Tag: black hills

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Eight Over Seven

Our Black Hills are gentle mountains. You don’t need ropes, axes and harnesses to tackle even our highest peaks. And most are climbable even in winter — especially in a mild winter like we’ve enjoyed thus far in 2020.

South Dakota has eight peaks that stand 7,000 feet or taller in elevation. Rapid City journalist Seth Tupper wrote about them in 2017, and his reports seem to have inspired a new challenge for hikers, bikers and runners to do all eight.

Erick Sykora of Rapid City took it a step or two further. After months of careful planning and preparation, he hustled to the top of all eight peaks in a single day — a 15-hour day. Here’s the complete account, first published in our Sept/Oct 2020 issue, of how he did it.

Most of us are more apt to tackle the peaks one at a time. If you climb in winter, remember that the days are short this time of year, and some deep canyons can be very dark at high noon. The weather can change quickly at higher elevations. And the frost-freeze cycle that occurs from temperature swings may cause slippery conditions, especially on granite slopes.

But those are precautions, not prohibitions. With common sense and weather-watching, mountain climbing can be a safe and fun four-season activity in the Black Hills.

©Paul Horsted/paulhorsted.com
©Paul Horsted/paulhorsted.com
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A Bridge for the Black Hills

By Michael Zimny

The landmark Keystone Wye and (inset) the arch made from discarded spans.

“Just as plants and wildlife complement the environment, so must the structures which we adapt complement the environment with pleasing aesthetic designs.” That’s how a promotional film produced by the South Dakota Department of Transportation described the goal of the Keystone Wye interchange.

If you’re traveling from Rapid City into the Black Hills, most likely you’ll cross the landmark bridge. Built in 1967, designers Clyde Jundt and Kenneth Wilson chose a laminated timber arch structure to harmonize with the natural surroundings.

Jundt and Wilson traveled to Oregon where the fir (probably Douglas) for the project was harvested, then processed in Portland. Individual boards were joined through a technique called scarfing to create 91-foot-long planks that were then glued together to create the arches. Cross-laminated timber buildings are currently trading in Portland. As usual, South Dakotans were decades ahead.

Charles Williamson was a longtime engineer for the South Dakota Department of Transportation and remembers being slightly nervous the day the arches were set in place. “If I didn’t have those two bolt fixtures exactly right when they put the big crane up, if those two didn’t come together at the top, what are you going to do?”

The two parallel arches were made of two spans. First, they were attached via steel hinges to the footings, then lifted and joined at the top of the arch. There wasn’t much room for error.

Fortunately, the measurements were correct, and the arches came together. There was a mishap during the building process. A truck carrying three of the arches from the Hill City rail station turned over, and though they appeared undamaged, DOT replaced them to play it safe.

“There could have been nothing wrong,” recalls Williamson. “But you can’t take that chance. If they’re damaged inside and you put them together, they’ll probably stand, but if you take a semi over them, they might collapse. We only had one option. You had to reject the whole load.”

The three rejected arches became a landmark of their own. First, they were placed inside town at the site of a planned Rushmore Memorial Arch park. That park was never completed. Years later the arches were moved to their present locale, just off Highway 16, at the turn-off for the now-closed Sitting Bull Crystal Caverns.

Williamson worked on many highway projects in western South Dakota, including the pigtail bridges on Iron Mountain Road, but when asked where the Keystone Wye rates among them all he doesn’t hesitate to answer: “Number one. Everything else was simple. I worried a lot that the arches come out, we rejected them, I had to wait again. I worried that if they dropped those in there and they don’t fit, what are we going to do then?”

Michael Zimny is a content producer for South Dakota Public Broadcasting and is based in Rapid City. He blogs for SDPB and contributes columns to the South Dakota Magazine website.

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A Black Hills Search for Solace

By Brook Gassman


Editor’s Note: South Dakota has become a second home for the Gassman family of Platteville, Wisconsin. Stephen Gassman is an acclaimed photographer who has worked extensively in South Dakota and contributed many images to South Dakota Magazine. When his wife, Suzanne, died in June 2019, the family headed west, hoping to find healing at some of their favorite Black Hills places. The Gassmans’ daughter, Brook, wrote this upon their return. Another essay and photographs by Stephen appear in the May/June 2020 issue of South Dakota Magazine.

Ninety-eight signs. That’s how many roadside advertisements there are for Wall Drug between our hometown of Platteville, Wisconsin, and Wall. One year, while my brother, Mom and I were traveling there to visit my dad, I counted them all. For hundreds of miles, I watched out the window, passing hills, grassland, prairie and the Badlands, just to count the signs. At the time, I thought it was a fun activity to enjoy and laugh about with my mom and brother. Ninety-eight is such a ridiculous number of signs to advertise for a place that’s claims to fame are free ice water and 5-cent coffee. That number held memories of how beautiful nature could be when you experience it with your family. With that number, I associated the splendor of Sylvan Lake, the awe of the Badlands, and the powerful feeling of finishing the hike to Black Elk Peak. Now, that number reminds me of better times before my mom passed away.

My mom was an incredible woman who, even when she couldn’t walk on her own, wanted to experience every bit of nature she could. We pushed her in a wheelchair during her final weeks so she could feel the wind on her face and experience the changing of the seasons. She would often wear a shirt she got in South Dakota that said,”Hiked It, Liked It.” This was one of her favorite shirts along with a plethora of many other outdoorsy-inspired graphic T-shirts. They reminded her and us of how important nature was, inspiring us to go on hikes and live life past its limits. My mom often encouraged us to do everything in our ability to experience the world, and, in South Dakota, this consisted of the Badlands, Sylvan Lake, Black Elk Peak, Reptile Gardens, Sunday Gulch, and, her favorite, The Purple Pie Place. Now that she’s gone, these places are little snow globes, memories caught in time that will always remind us of her.

We planned a trip to South Dakota immediately after the funeral. My family and I needed to get away, reminisce of better times while simultaneously making beautiful new memories. Our biggest goal was the climb Black Elk Peak with some of her ashes. So, on a Wednesday in June, my aunt, uncle, dad, brother, cousin and I set out on a 3-mile climb to the highest peak in South Dakota, letting my mom take one last hike. On the way, we shared a few laughs, met some other kind tourists from Wisconsin, and reveled in the beauty of the West. When we reached the top, we breathed in the cool air and let our mother see for thousands of miles, because I know that even though she can no longer experience the beauty of this earth, if I see it, she will too. After we finished, we hiked back down, releasing some of the pain and giving us the ability to move forward a little easier. While the path up the mountain might have seemed difficult, it was the hike down that made it all worth it.

