in Utah, trout in the range of 20 inches are caught regularly. Yet here in the Black Hills, I caught what I count as the largest rainbow I’ve ever taken.

Bill got several good-sized browns the first morning out on the basin. I got only a few hits. The second day, using one of Bill’s vintage bamboo rods, I was frustrated by the vagaries of the wind and by my lousy timing on the backcast, which was attuned to my stout old graphite rod. Still, I managed one perfect cast of a pearlescent midge pupa, and watched in awe as a large rainbow that had been taunting me in the clear water near shore all morning swung around, opened his mouth, and snatched the fly.

All right, here is where I am supposed to give an account of the epic fight, how I hung on until my hands bled as the fish peeled off yards and yards of line. Only it didn’t happen that way. The bamboo did the fighting for me, giving in when I tried to horse it, providing just enough resistance to keep the fish booked. The rainbow scooted left, then right, then back again left. Then it slid in toward shore, and I, who hate wading, walked right into the water in my plain old boots and socks.

I bent the bamboo rod almost double trying to urge the bull trout to head for my net. It preferred not to, and thrashed about, trying to turn tail. In desperation, I scooped the net, made for fish of more modest proportions, under the trout’s head, but when I lifted, more than half of its length dangled out, its tail whipping water drops. At last I abandoned the net and cornered the rainbow between submerged rocks. With slack on the line, the tiny hook just fell out.

Bill didn’t exactly have his camera at ready, so there was a touchy interlude, with me holding the trout in the shallows, while Bill ran toward me, fumbling with the lens cap. Then I reached down, grabbed the fish, held it up for the requisite photo, and slipped it back into the water. As it fled, I remembered that I had forgotten to measure it. It was as long as my arm, though, that I knew, and 1 also knew I’d never caught a rainbow bigger. The adrenaline high lasted the rest of the day. The memory will last much longer.

Bill couldn’t understand why I didn’t seem keen on fishing the basin after that. I’m not sure I can fully explain even now. I’d gotten my big fish. Anything else would be anticlimactic.

Editor’s Note: Ron Robinson’s fly-fishing tale is excerpted from “These Are the Good Old Days: Fly-fishing in the Black Hills,” a story that originally appeared in our Sept/Oct 2000 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.

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A Bad Rap for the Red Fox

By John Andrews

The Red Fox (Vulpes vulpes) gets a bad rap. People see the agile animal as a wily, cunning, bloodthirsty killer. That’s only partly true. Foxes are often guilty of killing more than they can eat, but not for the joy of killing. The frugal critters bury the extra food to eat later.

Red foxes prowl throughout the state, but are fond of East River’s mix of open farmland and shelterbelts. Few live in the south-central counties, but photographer Doug Jorgensen found these pups along Highway 18 west of Bonesteel. Foxes mate in January and February, and a litter of three to five pups is born between March and May. After surviving on milk for eight weeks, they get their first taste of meat, but not by hunting. Mom regurgitates a little for each pup.

Though they are born blind, foxes develop excellent senses of smell and sight, making them top-notch hunters. Hunting skills are instinctive, but their parents help sharpen them. For about two months, mom and dad bring live mice home so their pups can practice stalking and killing. By three months they can hunt on their own. They’re free to leave, although some stay close to home their entire lives. In the wild, that’s only one to four years.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the March/April 2009 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.

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Pollock’s Three Stone Idols

By Edward Raventon

On a balmy afternoon I traveled to visit the stone idols mentioned two centuries ago in Captain William Clark’s 1804 journal chronicling his voyage of discovery with Meriwether Lewis up the Missouri River. Clark’s entry for October 13, 1804 reads as follows:

“Passed a creek on the starboard (east) side (of the Missouri) 13 yards (wide) at 18 miles above the (Arikara) town (near the mouth of the Grand River) heading in some ponds a short distance to the northeast we call Stone Idol Creek. Nearly opposite (parallel to) this creek a few miles from the river on the starboard (south) side 2 stones resembling human persons & one resembling a dog is situated in the open prairie. To those stones the Arikara pay great reverence, make offerings &c. whenever they pass. Those people have a curious tradition of (regarding) those stones. One was a man in love, one a girl whose parents would not let her marry. The dog went to mourn with them, all turned to stone gradually, commencing at the feet. Those people fed on grapes until they turned, & the woman has a bunch of grapes yet in her hand. On the river near the places those are said to be situated, we observed a greater quantity of fine grapes than I ever saw at one place.”

