Best of the Black Hills

From Minnesota, cross South Dakota to the southwest corner of the state. There you’ll see the first granite spires, hear the first wind in ponderosa pines, taste the first of the Wild West. You’ve found the Black Hills, that rugged spine of mountains sprouting from the Great Plains. They were sacred to the Lakota, and it’s easy to see why. Since gold was discovered here in 1874, they’ve been prospected, blasted, and mined to pieces, but their magic still remains.

The Black Hills is the perfect road trip. Here’s a planning primer—from the northern hills to the south.

Downtown Rapid City

Before launching an expedition into the Black Hills, spend the night in the Hotel Alex Johnson (523 6th St., 605-342-1210), a classy Germanic Tudor with a touch of the West built in 1928. The grand lobby, anchored by a stone fireplace, has a rich, dark interior, with painted ceiling rafters and mounted heads of game animals. Try the buffalo roast at the hotel’s Landmark Restaurant. If you have time to explore downtown, stop at Prairie Edge Trading Co. & Galleries (6th and Main, 800-541-2388), which sells high-end Native American art and crafts on a traditional theme.

Reptile Gardens

Photo courtesy of the Reptile Gardens

A male red-headed agama at Reptile Gardens

Let’s start with a bit of kitsch: Road-tripping families have been stopping at Reptile Gardens (U.S. Highway 16 just south of Rapid City, 800-335-0275) since 1937 to see what is claimed to be the “most diverse collection of reptiles on the planet.” Most popular is the Crocodilian Show—with gator feeding and wrestling, dressed up with interesting facts and a bit of education. Kids can even touch a baby alligator. They can also get close-up looks at a twenty-foot-long python, a Komodo dragon, and a giant tortoise that just turned 127. (The tortoise has been there since 1956, so you might have seen it when you were a kid!)

Spearfish Canyon Scenic Byway

In the Black Hills, there’s no shortage of scenic drives, but one of the most popular follows U.S. Highway 14A south of Spearfish through Spearfish Canyon in the northern hills. Steep slopes are cloaked in spruce, ponderosa pine, and birch. Two scenic stops worth short hikes are Spearfish Falls and Roughlock Falls.

D. C. Booth Historic National Fish Hatchery

This federal fish hatchery (423 Hatchery Circle, 605-642-7730) in Spearfish is a great stop. Established in 1896 to take advantage of the area’s cold-water springs, the facility is one of the oldest hatcheries in the country. Today it’s a museum. Through an underwater window, watch brown and rainbow trout the size of fireplace logs.

Mickelson Bike Trail

Photo by Greg Breining

Jim Weseloh takes in the view from Mickelson Bike Trail

The George S. Mickelson Trail follows an old railroad grade right through the heart of the hills, from Deadwood south to Edgemont. Plenty of cyclists pedal the entire 109-mile route. Start north and head south to take advantage of the 1,150-foot overall elevation drop. To avoid long uphill climbs, plan a day trip on one of the long downhill sections. One of the most popular and scenic is the thirty-two-mile stretch from Dumont to Hill City, which cuts through the most rugged part of the trail and takes in all four of its tunnels. To rent a bike or arrange a shuttle, try Mickelson Trail Adventures (605-574-4094) or Rabbit Bicycle (605-574-4302), both in Hill City.

Mount Rushmore National Memorial

Photo courtesy of the National Park Service

Mount Rushmore

You’re familiar with it even if you’ve never been there—the faces of four of our most famous presidents carved in stone (South Dakota Hwy. 244 near Keystone, 605-574-2523). To get a close-up look, take the thirty-minute ranger-guided hike along the base of the mountain. The fifteen-minute sculptor’s talk tells the story of how the monument was carved from solid granite. Also check out the Lakota, Nakota, and Dakota Heritage Village set up so people can learn about the native inhabitants of the area. A nightly lighting ceremony (ends September 30) helps visitors see the faces in a fresh light.

Hill City

Of all the little former mining towns in the Black Hills, none has cleaned up better than Hill City, known for a taste for the arts. The town is probably most famous for a nasty custody battle over a dinosaur—the fossilized bones of a tyrannosaurus rex named Sue, discovered by the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research (117 Main St., 605-574-4289). The institute eventually lost the battle—and the fossil—to the federal government, but thrives nonetheless. It runs a dandy museum, filled with lots of stuff—from two mounted T. Rexes to outstanding collections of early invertebrates.

In the center of town, catch the 1880 Train (605-574-2222). A century-old steam engine pulls restored passenger cars along the route of an old railroad through the hills, making the trip to nearby Keystone and back several times a day.