So, I guess those 98 signs pointed us in the right direction — a path of healing, caring and family. South Dakota showed me that no matter what, there is something new to look at, something beautiful to experience, and someone new to cherish. I feel blessed to have such a wonderful state by which to forever remember my mother. I feel honored to say thank you to the West. I urge it to be wild, free and full of memories.

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Minnilusa Links Old and New

By Paul Higbee

Rapid City’s Minnilusa Pioneer Museum preserves all things Western. Pictured here is former museum director Reid Riner. Photo by Johnny Sundby.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the January/February 2015 issue of South Dakota Magazine. In 2017, Reid Riner left the Minnilusa and moved from Rapid City to Arizona . He passed away in a car accident near Phoenix in 2018. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

MUSEUM OBJECTS CAN sometimes speak more powerfully than words. Stroke Doc Middleton’s saddle at the Minnilusa Pioneer Museum in Rapid City. Feel the tooling, sniff the horn and let the leather scent transplant you to the open range.

That’s the very saddle the outlaw Middlelton used an 1893 cowboy race across the prairie, from Chadron to Chicago’s World Columbian Exposition. The man sure could ride, although it appears he cheated in this race and perhaps also used the saddle for cattle rustling.

Which brings up an important point. The Minnilusa collection documents the pioneer history of the Black Hills, and Rapid City especially. The western frontier drew a wide range of opportunists, most of them honorable and some anything but. To fully understand the frontier, which has been both glorified and marginalized by media professionals over the decades, it is important to let these objects speak as they will. In other words, an artifact’s presence here isn’t meant to say its original owner has been elevated as a role model for future generations.

That being the case, Peter Lemley’s boots, hat and Winchester carbine are here. He, like Middleton, was part of the vast open range cattle business of the late 1800s, and can be ranked as one of the meanest cusses to ever walk Rapid City’s streets. Lemley hated the Lakota people, was part of the civilian militia that played a role in events that led to the Wounded Knee tragedy, and it’s been rumored he had his own son murdered. The son’s offense? He loved animals and Lemley feared he was soft.

“But you never know what the rest of the story will be when you find someone like that in history,” notes museum director Reid Riner. “Something good came out of even Lemley’s story. Another son grew up to be a well-known Rapid City physician who started the Lemley Foundation. It’s still supporting charitable work today.”

Officers of the Sweeney Hose Company in Rapid City used this silver speaking trumpet to direct firefighters. The trumpet dates to 1888.

Juxtaposed between the Middleton and Lemley exhibits is a photo cutout of Gus Haaser, a cattleman Riner considers a remarkably moral man. “Haaser came from Norway, and he doesn’t really look like a cattleman, but he made himself into a good one,” Riner says. “He wrote that he never saw the horizon in Norway, but that South Dakota was nothing but horizon.”

Gold mining usually grabs most of the attention when historians discuss Black Hills pioneers, and it is represented at the Minnilusa museum. But the industry Middleton, Lemley and Haaser were part of (honorably or otherwise) was integral, too, particularly in Rapid City. “Beginning with the open range herds that came up from Texas, cattle brought in the dollars that changed Rapid City from a place of log structures to one of big stone business buildings,” Riner says. Indeed, the town grew from 202 residents in 1880 to about 2,000 when South Dakota achieved statehood in 1889.

STILL, RAPID CITY got off to a rocky start in 1876. On display here is the pocket compass John Brennan used, and the surveyor’s chain, when six blocks were laid out in February of that year. In the middle of that area Rufus “Pap” Madison built a little rough-hewn cabin, destined to play a big role in the Minnilusa museum’s own history 50 years later. In 1876, it was amazing the cabin survived as Lakota warriors repeatedly attacked the fledgling town. They were fully justified in their outrage because Rapid City sat illegally on land set aside for the Lakota people by federal treaty. By late summer most of the town’s original pioneers had fled 200 miles east to Fort Pierre.

They returned in force in 1877 when the government assured them the treaty had been changed — an issue that remains in dispute more than 140 years later. Never dreaming future generations could possibly question their right to the land, the first Rapid Citians rolled up their sleeves and built homes, businesses, Gothic Revival churches of many denominations and schools. Among the schools was an institution of higher learning, the territorial School of Mines. In the middle of this rush of construction, Grace French, a 26-year-old artist trained at Boston’s School of Fine Arts, stepped off a stagecoach in 1885. French made Rapid City her home for the rest of her long life, and today the Minnilusa Pioneer Museum displays many of her paintings and sketches. Her art documents the beauty of the Black Hills before roads and other development encroached, back when Rapid City felt like a tiny village nestled in the foothills.

Grace French is just one of the artists and storytellers remembered by this museum. Others include poet Captain Jack Crawford, early photographer Jack Collins, historian Annie Tallent, and husband and wife newspaper pioneers Joseph and Alice Gossage. The Gossages made the paper known today as The Rapid City Journal into western South Dakota’s premier paper, and in time Alice played a key role in launching the Minnilusa Pioneer Museum.

UNLIKE MANY HISTORICAL exhibitions across the West, the Minnilusa doesn’t dwell extensively on bawdy enterprises, although it notes madam Dora DuFran ran a house of ill repute in Rapid City in addition to her Deadwood and Sturgis franchises. There’s more emphasis on above-board businesses that filled those big buildings cattle money built.

Soldiers stationed at forts around Dakota Territory may have carried firearms similar to this 1877 Colt single action .45 revolver.

“In interpreting mercantile businesses, it’s effective to tell the stories of the personalities behind those stores,” Riner says. And to be sure, downtown Rapid City claimed larger-than-life entrepreneurs. Cattleman Peter Duhamel’s in-town job was overseeing a massive downtown store, and nearby he manufactured his famous Duhamel saddles. Tom Sweeney was a name known by everyone across western South Dakota and sizeable sections of Wyoming and Montana. That was because of signs and handbills that read simply, “Tom Sweeney Wants to See You.” Once drawn into his big Rapid City store, customers weren’t disappointed. They could buy everything from trousers to a freight wagon.