From his journal, it seems Clark did not visit the stones and was only repeating a story related to him by an interpreter from Chief Pocasse as the party passed the mouth of the creek. For nearly two centuries, the stone idols remained an enigma in Clark’s journal until a local farmer and former history teacher, Denny Jensen, started putting together clues. While moving some boulders from the previous land owner’s rock pile to nearby West Pollock Resort, he discovered three large chunks of granite that he thought fit the description of the shape and the location of the stones described in Clark’s journal.

The idols are technically boulders that were pushed hundreds of miles from the east during an early glacial advance and deposited on a low hill on the western edge of the Missouri Coteau hundreds of thousands of years ago. Looking at them in the early part of the afternoon, they appeared to be nothing more than two big pink boulders and a smaller black one curiously placed together.

Then I shifted position both mentally and physically, relaxed and backed up a bit. From the southwest, with the sun on their faces in the late afternoon, I could see the female wrapped in a shawl, reclining with the male standing attentively, almost rapturously gazing at his companion. The dog sits quietly on its haunches a step behind the male. It’s actually a lovely tableau — tender and tranquil.

But the idols’ surroundings have changed since the days of Lewis & Clark. Where once a riparian forest with big trees grew entwined”with a great quantity of fine grapes” now stretches the wide, treeless shore of Lake Oahe. Stone Idol Creek, now Spring Creek, is part of Oahe’s backwater called Pollock Bay.

Nudged back together into the 21st century by Jensen and his tractor, the stone idols sit reflectively again on the brow of a low ridge above the creek, but instead of being surrounded by native grass, they are at the edge of a hayfield. Southwest, below the idols, is the bustling recreational complex of West Pollock Resort.

Clay Jenkinson, a prominent Lewis & Clark scholar, examined the stones in 2001 and told the Aberdeen American News,”If these stones prove to be the exact stones, it would not surprise me. They’re in the right place, and with a small amount of imagination, they can be construed as a man, a dog and a woman.”

Michael Fosha, assistant state archaeologist, inspected the rocks at Jensen’s request and noted in the same article,”While we may never know which of the stones were the human and dog effigies, it is my opinion that you have identified the approximate location (where) these objects originally set.”

Apparently, the Arikaras were romantics and appreciated a good, if doomed, love story with a focus on devotion and commitment between two young people. Wild grapes, locally abundant, proved to be the hemlock that would ultimately preserve their fervor and ossify it.

Around 5 p.m., a low-lying deck of storm nimbus blue in from the northwest and slowly occluded the sky. Like a great thunder eagle, the cloud shadow slowly spread its wings across the land and absorbed the stone idols into the flat, even half-light of an early evening that completely enveloped the land. The spell was broken and it was time to go.

When I got up to leave, a thought crossed my mind — if I ever returned, it might be appropriate to leave a votive offering, flowers maybe, or perhaps a purple bunch of grapes and a wish for happiness.

Find the Idols

The stone idols require a certain meditative frame of mind, patience and imagination. Find them by taking Highway 1804 about a mile south of Pollock to the West Pollock Resort sign turnoff. Drive two miles west to the resort and then ask for directions in the resort restaurant.

Editor’s Note: The author, Edward Raventon, is a naturalist, outdoor writer and photographer, focusing on the natural and cultural history of the Northern Great Plains and the Black Hills. This story is revised from the September/October 2007 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.

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Quiet, Beauty and Snow

By Kerry Temple

“How does it feel,” my companion asked as he sipped coffee at dawn, “to be perched on the edge between heaven and earth?”

The assessment seemed right, for several reasons. The most immediate was our sunrise breakfast on a high-pitched ledge of rock on the eastern slopes of the Black Hills. There was fire in the sky that morning as the flaming sun rolled over the dim horizon, as the lower sky broke into a radiant orange, as the last of the morning stars glimmered in the cobalt-blue expanse of the infinite overhead.

We had spent the night on the shelves of this cliff some 6,000 feet up, and there wasn’t much between us and the towering South Dakota sky. Harney Peak, which at 7,242 feet is the highest point east of the Rockies, was an over-the-shoulder glance behind us. We could survey bony outcroppings of granite thousands of feet below. The world had been laid at our feet.

But the sense of being poised between heaven and earth had as much to do with the character of this landscape — the Black Elk Wilderness Area — as it did with our aerie lookout to watch the turning of the celestial orbs. Some say the place is sacred. The Black Elk Wilderness Area is at the heart of the Black Hills which were held in holy trust by the Native Americans who lived for thousands of years on the plains surrounding them. Not only did the area provide an abundance of needed game, plant life and seasonal refuge, but it was also believed to be an especially sacred area.

