CITY ESCAPES
Nature Photography, LLC
Newsletter
September, 2011
The Well-kept Secret that is South Dakota
(This is the second installment in a two-part series on places new to me that I had the good fortune to experience over the summer. See the August 2011 newsletter for the first installment about the Great Lakes.)
I admit, albeit sheepishly now that I have seen my error, that I had very few expectations of South Dakota. Like many who visit this relatively ignored state, I had done little research and planned on seeing only two things during my short stay: Mount Rushmore and the Crazy Horse memorial. After all, I had a lot of ground to cover during the rest of my trip, and what else could I possibly hope to see in South Dakota? As it turns out, quite a bit. As my journey through this magnificent region got underway, my ignorance and naïveté of the state’s wonders rapidly became painfully clear.
My exploration centered around the southwestern corner of the state, home of Mount Rushmore and the Crazy Horse memorial. I had few preconceptions of what kind of ecosystem I would find there, except that there would be one mountain with carvings of four of our presidents gracing its face, and another mountain slowing growing an image of Crazy Horse. Despite this, I was fairly certain that it would not be too mountainous, at least not on the scale I knew (I spent over a decade in the Rockies), and I was pretty sure that swamplands would be nowhere to be found. Other than those very vague and generalized ideas, South Dakota was a blank to me.
I soon discovered that this area was also home to the Black Hills and Badlands National Park, two gems that are must-sees for any nature lover traveling through the area. Both are a scrambler’s paradise, full of spires, cliffs, buttes and ravines. Scramblers should stay alert and focused, however, as the rock is soft and crumbly, and a fall could be deadly. Oh, and did I mention the rattlesnakes?
The Badlands are striking not only for their magnificent striated rock formations, but also for their sudden and barren appearance. The largest protected mixed-grass prairie in the United States very abruptly gives way to towering cliff faces and sharp peaks, devoid of most vegetation. The area was created by a fierce combination of volcanic action and erosion, and is quite arid. It is not surprising then that it is also home to a number of impressive fossil discoveries, including a small camel, a three-toed horse, and my favorite, a saber-toothed cat. In fact, so many dinosaur fossils have been discovered in Badlands National Park that it has earned the nickname of “the dinosaurs’ playground.”
The park is not all about animals of yesteryear, however; it is also involved in an attempt to keep one particular animal from becoming an animal of yesteryear. The black-footed ferret, the most endangered land mammal in North America (in 1981, only 18 were known to exist), has been reintroduced into an area of the Badlands known as the Sage Creek Wilderness, where they find an abundance of the two things they need most to survive: prairies and prairie dogs. Black-footed ferrets live in prairie dog burrows and rely almost exclusively on prairie dogs for food. Though the precise number of ferrets now living in the Badlands is not known (it is difficult to count nocturnal animals that live in burrows), it is known that their numbers are increasing. Nationwide, and including one site in Mexico, it is estimated that 1000 black-footed ferrets now live in the wild, with between 150 and 220 additional ferrets being released annually from captive-breeding centers.
It is easy to understand why the ferrets would be released in South Dakota, as there are many jokes here to the effect that prairie dogs greatly outnumber people -- and that is not a difficult concept to believe. In 1900, a massive prairie dog colony was discovered: 100 miles by 250 miles, it contained an estimated 400 million prairie dogs. Though their habitat and numbers have been greatly reduced over the last century, the playful rodents are still quite plentiful and easy to find. Amusing little creatures, one will suddenly stand up on its hind legs and give a shrill bark, which starts a mini-prairie dog wave as others in its colony immediately follow suit.
The Black Hills have spires, ravines, and other rock formations similar to the Badlands, but covered in trees. The trees are actually how the Black Hills got their name -- it certainly wasn’t from the color of the rock, which in many places is a deep and startling red. Rather, when viewed from a distance on the prairies and grasslands, the Hills look black due to their covering of dark trees. Famous for the gold found in them, they are also strikingly beautiful. I stumbled across a part of the Black Hills known as Custer State Park with its lakes, forests, stunning vistas, and winding roads with a few hairpin turns through low, narrow rock tunnels thrown in for good measure, and I immediately wished that I had allocated more time for this surprising gem.
Then of course, there was Sturgis, Deadwood (of Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane fame), and oh, yeah, Mount Rushmore and the Crazy Horse memorial. Not to mention other treasures that I didn’t get to, such as Wounded Knee, Jewel Cave (the second-longest cave in the world), Devil’s Tower… It looks like another trip to this “relatively ignored state” is in order.
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September’s Fun Facts
This month we focus on South Dakota, of course:
- The Black Hills of South Dakota are the highest American peaks east of the Rockies.
- The oldest continually operating gold mine in the world, and the largest in the United States, is the Homestake Mine in the ironically named town of Lead. A little alchemy, anyone?
- Clark boasts a Mashed Potato Wrestling contest.
- Over 500 wild horses make their home in the Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary.
- An artesian well feeds the South Dakota State Capitol Lake. Water from this well has a natural gas content so high that it is flammable. The Flaming Fountain, built to take advantage of this unusual water source, is a memorial to all South Dakota veterans and burns in perpetuity.
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