Sweeney didn’t claim the only local slogan well known a century or more ago. “Learn to say Cyco Cigar,” read old print ads, referring to a tobacco product manufactured by Rapid City’s own Gate City Cigar Company. Other early merchandise that has found its way into the museum include a wicker purse, fine china and a Red Wing butter churn. Most intriguing is the museum’s collection of patent medicine bottles and packaging. “People came to Rapid City from places where there were no doctors, and if there had been, they couldn’t afford them,” Riner says. “So they saw patent medicines as their best options for staying healthy.”

Lots of those patent medicines contained alcohol, Riner adds, so customers certainly felt better after a dose or two — for a little while. It’s unlikely the modern Food and Drug Administration would have seen much merit in Dr. Hobson’s stimulant, described as a “wonder drug promising to ‘cure while you sleep’ whooping cough, croup, bronchitis, coughs, grip, hay fever, diphtheria & scarlett fever.” But for ranch families living 100 miles from a doctor, knowing the “wonder drug” sat waiting in the kitchen cupboard brought comfort.

By the 1920s, Black Hills pioneers were passing away and, in too many cases, taking their stories with them. Communities suddenly took great interest in monuments, celebrations and museums that would record pioneer names and adventures. That decade Spearfish unveiled its 11-foot-tall stone “Memorial to Spearfish Pioneers, 1876 – 1926.” Deadwood launched its Days of ’76 festivities in 1924. In 1926 in Rapid City, Alice Gossage, the newspaper owner, put money and her considerable community clout behind an effort to repair and move Pap Madison’s 1876 cabin to Halley Park, just west of downtown. “The story is she just walked into a city council meeting and said it had to happen, and so it did,” Riner says.

Richard Hughes, one of the best Black Hills historians and himself an 1876 pioneer, wrote this poem inscribed on a slab outside the cabin:

I was built in the olden, golden days,
When this was an unknown land;
My timbers were hewn by a pioneer
With a rifle near at hand.
I stand as a relic of ‘seventy-six,
Our Nation’s centennial year;
That all may see as they enter the Hills,
The home of a pioneer.

Not only was the cabin a museum artifact, it became a museum itself after items collected by the recently formed Minnilusa Pioneers’ Association were displayed within. “This society,” wrote Hughes in the late 1920s, “organized to preserve data and relics of the early-day West River country and Black Hills area, has in its membership many descendants of pioneers.” Those early members decided to use a Lakota term for their association’s name, one meaning “rapid water.” When translated to English it gave Rapid City its name.

This pocket watch with human hair fob was fashionable in the 1800s. Jewelry made with hair was often carried as a tribute to lost loved ones.

While the Pap Madison cabin can be considered the Black Hills’ first history museum (it predated Deadwood’s Adams Museum by four years), it was also one of the smallest. For decades most of the relics collected by the association were stored in a warehouse. Beginning in the 1930s the cabin shared Halley Park with the U.S. Department of the Interior’s world-class Sioux Indian Museum, a collection of Lakota artifacts placed in a new stone building built by the Works Progress Administration. In 1956 a new wing was added to that building, space that allowed the Minnilusa Association to take artifacts out of storage and into exhibits.

“In 1956, in the minds of some people, an Indian institution and a pioneer institution didn’t seem to belong together,” Riner says. But in Rapid City it worked, and nearly 60 years later the two museums still co-exist under one roof, although not in Halley Park. They were among four museums that remained independent yet moved into the Journey Museum complex in 1997 (the others are the South Dakota Historical Society’s Research Center and City of Rapid City’s Duhamel Plains Indian Artifact Collection). The Pap Madison cabin trailed behind, arriving in 2012. It stands in front of the Journey.

Riner became involved with Minnilusa in 2004. He grew up next door to Rapid City in Black Hawk, then left the state for 16 years for work and education. He earned a master’s in Public History at Arizona State. He enjoyed visiting the Journey Museum during trips home, and was ready to return to the Black Hills to stay when the Minnilusa position opened. Riner inherited a strong organization with a solid endowment and a collection that now numbers more than 6,000 artifacts, of which 30 to 35 percent are on display at any one time.

A West River cowboy made this horsehair bridle and rein set sometime in the 1880s.

The museum is also home to a collection of 8,000 to 10,000 photographic images, most scanned into a digital format. The collection is proving itself invaluable to historians, publishers and individuals hoping to learn more about their Black Hills roots. Well-known Black Hills photographer Johnny Sundby serves on the Minnilusa board and helps manage the photos. Among his favorites are those depicting the towns of Pactola and Sheridan before reservoir waters claimed the sites, Rapid City’s nearly forgotten Alfalfa Palace, mines, flume trails, Rapid City’s first airplane flight in 1909, and development of Mount Rushmore and the Hotel Alex Johnson. “We’re always looking for original prints people may have,” Sundby says. “They can take home a cleaned-up image where scratches, discoloration and tape marks are gone.”

Riner considers Rapid City’s true pioneer years to have been from the 1870s until 1934 and 1935, when manned balloon flights into the stratosphere (documented well by the museum) moved Rapid City into the nation’s consciousness in a new way.

But that doesn’t mean the spirit of old-fashioned town-building ended at that time. In fact, Rapid City’s downtown redevelopment over the past decade is unmatched regionally, resulting in Main Street Square, arts venues and new dining and retail. There’s increased emphasis on pedestrian access, ways for visitors to park their cars and move through what Riner describes as an evolving “cultural campus,” linking the museum to the civic center, historical district, public art and library.

“We’ve got the seeds for growing cultural tourism,” he says, “and a city government committed to making it happen.”

It’s happening even without Alice Gossage barging into meetings and demanding action.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the January/February 2015 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Hidden Trails

By Michael Zimny

Whether you’re visiting Rapid City or you live here, sometimes you might want to hike the Black Hills without first driving an hour.

The Buzzard’s Roost, Flume and Stratobowl Rim trails are all fairly well-known options. Here are two more that explore unique nooks of the National Forest without burning half the charge on your Nissan Leaf.

Diverse flora gives Botany Canyon its name.