It was a place for seeking visions — often at the summit of Harney Peak, known in various Plains Indian dialects as the “tall rock mountain at the center of the world.” Now comprising over 13,000 acres of undeveloped national forest land, the area was named in 1980 for the Lakota holy man whose life story is chronicled in John Neihardt’s classic Black Elk Speaks.

The feeling that these woods, these rocks, these meadows are special persists today. Even those who are less romantic, less sentimental about the natural landscape will admit sensing something different here. Others will tell you the preserve (like Bear Butte to the north or the Stone Medicine Wheel in Wyoming’s nearby Big Horns) is among the world’s sacred spots. Those who are inclined toward the mystical may report extraordinary soundings in these woods, and earnest New Agers appreciate the sense of place and point to the glittering mica and quartz crystal found here.

Of course, my companion and I did not hold such lofty views a few mornings prior to that luminous dawn watch. We had awakened to snow. Maybe three inches. Startling our stockinged feet. Draped generously on our tent. Blanketing our metal cook gear.

This was not our first trip to the Black Elk area in late fall or early winter, and each time we had just missed heavy snowfalls. Feeling either lucky or blessed we kept coming back, largely because we like the Hills this time of year. The temperatures are brisk but pleasant and the place is mostly empty.

One of the main advantages of this wilderness area is its accessibility: the highest reaches are but a day’s hike from the car. An elaborate trail system networks the wilderness area with the surrounding forest lands as well as Mount Rushmore, Custer State Park and Wind Cave National Park. It also splices into the Centennial Trail which runs the length of the Black Hills from north to south.

But the accessibility is also one of the area’s biggest drawbacks: backcountry backpacking and solitude can be quickly undercut by trooping vacationers, picnickers and day hikers. Even Harney Peak’s summit, capped with a stone lookout tower built in 1938 but no longer used, is an afternoon’s jaunt from a parking lot. So we come in autumn and take our chances with shifting winds, and waking occasionally to ice in our water bottles.

And there we were now, waking to a snow-laden landscape after star-gazing the night before. So we cooked breakfast in the cold, wet snow and ate in the snow and took our tent down in the snow and hiked all morning in the snow — in a grey and white wonderland of pine, birch and oak, and big, heavy flakes, under a low-hanging sky of slate-grey.

But by early afternoon the beauty and novelty weren’t enough to offset the soggy boots and numbing toes, and a closing-in sense of foreboding. After a chilly lunch, we stood in a bitter wind and looked at the cold, grey day and kicked at the three-inch snow as if it would tell us how long the storm would last.

There are no weather reports in the woods and not much sky when you’re hiking the shoulders and ravines of precipitous forestland. We didn’t know what to do — head for cover or carry on?

But before we had to choose between foolhardy courage and cowardly caution, a patch of white clouds appeared. Then a window of blue sky. Then a puddle of sunlight. And by midafternoon the storm had passed through and the sky was clear and the sunset was brilliant.

We set up camp that evening in a gold grass meadow, laid out our sleeping bags to dry, and scrambled up some rocks for a cocktail hour of Gatorade and trail mix. The vista was stunning — red sun sinking in the west, full white moon rising over rocky peaks in the east. Luminescent.

I like being in a place where I am not confined to campgrounds, but am left to my own allegiance to low-impact camping. I like to get off the trail and explore a bit, whether it’s struggling to the top of Little Devil’s Tower, finding a perch to admire Cathedral Spires, or climbing around on the huge slabs of granite scattered about the area.

One of my favorite features of the Black Elk Wilderness are the rock formations — giant boulders and splintery crags, projectile needles and weathered knobs. They will make you stop and stare. And think. These fingers and fists emerged from a seabed as a great dome of molten rock plunged through and transformed the layers of limestone and sandstone sediments laid down 600 to 700 million years ago. Erosion and weathering have left the granite pegmatite exposed and gnarly and wondrous. But then I favor rocks.

There is also a fair amount of wildlife here — ground mammals, deer, wild turkey, beaver, an occasional elk or bobcat or mountain goat, bald and golden eagles. But the main attraction, it seems to me, is something which comes through the soles of the feet when you have hiked here awhile, or through the pores when you least expect it. It is an awareness that there is more here than might be detected through our meager senses — something luminous, something of the heart of the place, something which puts you in touch with both the earth and sky.

Editor’s Note: Kerry Temple lives in South Bend, Indiana, where he is editor of Notre Dame Magazine. This story originally appeared in the November/December 1992 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.



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Old Timer On Skates Outshoots Them All

By Roland D. Sherman

When we lived in Wessington Springs many years ago, my dad was a druggist and hotelkeeper. When he had time he went duck hunting. He would pick my brother and me up after school. Sometimes his partner and erstwhile cowboy Slim Carothers came along.