When you’re done, dine at Alpine Inn (225 Main St., 605-574-2749) with this proviso: You have to like steak, because that’s all they serve for dinner—filet mignon, baked potato, and a wedge of lettuce with house dressing for only $9. You get Victorian atmosphere and a huge choice of imported beers and desserts.

Crazy Horse Memorial

If you think the sculpture at Mount Rushmore is big, consider what’s in store at the Crazy Horse Memorial (U.S. Highway 16/385 between Hill City and Custer, 605-673-4681). When the mysterious Lakota warrior finally emerges from the granite mountainside—and this won’t happen for years—he will stretch 641 feet long by 563 feet high, the most massive sculpture on earth. Today you can see Crazy Horse’s ninety-foot-high face (Rushmore’s faces are sixty feet high) and the suggestion of his arm.

Custer State Park

Photo courtesy of the National Park Service

A bison bull

At 71,000 acres, Custer State Park (U.S. Highway 16 east of Custer, 605-255-4515) is far larger than most state parks and a haven for all kinds of challenges, including hiking, biking, horseback riding, and backpacking. One of the most popular activities is driving the eighteen-mile-long Wildlife Loop Road through the prairie and wooded draws to watch elk, antelope, bighorn sheep and, especially, bison. Often the critters block the road, scratching their gnarly heads on bumpers and fenders ’til they get the urge to move.

One of the park’s best shows is the bison roundup during the last weekend of September, when volunteer cowboys help herd bison into corrals and cull surplus animals for market. The roundup has grown into a celebration of buffalo and Americana. Last year nearly 12,000 visitors lined the road.

Other attractions are Custer’s distinctive lodges (888-875-0001). The historic State Game Lodge serves buffalo, pheasant, and trout. Sylvan Lake Lodge, overlooking its namesake trout lake, was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Blue Bell Lodge has a cowboy theme, with trail rides and cookouts. Legion Lake Lodge offers trout fishing.

Peter Norbeck Scenic Byway

This scenic route through the central Black Hills was named for Peter Norbeck, the former South Dakota governor and U.S. senator who pushed for the creation of Custer State Park. “You’re not supposed to drive here at sixty miles an hour,” Norbeck said. “To do the scenery half justice, people should drive twenty or under. To do it full justice, they should get out and walk.” To enforce that ethic, many of the roads snake around switchbacks and duck through narrow tunnels. You couldn’t drive fast if you tried. One passage is just over ten feet high, another barely eight feet wide.

Jewel Cave National Monument

The granite core of the Black Hills pushed up through a layer of limestone riddled now with miles of caverns. Among these is Jewel Cave (west of Custer, 605-673-2288), the second-longest known cave in the world, with 143 miles of passages. Rangers lead tours daily. The “scenic tour” lasts about eighty minutes. It climbs or descends the equivalent of about forty flights of stairs over a half-mile. The lantern tour simulates caving conditions of the 1930s. If those choices sound tame, get down and dirty on the spelunking tour.

Wind Cave National Park

Photo courtesy of the National Park Service

Wind Cave’s Snowdrift Avenue

Wind Cave (north of Hot Springs on U.S. Highway 385, 605-745-4600) is one of the earliest documented caves in the world. Rangers lead tours daily. Wind Cave National Park, like Custer State Park to the north, is a great place to drive park roads and scan the prairie for bison, elk, pronghorns, mule deer, and coyotes. You can also set off on thirty miles of hiking trails.

Hot Springs

True to its name, the town of Hot Springs grew up in the late 1800s as resorts were constructed around the nearly 200 natural hot springs in the area—many of them known and used by the local Indians for centuries. Today, shops and restaurants occupy the old stone buildings. Kids will like Evans Plunge (1145 N. River St., 605-745-5165), an indoor warm-water fun park. Adults may prefer Red Rock River Resort (603 N. River St., 888-306-8921) in a massive sandstone building that dates to 1891 or Springs Bath House (146 N. Garden St., 888-817-1972) with massage and aromatherapy.

Mammoth Site of Hot Springs

Some 26,000 years ago, nature laid a perfect trap. Caverns near the surface collapsed, leaving a sinkhole filled with warm spring water. The vegetation and warm water attracted Ice Age mammoths, which ventured into the basin, but couldn’t escape up the slick banks. Discovered by a local developer in 1974, the Mammoth Site of Hot Springs (1800 U.S. Highway 18 bypass, 605-745-6017) is a treasure trove of fossils—at least three woolly mammoths, fifty-five of the larger Columbian mammoths, and bones of rabbits, llamas, frogs, and more than eighty other species, including the giant short-faced bear (bigger than any bear alive today). Tour the expansive building that has been constructed over the old sinkhole to see skeletons and tusks in the process of excavation.

Greg Breining is a nationally published St. Paul writer specializing in active travel.