Botany Canyon

Some locals will bristle at the thought of Botany Canyon as a lesser-known locale, but most visitors will not have heard of it. Others would likely prefer that it stay semi-secret. On the other hand, hikers can help protect this lush riparian wonderland from unauthorized motor vehicles by serving as an overwatch.

Since the Canyon was reclaimed for foot travel only, the watercress beds and kaleidoscope of mossy banks and lichen-rich rocks have begun to thrive again. The place is a paradise for botanists and flora fiends, hence the name, replete with rare species of flower like death camas.

To get there, you can follow the map on the free All Trails app. The parking area on High Meadows Road has enough room for maybe three vehicles, and might fill up early on weekends. The trail starts somewhat unimpressively as a Forest Service road. There are several forks, so you might want to use a resource like the aforementioned All Trails hiking map to find your way. At 44.18189, -103.39276, hang a right and hike down into the canyon until you reach a fence and a sign that reads, “Closed to Motorized Vehicles.”

This is where you enter a Rip Van Winkle-ish world more reminiscent of the Catskills than the Black Hills — a pocket of moisture retention beneath a steep-walled spruce forest where bryophytes burst forth from your very exhalations. On our recent jaunt, the trail seemed to disappear before we reached the end, according to All Trails, but venturing further would have made for high impact hiking. Once you’ve entered Winkle-world, the joy is in leisurely strolling and contemplation.

Botany Canyon is a moderate (about 640 feet elevation gain) 5-mile, out-and-back hike.

Pilot’s Knob/Frog City Loop

The Pilot’s Knob trailhead, on the Centennial Trail, is about a half hour from Rapid City and can be combined with Forest Service 8089-B to make a loop trail.

Like the Botany Canyon trail, this section of the Centennial is a Forest Service road, and some people may wonder why, from a public relations standpoint, the Black Hills’ signature thru-hiking trail should be so marred, in places, by logging activity and burn piles. Nonetheless, there are some beautiful views of granite outcroppings, and a diverse sampling of ponderosa pine, quaking aspen, and old-growth spruce, droopy with age and frazzled green beard lichen.

The 8089-B section of this hike could be called Frog City, because of the abundance of Estes Creek ponds with their cacophony of frogsong. This might be the froggiest spot you’ll encounter in the Hills. With as many predators as enjoy them, they make themselves hard to spot, but you’ll hear them for miles, at least until the ponds dry out. At night, their song must lure hungry owls, skunks and muskrats to an amphibian feast.

You can find the Pilot Knob trailhead on Google Maps. The first junction of the Centennial Trail and the 8089-B is at: 44.16006, -103.55510. The Frog City loop is about 7.6 miles with 988 feet elevation gain.

Michael Zimny is the social media engagement specialist for South Dakota Public Broadcasting in Vermillion. He blogs for SDPB and contributes arts columns to the South Dakota Magazine website.

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A Ghost Town Called Spokane

By David Ford

Editor’s Note: The mining town of Spokane, 16 miles northeast of Custer, was founded in 1890. The surrounding hills produced gold, silver, copper, zinc, mica and graphite. Mining proved profitable into the 1920s, but unfortunately Spokane met the same fate as did dozens of other Black Hills mining camps. By 1940 it was largely abandoned. Only remnants of its heyday still exist. Writer David Ford visited in the summer of 1990 and wrote this account for our May/June 1991 issue. It is illustrated with images by Spearfish photographer John Mitchell, captured in early 2019.

“It is said that there is a place on the small hill overlooking the old Spokane Mine, where on a moonlit night with the wind brushing softly through the pine trees, you can hear the miners clinging faintly to each other. As you listen to the wind, you can hear in it the faint sound of the miners working with picks hitting rock and see in the ever changing shadows, the dim outline of feathered Indians, fortune hunters, hard rock miners, loggers, rangers, and farmers driving their oxen, all passing by.”

— From Rushmore’s Golden Valleys, by Marthe Linde

I wasn’t exactly sure where Spokane was. I just knew it was there. Four of us had been hiking up the overgrown road in the draw for about 20 minutes, give or take a few. You lose track of time in the Black Hills. It just doesn’t seem as important as it does other places.

The first signs we found were scattered treasures of civilization: garbage, an oil filter, barrel hoops, and evaporated milk cans. The trash population increased as we climbed a rise on the left side of the road.

“Ssh, hear that?” I asked. Voices. Nothing you could understand, just muffled voices. Mixed with the voices was a sort of clanging — the kind of clanging one might hear in a factory or in a mill … a mill that should have been quiet for a quarter of a century, at least.

I was the tour guide for our quartet of explorers, Judy, Ron, Marietta, and myself. I had hoped to have Spokane to ourselves so we could explore to our hearts’ delight. It sounded as if we weren’t the first here today. I figured I would find, just around a curve or over a hill, a bus load of picture-taking tourists from Japan or Boy Scouts from Chicago. Those guys seemed to be following us everywhere we went since we arrived in the Black Hills. But when we reached the top of the rise, all human noises stopped. There was no one there. No bus, nothing. The sounds of nature were still there — the birds and the rustling of the leaves in the trees. Nothing else. What else could there have been?

The first mine feature to be seen was the top of the headframe. The large stamp mill came into view beside the house and machine shop. Just think what it was like with the huge cables running from the hoist house to the headframe, lowering men down to work the mine and bringing up buckets of ore laced with gold, zinc, lead, and silver. On the north wall of the mill we found graffiti left by previous explorers. Now it is a sad part of Spokane history.

We followed a road that led through the mine buildings and down around the hill. It was a beautiful day and the hike was refreshing along the shaded lane. We rounded a last curve and a lush green meadow opened before us. It seemed to have been waiting for years for us to take in, or maybe to take us in. The road we were on circled the meadow so we circled with it. Foundations were now appearing on either side of the road. A basement here, what looks like a vault or cold cellar there. At one comer of the meadow another small road trailed off up the hill. It was littered with all types of garbage — fenders, stoves, and the ever-present evaporated milk cans.

At the head of the meadow, a two story house and garage stood guard over what we now realized had to be the townsite of Spokane. The house was deserted now but for how long has it been that way? It had a timeless quality about it. Further up from the house was a one-room schoolhouse. The steps were gone, as were the windows and the floor. Just like in a lot of other small towns, this school must have been used as a church. There seemed to be an energy about this building. Did it come from the pupils at recess or a teacher writing today’s lesson on the blackboard? Maybe it was left over from some fire-and-brimstone preacher or the weeping of a wife and family who had lost a husband and father in some mine disaster.