When the ducks came in to roost at dusk the shooting was fast and furious and ducks would rain down. My brother and I would scurry out to retrieve them and get back for the next flight. We always wanted to go along when the big northerns came down but dad said it was much too cold for us that time of year.

He told me once that he and a party of hunters had dragged straw onto the ice for warmth on a hunt for northerns. They used the straw to make a blind near the only open water on the frozen lake.

The shooting was fabulous, mostly green mallards, when suddenly an old-timer, bundled to the eyebrows, bearing a 12 gauge single shot, came skating towards them on rocker skates that curled up over the laces of his boots.

“Hey! You’re on my land,” said the old-timer.

“It’s water and not much of that,” said dad.

“Well, I own the land around it.”

“Join us. There are plenty of ducks and help yourself to our shells,” said dad, then he tugged at the old-timer’s coat. “Get down! Here comes a flock of ducks.”

The old-timer dropped into the blind and blasted away. “I got that one,” he cried every time he shot. Often he was wrong, but he always skated out and retrieved the downed duck.

At noon he tied all the ducks he could hold onto his belt and skated for home. One of the other hunters suggested they had better hide some of their ducks because their host might be back. Sure enough, after lunch he appeared again and was successful as ever.

Editor’s Note: Roland Sherman shared this 1920s hunting tale (back when the bag limit was 20 ducks) in the November/December 1995 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a back issue or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.

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Nature’s Buglers

Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in the Sept/Oct 2010 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.

Listen closely while in the Black Hills in September. Fall is the rut for South Dakota’s elk herd, and as they shed the velvet from their massive antlers, bulls will be bugling for cows. One of the most distinctive sounds in nature, the call begins low and resonant, then rises to a high-pitched squeal.

South Dakota’s elk population has recovered from the brink of extinction to become the largest in the country east of the Rocky Mountains. When Lewis and Clark paddled up the Missouri River 200 years ago, elk were so abundant that one of the first places they camped in present day South Dakota was known as Elk Point. The heavily wooded site was a runway for elk traveling between the Missouri and Big Sioux Rivers. But by 1900 hunters had thinned the American elk population from 10 milion to less than 100,000.

Rocky Mountain elk were captured and used to replenish herds. According to the South Dakota Game, Fish & Parks site, about 4,000 elk roam the Black Hills National Forest and the grasslands of Butte, Bennett and Gregory counties. A herd has also been established on the Lower Brule Reservation north of Chamberlain.

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Mystic Mountain Run

Nathan Schock and Mystic Mountain Run founder Jim Brown at the post-race picnic.

By Nathan Schock

The year that I was born, 1974, construction was completed on my grandparents’ vacation home in Mystic Valley, which is nestled in the heart of the Black Hills, about 20 miles west of Rapid City. My grandparents have since passed away and the home has been passed on to my father and his siblings. Still, family vacations have taken me there at least once a year, first as a child and now as a father.

Three years before that home was built, Jim Brown started a road race just a mile up the valley. So in 1971, 21 runners competed in the first Mystic Mountain Run, which makes it the longest running race in western South Dakota. Brown placed sixth.

I first heard of the race as a young boy vacationing in the Black Hills. Our vacations always included a lot of hiking — at least one long one per day. If soccer season in my hometown of Sioux Falls was approaching, we added”soccer climbs” which were comprised of climbing 220 feet over a quarter of a mile as fast as we could. Still, I had never run the race. Until this year.

About a year and a half ago, I was part of a national trend of people getting back into running. A three-sport athlete in high school and a varsity college soccer player, I finally came to terms with the fact that my body could no longer handle the physical beating that came with those sports. But I needed a way to stay in shape and an outlet for my competitive drive. Running was the one thing left I could do, so I started with a 5k. Halfway through 2012, I have already competed in a 5k and two 10ks. Now, I’m training to run in the Sioux Falls Half Marathon.

But it just happened that this year’s family vacation to the Black Hills ended on the same day as the Mystic Mountain Run. I had finally run out of excuses. It was time to run.

So on July 8, I joined 125 other runners for the 42nd annual installment of the race. Pre-race course directions came from the founder, Jim Brown.”It’s all right turns,” he said of the race course, which is a giant loop. I was half paying attention while I loosened up for the race and finished my Gatorade, but he caught my attention with,”You cross the creek twice. If you cross it more than twice, you’re lost.”

The race itself is as brutal as it is beautiful. It’s officially listed as an 8 mile course, but Runners’ Shop of Rapid City owner Dennis Lunsford said it’s closer to 7.5 miles.”We’ve never done a formal measurement,” said Lunsford, who has been helping with the race since he first ran it in 1979.”We never felt we needed to. Mystic is just Mystic.”