As we left the schoolhouse I realized we were now speaking quietly and with reverence, a sort of new respect for the area we visited. This quietness continued as we took the road back to the stamp mill, the road that was the avenue to and from the mine for so many years. Every morning they marched up that road to work and every evening, home to their families. That was the key. We hadn’t just left foundations and piles of garbage. We had been to see the homes of a community. A town that had once been filled with laughter and tears. A town that had felt the excitement of a gold strike and the fear of an Indian attack. The ruins hadn’t changed but we had. Even though we had seen no one, I now knew we weren’t alone. We had never been alone. We were surrounded by the spirits, the life forces of folks who had walked here before us. Indians, who had been here first, miners and their wives, farmers, shopkeepers, doctors, lawyers, undertakers, children and their teachers, and maybe now our little group. I could feel the ghosts of another time, not necessarily a better time, but different. It was a taste of life I hope to experience just a little of through my travels, my photographs, and now my writing.

The voices were always there, I just didn’t know how to hear them. Now I know.

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Prospecting in the Hills

By Rich Jensen

Gary Mallams and fellow miners welcome opportunities to introduce youth to the adventure and intrigue of prospecting.

“We never sell the gold,” Kathleen Flanagan, secretary of the Black Hills Prospecting Club, tells me over lunch in Rapid City.”It’s the first question everyone asks.”

This doesn’t make much sense to me. Why else would someone go out panning for gold?

And then the members of the club bring out their favorite nuggets. Almost all of them have brought their best finds to lunch. Most are kept in small vials filled with water or mineral oil.

As I rotate the vials, nuggets and flakes roll around, catching light as only gold does, and these prospectors’ reluctance to sell their gold suddenly seems reasonable. Money all looks the same. Sell a gold nugget and you’re trading something unique for plain old folding money, and eventually whatever ordinary goods that money can buy.

People used gold for decoration long before they used it for money, and if you’ve seen unprocessed gold sparkle, a little bit of that fascination probably rubbed off on you.

For many club members, their love affair with gold started at an early age. Lou Schmeltzer, one of the older members of the club, can still remember the day 80 or so years ago when one of his father’s friends brought white quartz crystals embedded with gold into his father’s barber shop in Lead, along with pieces of schist that had free gold between the layers. He still has some of those pieces of schist.

By age 9, Schmeltzer was sneaking off into the abandoned mines around Lead, looking for gold with a candle in his hand. Later, equipped with one of his mom’s pie pans, he set about panning for gold wherever he found a ledge, or outcrop, of mineralized rock that might have deposited gold into a streambed as it slowly eroded. Finally he got an authentic prospector’s pan — a banner day indeed.

The process of panning for gold hasn’t changed much since the Deadwood gold rush of 1876. Prospectors start with placer deposits, which are basically old streambeds. They’re a mix of loose soil and gravel that eroded from the Black Hills eons ago and washed down into valleys, where it remains.

Deadman Gulch, buried deep in the Black Hills near Rockerville, is a popular claim site for Don Hamm and fellow members of the Black Hills Prospecting Club. The gulch was named for two miners who died there in 1876.

A prospector starts with a pan full of water and placer material dug from a nearby deposit or scooped from the streambed itself. By carefully swirling the water around and allowing it to spill out of the pan, loose soil and lighter rocks are washed away, leaving the densest minerals, often a dark gray to black mass. If there’s any”color” in there (yes, prospectors still call it that), it will appear right along the curve. Sam Griner, a veteran prospector, calls it”a big smile at the bottom of the pan.”

Panning equipment has been upgraded slightly, even if the process is little changed. Rather than sturdy metal pans, today’s prospectors often prefer pans made of soft rubber that can be twisted and bent to better control the water swishing around the bottom. Pans are usually dark in color to make it easier to see small flecks of gold.

Some prospectors also use a sluice box, a long trough that has various ridges that catch rocks and minerals as water runs through it. The principle is basically the same as panning — gold is heavier than almost any other rock or mineral likely to turn up in a placer deposit, and it will settle to the bottom of the sluice box, while the water washes loose soil and lighter gravel away.

Although prospectors are looking for gold, it’s not unusual for other minerals to show up at the bottom of the pan. The Black Hills have a little of everything, including gems and metals. Don Hamm, the club’s vice president, once found a small platinum nugget while panning, and several other prospectors have found tourmaline and gem quality garnets. In fact, the January birthstone is so plentiful in the Hills that one of the club’s claims is called the Garnet.

The suspense of panning, of not knowing what you’re going to find, is part of what makes it an enjoyable hobby.”It’s all about the hunt,” according to Dean Duncan,”and the sense of satisfaction in finding the first piece of the day.”

“You can learn a lot of patience and a lot of frustration,” says Sam Griner.”But it’s all fun,” he continues, because when some color does turn up,”you’re the first person to ever see that nugget of gold.”

Stewardship of the land is an important part of panning. Prospectors during the gold rush weren’t so concerned about leaving a claim in better condition than they found it, but it’s a point of pride for many members of the club. If prospectors dig a hole in a placer deposit, they’re expected to backfill the hole and seed it with grass when they’re done. If they excavate loose deposits from a hillside, they’re expected to knock down the overburden, meaning to collapse the hillside over the excavation instead of leaving holes in the hill.

Club president Gary Mallams says, “finding gold in your pan is just one of the rewards for being in a beautiful place with good friends.”

Panning on National Forest land still occurs on claims, and while a few members of the Black Hills Prospecting Club also work their own claims, most of them work on one of five claims that the club maintains. Two are along French Creek, where members of George Custer’s expedition discovered gold in 1874.

Don Hamm works his own claim. He and his father, Bob, the oldest member of the club at 92, may be the most experienced prospectors. In 1982, they incorporated themselves as”Southern Hills Mining” and had the third largest gold mining operation in South Dakota that year. They pulled about 50 ounces of gold out of a placer deposit from one of Don’s secret spots.

The land under most claims remains the property of the federal government. Prospectors are free to take the gold they find, but they don’t have any other ownership stake in the land. However, some claims are”patented,” meaning that the claim belongs to the claimholder. He can build a mine — or even a house — on the land. Lots of private property in the Hills started out as patented claims.