Runners are lulled into complacency by starting with a two mile run on Mystic Road that slopes gently down to the valley. But any sense of comfort is quickly shattered when you cross the Mickelson Trail and start climbing the mountain. And keep climbing. And climbing. In fact, the entire third mile of the race is uphill, as runners (“walkers” would be a more accurate description for me at this point) climb more than 750 feet. My treadmill doesn’t have a setting that duplicates that incline.

As I hurtled down that final descent, my quadriceps were about ready to mutiny and find some other, more sane body to inhabit.

The one benefit of slowing down for the climb was the spectacular view of Mystic Valley off to my left. Castle Creek was visible, winding between the Mickelson Trail and the service road that dead-ends at my family’s vacation home. The one drawback (besides the obvious) is that I was one of a handful of runners who got stung by a bee. As if the climb wasn’t difficult enough.

What awaits you at the top of that climb is an old logging road which guides your descent to a valley that is home to Slate Creek. After fording the creek twice (and only twice), we had one more mountain to climb. At the peak of that second mountain, runners have now climbed more than 1,000 feet and are rewarded with a bone-crunching 1.5 mile plunge to the finish line. As I hurtled down that final descent, my quadriceps were about ready to mutiny and find some other, more sane body to inhabit.

I ended up placing 11th out of the 126 runners that finished the race, which was good enough for third place in my age division of 30-39 year old males. My time of 58:48 was just a little more than ten minutes off the winning pace set by 22-year-old South Dakota State University runner Mike Krsnak, who has now won all three of the Mystic Mountain Runs in which he has participated.

A picnic for the runners and their families was held for runners and their families once the last person finished just over two hours after the 9 a.m. start. I had a chance to chat with the race’s founder, Jim Brown, who said he has only missed one of the 42 races.

Brown handed the majority of the responsibilities to Lunsford and the Runner’s Shop. Lunsford got involved purely out of the enjoyment of the race.”I just loved the atmosphere of it,” Lunsford said.”I love its rustic atmosphere. I helped for so long, that Jim thought I would be the person to turn it over to.”

Among the runners, there was also a family atmosphere. As we walked up to the starting line, the organizers asked for a show of hands on how many people had run it before. More than half the hands went up and many stayed up as they asked who had run in more than two races…five…ten. Even at 20 races, a few hands stayed in the air. During the picnic, it was obvious that this was a community of runners and this was their annual get-together.

As for me? I’m already looking at the second Sunday in July for my next family vacation to the Black Hills. It’s the most unique race I’ve ever run and unquestionably the hardest. Next year, I want to be one of those runners with a hand in the air, saying I’ve done this before.

If you want to join, check out The Runner’s Shop’s site for next year’s date.

About the author: Nathan Schock is a fourth-generation South Dakotan who resides in Sioux Falls with his wife Barb and their three daughters. Nathan is currently employed by Locals Love Us and in the past has worked in politics, higher education and renewable energy.

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The Cottonwood Slough

By Bernie Hunhoff

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the March/April 2008 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.

Marvin and Connie Piotter felt their 400-acre Roberts County farm was unusual when they bought it in the early 1970s, and they later found out why.

“Sometimes I would make a cup of coffee and go out above the lake at 4:30 or 5:00 in the morning and listen to the world wake up,” said Connie. She listened to the songbirds, saw ducks and geese lifting off from their overnight stay and spotted deer as they looked for daytime nesting places. Nature also has a violent side. She once saw a bald eagle lift an adult Canada goose off the lake and fly away with it.

The Piotters’ native grass pasture is on the southeastern border of Lake Bde-Sake (Dakota for”Dirty Water”), but Marvin and Connie eventually learned that the lake has other names. Eons ago, the 11-mile stretch of water was part of Lake Agassiz, the world’s largest glacial lake. Only archeologists and Roberts County residents are likely to know that. Local people call the area Cottonwood Slough or Dry Run.

The lakes eventually drain into Jim Crick below the Piotters’ farm; Jim Crick flows south for a mile and feeds into Lake Traverse, which flows northward into North Dakota and the Red River Valley.”They drink our water in Grand Forks,” said Marvin.

Canadians far to the north might also drink rainwater and snowmelt that begins to collect in the Cottonwood Slough, because the slough constitutes the southern tip of the massive Hudson Bay watershed.

All the rest of South Dakota drains into the Gulf of Mexico, via the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. The two watersheds are separated by one of the North America’s five great continental divides — ranges of hills and mountains that send the continent’s waters to the Pacific, Arctic and Atlantic oceans, and to Hudson Bay and the Gulf of Mexico.