Don Hamm lives on a patented claim along Deadman’s Creek. That inspired his grandkids to try prospecting.”You dig in the dirt and you can usually find gold,” he says.”It’s fun to teach the kids how to pan — once they find gold, they’re hooked.”

Kathleen Flanagan’s daughter, Kristin Draine, and her husband Chris are also active in the Prospecting Club. Like most members, they have a stock of nuggets found while panning.

However, they have an additional reason for being involved.”It’s something we want for our kids,” Kris says,”to be out in nature and active, not always inside.” Of course, many youth are skeptical at first. Venturing into the Hills to slosh water and dirt around in a rubber plate may not sound like fun. But many kids change their minds when they start finding gold.”Are we going prospecting this weekend?” is now a common question in the Draine household.

There’s also a social aspect to prospecting. Membership in the Black Hills Prospecting Club is just over 250 from several states, and they have regular monthly meetings and organized outings and contests. The current record holder in their panning contest is a man from Keystone who sifted through a pan in only 12.5 seconds.

Dean Duncan talks about the enjoyment of being out with friends, and”showing the greenhorns how to pan and some of the shortcuts and tricks.”

Club president Gary Mallams agrees. He discovered prospecting on a trip to Alaska, and while he enjoys the search as much as anyone in the club,”finding gold in your pan is just one of the rewards for being in a beautiful place with good friends.”

It doesn’t hurt that the prospecting takes place in the Black Hills. For many, the scenery is worth the trip, even when the prospecting doesn’t go their way. Larry Howells moved into the Hills from Kansas. He thought that panning would be an”easy, fun hobby with some financial return.”

Veteran prospectors say the gold flakes they find are, “a big smile at the bottom of the pan.”

It didn’t work out that way.”I soon found out that carrying a pick and shovel, packing buckets of rock and dirt, standing in cold water, and swirling several pounds of mud and gravel in a pan is not easy.” Regarding the financial return, he says,”Don’t quit your day job.”

But he’s still an active member.”Fun comes from being out in some of the most breathtaking scenery and the sounds of nature.”

“I’d heard of the Hills,” says Bill Dore.”I was working out in the eastern Montana oil fields in the early ’80s, in the summer heat, just baking, and I used to dream about going up some creek with a pan — and who knows what I’d find? I just wanted to be out in the shade. That’s a lot better than the Montana oil fields.”

There’s great value in prospecting deep in the Black Hills, but these days it has little to do with the price of gold.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the March/April 2017 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Hell Canyon’s Flower Power

By Michael Zimny

Sometimes you’re cruising through the apocalyptic burn scar seared into the beautiful Black Hills by the Jasper Fire and you start to sob. But take heart, tree lovers! There is more to see here than just a timber bone yard. Those noble ponderosa didn’t perish for naught. As their bodies lie moldering on a montane open grave, the sun that sustained them now sustains a vast, kaleidoscopic wildflower riot — as varied in form as in color. You just have to get a little closer to see them.

The Hell Canyon Trail, just west of Jewel Cave National Monument (on Black Hills National Forest land) will get you there. The 5-plus mile loop, rated moderate in terms of difficulty, explores sunny slopes where the inferno raged and low-lying bottomlands that were mostly spared.

“Hell Canyon is a good place to see early-blooming plants because it has a lot of exposure,” says Cheryl Mayer, a Forest Service Botany Technician who rock climbs in her spare time.

“And you get a variety of habitat types. You get your upper canyon, which [after the fire] is now grassland, prairie-type habitats. Then when you turn the corner and come into the canyon bottom you get some different plant communities. The fire didn’t burn as hot in the bottom, so there’s still the overstory of pine — and you see some communities that are dominated with more deciduous types of overstory, like box elder and chokecherry. You get a lot of variety of vegetation types in a pretty short, accessible loop.”

With Mayer as a guide, we encountered lanceleaf bluebell, some late-blooming pasque (as well as others gone to seed), Wyoming kitten-tail, sand lily, Nuttall’s violet, hairy puccoon, Rocky Mountain iris (not quite bloomed yet), wild blue flax, Missouri milkvetch, silver bladderpod, longspur violet, rock clematis, Western red currant, golden sweetpea, serviceberry, alyssum-leaf phlox, shooting star, mouse-ear chickweed, pincushion cactus, prairie smoke, wild strawberry, bastard toadflax, rock cress, tufted milkvetch, kinnikinnick, slender lip ferns thriving in rock crevices, buttercup, heartleaf alexander, Canada violet, early cinquefoil, box elder in flower, larkspur and valerian.

Later in the season: “You’ll get a different assortment,” Mayer says. “There will be some different flowering shrubs, like chokecherry. You’ll see more rock mountain iris in bloom. You’ll see death camas on the higher, more barren slopes.”

So there you have it. If you’ve been looking for ways to make wildflower-watching sound more badass, just say you’re going to spot some death camas on a barren Hell Canyon slope.

Michael Zimny is the social media engagement specialist for South Dakota Public Broadcasting in Vermillion. He blogs for SDPB and contributes arts columns to the South Dakota Magazine website.

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Doane’s Favorite Places

By Paul Higbee

Doane Robinson began his career in law, but eventually he became a poet, writer, publisher and state historian.

It’s an eight-minute walk in Pierre from Doane Robinson’s former home on Wynoka Street to the state capitol building, where he once had an office. Eight minutes, that is, if you walk with a sense of purpose.

And it is impossible to think of Doane Robinson ever moving without a sense of purpose. In the early days of South Dakota statehood he was South Dakota’s idea man, and he ranks among our most prolific writers. Usually men of letters leave behind books, and men with big ideas leave thinking that spurs others into action over time. Certainly Robinson’s legacy includes books and inspiration, but he also left South Dakota beautiful buildings at Gary, Pierre and Hisega, as well as a solid foundation for a department of state government. Oh yes … there’s also that sculpture of four presidential heads blasted from mountain granite near Keystone.

Robinson’s grandson, Will Doane Robinson, a retired teacher in Rapid City, remembers long walks along Wynoka and beyond with his grandfather in the 1930s.”A very, very nice man,” he describes him, and other neighborhood children concurred, often tagging along on walks. At the time they had no real idea of who their older friend was. Professionally Doane Robinson was a homesteader, teacher, lawyer, poet, editor and South Dakota’s first state historian. In his personal life he was a devoted family man who was widowed young. In his spare time he sometimes tinkered trying to invent a perpetual motion machine.

Born into a farm family near Sparta, Wisconsin in 1856, he was christened Jonah LeRoy Robinson. Two childhood incidents impacted the rest of his life. First, younger sister Sadie couldn’t pronounce Jonah and called him Donah, later shortened to Doane. He answered to the name the rest of his life. The second event, says great-granddaughter Vicki McLain, was much darker. Typhoid fever hit his family. No one died, but the family struggled for years to pay medical bills, keeping them in poverty for most of Doane’s childhood. Forever after, Robinson believed debt had to be avoided if at all possible.

He possessed an amazing memory, claiming he could recall incidents that happened before age 2, and maybe even before age 1. Robinson seemed strangely attuned to history-in-the-making. He remembered his parents discussing news that Abraham Lincoln had been elected president the month after Robinson turned 4. His parents were Democrats and he recalled they were unimpressed with the Republican Lincoln. Later he heard talk of distant fighting as the Civil War played out, and Robinson remembered news of Lincoln’s assassination — his mother worried Democrats would take the blame. Much later Robinson decided”in some ways the truth about Lincoln had been withheld from me,” and he committed himself to reading political theory. He became a Republican but, he wrote,”will give my support to another party any minute I am convinced that the sum of happiness will be enhanced by it.”

During his teens he worked hard on the farm, was able to run the place on his own in the event of family emergencies, and he worked equally hard in school where he honed his love of words. In his early 20s he taught school, homesteaded near his brother’s place in Minnesota, and began studying law at the University of Wisconsin. All the while he fretted about Jennie Austin, a Wisconsin girl he greatly admired and found beautiful, but who was a teenager too young for him.

Robinson fell in love with a spot he saw while traveling on the Crouch railroad line. He named it Hisega, and soon build a lodge there featuring a wraparound porch. Photo by Paul Horsted

Of course, Jennie matured. She became a teacher herself. The two decided their affection was mutual in 1883, the same year Robinson got serious about finding legal work in western Minnesota or across the border in Dakota Territory. He hadn’t earned a law degree but had learned enough to feel confident he could offer quality legal services — not an unusual course of action at the time. He considered setting himself up in Ortonville, Minnesota, but didn’t like the town. Then he visited Watertown”and made up my mind I had found the place I was looking for.” He opened a Watertown law office in September of 1883.

Months later he bought one-third interest in the Watertown Daily Courier.”The law is a jealous mistress and must come before anything else in your life,” Robinson would one day counsel his son Will, an attorney. By buying into the newspaper and, in fact, becoming its editor, Robinson demonstrated an unwillingness to focus on the law alone. The result, he decided later, was failing to be”much shucks” as a lawyer.

In December of 1884, Watertown’s young lawyer and editor rode the rails to Wisconsin to marry Jennie. Then the couple came home to Dakota Territory. Son Harry was born in 1888, and Will came along in 1893. In those years Robinson learned he could supplement his family’s income nicely by selling poetry to magazines across the country. He actually attracted a national following. The Boston Herald noted that”perhaps no one of the younger poets of America has so quickly established himself in the hearts of the common people.” Robinson came to know South Dakota in part because of requests to travel from town to town and recite his verse. His dialect poetry, recreating the speech patterns of the state’s immigrants, often for humorous effect, was well received. He also toured other Midwestern states. Even after he became state historian, Robinson remained a poet, and found he could sometimes combine verse and historical interpretation. An example is this poem about W.H.H. Beadle, Civil War veteran and pioneering educator who championed South Dakota School and Public Lands for generating public education funds:

Man of vision! Man of mission,

Patriot, soldier, scholar, seer.

Man of action! Man of purpose! Duty led

in thy career.

Forward looking; self forgetting; unwaged

drudge for learning’s gain;

South Dakota reaps the harvest planted by

thy care and pain.

In 1894 he moved his young family to Gary, a railroad town in Deuel County, close to the Minnesota border. He bought the Gary Interstate newspaper.”Getting out an edition of the eight page newspaper was frequently a family affair,” son Will recalled in an excellent little biography of his father.”The press was an old Washington hand press.” Jennie positioned the newsprint in the press and Doane swung a big lever to apply pressure and make the imprint. At age 6 Harry removed the finished newspapers from the press and stacked them.

After the town of Gary lost its status as the seat of Deuel County, Robinson urged the state to locate the School for the Blind there. Today the campus is the Buffalo Ridge Resort and Business Center.

The year after the Robinsons moved to town, Gary lost county seat status to Clear Lake. But the new newspaper publisher had an idea: Why not lobby the state to build a School for the Blind on the former courthouse grounds? Robinson did some research and determined it cost South Dakota $2,000 per student, every year, to send children with visual impairments to out-of-state institutions, in the era when it was assumed students with disabilities learned best in segregated environments. Robinson’s idea won statewide support and ground was broken in 1899. Students arrived in 1900. Vicki McLain thinks perhaps there was more to her great-grandfather’s passion for the school than commerce for Gary.”When he was studying law in Wisconsin,” she says,”he temporarily lost sight, apparently because of severe eye strain. He recovered but never took eyesight for granted.”

Over the next several years the school evolved into a pretty campus a couple blocks north of Gary’s business district. Services moved to Aberdeen in 1961 and the campus fell into disrepair, but more than 40 years later Joe Kolbach completed a beautiful restoration, creating Buffalo Ridge Resort.

Even as he was publishing the Interstate and advocating for the school, Robinson nursed a pet project, one he believed in so much that he was willing to sometimes serve as an”unpaid drudge,” to borrow a phrase from his Beadle poem. The idea was a magazine, the Monthly South Dakotan, that would heavily emphasize the young state’s history. Issues were produced over a period of several years and wherever Robinson moved, the magazine went with him. The Robinsons moved to Yankton where he bought controlling interest in a morning paper, The Gazette, and then it was on to Sioux Falls where Robinson hoped to find more ad revenue for the Monthly South Dakotan. Next the family made Aberdeen its home, and Robinson published the Brown County Review.