Roberts County citizens are familiar with the geology of the divide, but only a few probably recognized the watershed’s international importance before the National Park Service sent scientists from the University of Colorado to study the site. They concluded that the wetlands were a buffer zone that divided the tall grass prairie from the eastern deciduous forest country.”It is among the top natural areas in this part of the country for concentrating and production of waterfowl,” they concluded,”and one of the best natural riverine wetland complexes remaining…”

Scientists found the rare piping plover, a tiny bird listed on the endangered species list. Further exploration indicated that Native American artifacts and burial sites lay in the hills above the lakes. In 1975 the National Park Service declared the lakes a Natural National Landmark.

The landmarks program identifies unique geological and biological lands owned by either public or private parties. Less than 600 have been found in the entire United States. Cottonwood Slough is one of a dozen such sites in South Dakota. Some others include Sica Hollow, a prairie forest northwest of Sisseton; the Castles, a series of sandstone spires in Harding County; the Fort Randall Eagle Roost, west of Wagner; the Mammoth Site in Hot Springs; and Bijou Hills, north of Platte.

Mike Gallagher, a now-retired NPS staffer who was involved with the National National Landmarks program, said Roberts County farmers and landowners who surround Cottonwood Slough have done an excellent job with the property.”This is a perfect example of what we hoped to achieve. The goal wasn’t to have public ownership of these unique land features, but to work with private owners to preserve and protect the land.”

The Cottonwood Slough begins just east of the little town of Victor, near the North Dakota border, and meanders below farmsteads and cattle pastures before narrowing into the crick and then into Lake Traverse. The Cottonwood valley is about a half-mile wide and constitutes 5,400 acres in total. Its tiny lakes, marshes and potholes are rimmed and intersected with a thick growth of cattails and rushes. The foothills on both sides are thick with cedar, cottonwood, ash and box elder trees.

“The park service just raised our pride in what we already loved,” Connie said.”It should remain wild and natural. I’d hate to see it built up with resorts and lodges.”

Living by the lakes has been entertaining and educational for people like the Piotters.”When we first moved here, I remember watching some young Indian boys playing in the water,” Connie Piotter said.”They would grab onto the gills of these huge carp in the shallow waters, and then they’d ride them a little ways before they’d fall off. It was something to see.”

Several species of fish swim up from the Red River (upriver is south for this country), and they spawn in the Cottonwood Slough.”First come the northerns,” said Marvin.”Then it’s the bullheads and the carp.”

Ducks and geese visit by the thousands in spring and autumn.”It’s not always pleasant to live along the flyway,” Connie said.”The geese have been so thick that they’ve turned the hills white with droppings. We tried to grow sunflowers but the blackbirds just decimated them. There was nothing left to harvest.”

Eagles, rarely seen in Roberts County 30 years ago, are now common. A few are starting to nest in the trees. They are a noble sight, but pesty.”We had cows calving near the slough, and the eagles would fly down and eat the afterbirth when a cow had her calf,” Marvin said.”That would cause the cows to go nuts, but the eagles never did bother the calves.”‘

The Piotters graciously share the hills and lakes with others who show an interest. In fact, they’ve signed an agreement with the National Park Service”to protect, use and manage the site in a manner which prevents the destruction or deterioration of its nationally significant problems in managing the area.”

The Piotters raised four daughters and two sons on their Roberts County land, and both of the sons — Matt and Daniel — farm with them.”We want to preserve it for them and for our grandchildren and beyond,” Connie says.”We always knew it was special.”

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South Dakota’s Killer Wolf

By Katie Hunhoff

A gray wolf shot near Custer earlier this year caused a lot of conversation in the southern Black Hills. John Kanta of the Rapid City Game Fish and Parks Department said it wandered from the Great Lakes region. “We have an occasional wolf that wanders through South Dakota. But we don’t have a breeding pair. Because of all the livestock we have I don’t think they’d fit well here in South Dakota,” Kanta told us.

Gray wolves are bigger and stronger than timber wolves. Grays were lording over the river breaks of western South Dakota when farmers and ranchers first settled there. The wolves preyed on livestock, so they were eventually hunted to extinction in South Dakota.

One of the last was a wolf named Three Toes that achieved great notoriety in the hills and plains of northwest South Dakota. Archie Gilfillan, a sheepherder and writer, was intrigued by the local ranchers’ mixture of respect and hate for the wild and wily creature. In his book Sheep, Gilfillan noted that Three Toes “for 13 years laughed at poison, traps and guns, lived in and off enemy country with the hand of every man against him, a cunning, bloodthirsty killer, a super wolf among wolves and the most destructive single animal of which there is any record anywhere.”

So named because he had lost a paw in a trap early in his life, Three Toes gained a reputation as a bloodthirsty killer by 1912. He left his unmistakable paw print at ranches throughout Harding County. Infuriated ranchers tracked his whereabouts and devastating destruction. They estimated that his lifetime of kills exceeded $50,000 in cattle and sheep.

Three Toes lived to an old age, and reached the peak of his destruction in the 1920s. Gilfillan wrote, “For first, last, and all the time, Three Toes was a killer. Other wolves might kill one cow or sheep and eat off that and be satisfied. But Three Toes killed for the sheer love of killing. He would kill on a full stomach as well as when hungry. On one occasion he visited three different ranches in one night, killed many sheep and lambs at each one, but ate only the liver of one lamb.”

Officials bumped the bounty for Three Toes to $500, but no hunter could catch the cunning old wolf. In July of 1925, federal wolf hunter Clyde F. Briggs settled on a ranch near the center of Three Toes’ hunting range. For weeks Briggs set his traps and Three Toes carefully eluded them. But he was tricked on July 23 by a hidden trap. The earth around him was scratched and plowed by his frantic efforts to escape from the trap’s grasp by the time Briggs arrived. The trapper muzzled and hog-tied the big wolf and put him in the backseat of his car, intending to deliver him to Rapid City alive. But soon a passenger cried, “I think he’s dying.”

“Briggs stopped the car, and looking around, found the wolf’s eyes fixed on him. But the eyes did not see him, for the wolf was dead,” wrote Gilfillan. “Call it a broken heart, or what you will — something of this sort is what killed the old wolf. He was resting easily when found, his wounds were superficial … but there was something in his grand old spirit that could not brook capture, and Nature, more merciful than he had ever been, granted him his release.”


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Explorers of an Unseen World

By Paul Higbee

Editor’s Note: Jan & Herb Conn were inducted into the South Dakota Hall of Fame in 2011. Herb died Feb. 1, 2012 at age 91. They were featured in this story, revised from the Jan/Feb 1998 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.

Jan & Herb Conn discovered miles of passageways and chambers in Jewel Cave. This Jewel Cave National Monument photo shows them near Treasure Aisle in 1961.

Over 60 years after Jan and Herb Conn found the Black Hills on a cross-country rock climbing trip, they still lived here deep in the forest. The rustic cabin they built sits west of Custer State Park, and from their property you can gaze at the granite Needles’ formations, including spectacular Cathedral Spires.

They filled many days with long hikes to Black Hills landmarks they named. They were detached from the wide world in some ways, but are certainly not naÔve about it, and they didn’t come to South Dakota to hide from the world. They’ll live in Black Hills history forever as the spelunkers who proved Jewel Cave to be among the world’s largest. Both are published writers. Herb used to dangle from the Rushmore heads each fall, doing annual maintenance on the four faces. Jan’s musical play, Run to Catch a Pine Cone, has been performed throughout the country. Fellow climber and cave explorer Dwight Deal, in the foreword to a book the Conns authored about Jewel Cave, called them simply, “two of the most remarkable human beings I have ever met.”

Herb grew up in New York state and Jan in the Washington, D.C., area. Not long after they fell in love with one another, they fell in love also with rock climbing, which they learned on the Potomac River cliffs. “When you’re learning to climb, it’s handy to have a river below you,” noted Jan.

Herb Conn dangled from the faces on Mount Rushmore each fall to do maintenance work. (U.S. Dept. of Interior photo)

They married in 1944 and Herb made good money as a civilian electrician for the Navy during World War II. The young couple tucked most of those dollars away for post-war, transcontinental rock climbing treks. Careers, they decided, would be sacrificed for outdoor adventuring; they’d seek out seasonal odd jobs to pay their bills. A seemingly innate belief that they could do most anything served them well. For example, Jan once answered a help-wanted ad for an experienced Venetian blind assembler. She got the job and then got busy at home disassembling and re-assembling a set of blinds. When she reported to work the next day she was, indeed, experienced.

They took seasonal tourism jobs from New England ski resorts to an Arizona dude ranch, “until we got tired of smiling at people,” Jan recalled. Returning east from California in 1947, driving a panel truck the Conns describe as “the world’s first RV,” they decided to check into climbing challenges at Devil’s Tower. Much impressed by Devil’s Tower and the rest of the Black Hills, they nonetheless were unprepared for their first glimpse of the Needles. “If you’re a rock climber, you won’t find anyplace better,” said Jan. In 1949 they bought 20 acres adjacent to the Needles. A couple years after that they’d built a rustic shelter on the place.