ìHe had a thousand irons in the fire,” Will wrote. As for the Monthly South Dakotan, he added, it claimed a loyal readership willing to pay for subscriptions, but ad revenue constantly fell short. The publication folded in 1904, and by that time Robinson’s life had changed drastically. In 1901 he was selected Secretary of the new South Dakota State Historical Society, a branch of state government. Now he had the opportunity to publish articles of the sort he prepared for the Monthly South Dakotan, but at state expense. After a few years in the position his income would allow for a very comfortable lifestyle. It should have been a happy time, but in 1902 Jennie died of acute bronchitis. Who else but Robinson, with his head for historical dates, would note that Jennie died 19 years to the day after she and Doane decided they were in love?

Robinson advocated for the stately Soldiers and Sailors Memorial in Pierre after World War I. It once housed the state’s history museum. Photo by Chad Coppess/S.D. Tourism

ìOh, my dear boys,” Robinson later wrote his sons,”I can never tell you how dearly I loved your Mama, not only those nineteen years, but long before, and every moment since.” He was 45 and never remarried.

Sadie, the sister who gave him his name, moved in to help run the household. The family relocated to Pierre and Robinson arranged for construction of the home on Wynoka Street. Future governor and U.S. senator Peter Norbeck would be a neighbor on Wynoka, and became Robinson’s good friend and ally.

Robinson perhaps occasionally lost himself in work as he grieved Jennie. He helped plan the state capitol building and wrote 1905’s Brief History of South Dakota, more commonly called”the little red history book,” which for decades was the standard volume schools used to teach about South Dakota’s past. Most important, though, Robinson got the State Historical Society off to a strong start, publishing the first volumes of South Dakota Historical Collections, the biennial series of papers that most every South Dakota historian has referenced.

ìHis was the foundation we’ve built on ever since,” says Jay Vogt, current State Historical Society director.”In his time, he was much more hands-on than we’re able to be, doing most of the research and writing himself.”

Indeed, when something big developed, such as the discovery of the Verendrye plate that proved French trappers passed through the state in 1743, Robinson jumped into action and researched, wrote and edited until he had 300 pages for Historical Collections. He also gathered South Dakota newspapers and indexed them, along with government documents, and he took special interest in seeking out American Indian historical perspectives. He considered it a great honor, before his state historian years, to have interviewed Hunkpapa leader Gall, one of the victors at the Battle of Little Big Horn.

While no one ever questioned Robinson’s work ethic, he has sometimes been criticized for not being an academically trained historian.

ìBut you have to put that criticism in context,” says Vogt.”At that time, in all states, history organizations were kind of amateur clubs, made up of people who had interest and maybe connections to historical sources. Doane Robinson brought a wide range of professional experiences to his work, and he possessed great curiosity.”

For many years his office was on the capitol building’s ground floor, along with a little museum. When the legislature was in session, lawmakers knew the state’s best writer was close at hand if they struggled with a bill’s wording.

After railroad tracks spanned the Missouri River and were extended west to Rapid City in 1907, Robinson had easy access to the Black Hills for the first time. The region offered intriguing history, and it was a perfect place to relax. In 1908 Robinson arranged a camping adventure for 17 friends, relatives and Pierre colleagues. The party stepped off the Crouch Line train in a beautiful canyon west of Rapid City and pitched tents. Robinson loved making up words and announced he would call the spot Hisega, a name derived from the initials of six women in the group: Helen, Ida, Sadie, Ethel, Grace and Ada. Everyone loved the place, talked it up back in Pierre, and Robinson devised a time-share scheme. If enough people contributed $100, he would build a mountain lodge for them at Hisega. The big structure with wrap-around porches awaited visitors the next summer, and it still greets guests today.

A building of an entirely different style that stands as a Doane Robinson legacy is the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial, down the front steps and immediately across the street from the state capitol. Robinson pushed for the building after World War I, and it took more than a decade to raise funds and get the stately memorial finished. In addition to honoring South Dakotans who served and died in military service, the building housed the state’s history museum for many years and was usually referred to as the Robinson Museum.

Robinson dreamed of carving into Black Hills mountains. Newspapermen called the idea ridiculous, but Robinson partnered with Gutzon Borglum and history was made. Photo by S.D. Tourism

Of course, when it comes to tangible legacies, nothing tops Mount Rushmore Memorial.”My grandfather thought the Black Hills were beautiful, but that not enough people would visit just because of that,” says Will D. Robinson.”There had to be some other reason. I can show you the spot on the Needles Highway where his Model T Ford touring sedan got hot one day, and he sent my dad to bring water from a spring. When my dad got back to the car, my grandfather was looking at the Needles, thinking how they could be carved by a sculptor.”

That was 1923. Robinson talked to people who might help, especially Senator Norbeck, and sometimes took heat from South Dakota newspaper editors who considered the scheme ridiculous. But in short order internationally renowned sculptor Gutzon Borglum was on board and in 1927, as Robinson looked on, President Calvin Coolidge was present for a ceremony launching the project. Only the location wasn’t the Needles but nearby Mount Rushmore because, Robinson’s grandson understood, the Needles spires contained too much feldspar and Borglum didn’t want to alter that stunning piece of God’s handiwork.

Borglum also didn’t want to carve figures related to the American West, as Robinson proposed, but instead presidents. In Borglum, Robinson met a man whose vast vision matched his own. In another way, though, the men were polar opposites. Borglum liked to move ahead without much thought about costs, while Robinson insisted on budgetary constraint. As an executive of the original association formed to oversee Mount Rushmore’s creation, it fell to Robinson to confront the sculptor at times about spending. He was happy to pretty much leave the project in 1929, content in knowing his role as instigator had been successful. Robinson was back at the mountain on July 4, 1930, as a speaker when the Washington head was dedicated. He was 73 and had retired as State Historical Society Secretary six years earlier.

In the 1930s Robinson had more time for his walks and young friends on Wynoka Street, and he kept writing. Unlike Borglum and Norbeck, he lived long enough to see Mount Rushmore in its final form. He also saw his son Will become head of the State Historical Society in 1946. Doane Robinson lived a few weeks past his 90th birthday and his grandson recalls his mind and memories were as sharp as ever toward the end. He had witnessed America’s evolution from Abraham Lincoln to the atomic age. No one observed South Dakota’s first half century more intently.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the November/December 2013 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.