Rock climbers in the 1950s were far less common than today. If you’ve got vacation photos from that era showing people scaling the Needles, it’s a good bet the subjects are Jan and Herb. They never guessed, up there in the wind, where their next adventure would lead them.

By 1959 Jan and Herb had been scaling rocky heights for 17 years, and were supporting their climbing addiction by creating customized leather and wood products. That year they broke routine and went spelunking with friend Dwight Deal at nearby Jewel Cave. For the next 22 years they explored Jewel almost weekly.

Jan & Herb during their spelunking days.

Spelunking, they found, put to use some of their well-developed climbing techniques, required tremendous stamina, and took a toll on knees and elbows. Compact and strong, both Conns could wriggle through spaces sometimes only eight inches wide for long distances. They came to live for the magic words, “It goes!” meaning they’d found a passage extending deep into the black unknown.

Jewel Cave, it turned out, goes farther than anyone dreamed 40 years ago. Today it ranks as the world’s third longest cavern system, with known passages extending 110 miles. Located west of Custer, Jewel was designated a national monument by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1908. In 1959 it was still considered a small cave, measured by yards, not miles.

‘There was talk then that it wasn’t up to national monument standards,” said Jan. “I think maybe the Park Service was happy to have us explore, so they would know what they were getting rid of.”

The Park Service granted the Conns a special use permit, meaning Jan and Herb Conn could volunteer all the time they wanted exploring, as long as they also mapped their routes. Then the Park Service sat back in awe as the duo, accompanied by Deal and a series of other capable partners, filed reports describing a dizzyingly complex network of passageways, lofts, and chambers.

Jan and Herb named their finds: Mighty Tight Street, Long Winded Passage, Carnegie Hall, Torture Chamber, Hell’s Half Acre, The Other Half Acre, Black and Blue Grottoes, to name a few. Santa Claus Chimney they discovered one Christmas Eve. Benny’s Vault echoed like a sound effect they remembered from Jack Benny’s radio show. Within a couple years they’d found big, scenic chambers perfect for public tours; problem was, it took seasoned spelunkers a good ten hours to reach those chambers from the cave’s entrance. The Conns helped the Park Service calculate where to drill a vertical shaft, from the surface to the scenic chambers 190 feet below, so visitors could eventually descend by elevator in about 30 seconds (prior to the elevator the Park Service offered tours in the natural entrance vicinity, still the area for candlelight tours today.)

As early visitors stepped off the elevator, Jan and Herb were exploring remote sections of the cave to the southeast, through tight passages called Calorie Counter, Miseries and, tighter yet, Mini Miseries. In the era when Apollo astronauts stepped on the moon, the Conns also left footprints where no one had walked before. On December 4, 1973, they recorded the cave’s 50th mile — a mark deemed unthinkable a few years earlier.

“You don’t do it for the mileage,” said Jan. “And yet the mileage gets in your blood.” That’s especially true as a cave climbs onto the list of the world’s longest.

The Conns fell in love with each other and then with rock climbing. Photo by Paul Higbee.

Now, almost two decades after the Conns turned the exploration over to others, the mileage continues to mount. There’s long been speculation that Jewel and Wind caves might be one and the same, but Jan and Herb couldn’t imagine spelunkers proving it so. Eight hours of rugged going from the elevator will take you two miles toward Wind Cave; that’s as far as Jewel’s been explored that direction. From that point, the nearest Wind Cave could be is about 20 miles (those 110 known miles don’t run anywhere near 20 miles in any one direction; they twist and double back to form a baffling maze).

Today visitors can take guided tours in the elevator vicinity, where there are electric lights and smooth walkways, or they can take the more rugged candlelight excursions. And for those small enough and physically fit enough, there are spelunking tours that let you feel like Jan and Herb for a few hours. Combined, these tours take visitors to only a tiny portion of this mostly wild cave.

Yet another way to experience Jewel Cave is by reading the Conns’ book, The Jewel Cave Adventure ñ Fifty Miles Of Discovery Under South Dakota, published in 1977 by the National Speleological Society. Filled with the excitement of discovery and lots of humor, the book even features a recipe for spelunkers’ bread, and cave songs Jan composed.

Once committed to a wayfaring lifestyle, the Conns seldom traveled in the years before Herb’s death in 2002. Jan and Herb said they’d cling to most any excuse to stay home, like deciding canned goods might freeze in their absence.

“Anyway,” said one visitor, “out here you’re living a life people dream of.”

“If they really dreamed it,” said Jan, “they’d be living it.”