Black Hills

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Image:Black-hills-sd.jpg

This article is about the place in South Dakota. For the place in Washington, see Black Hills (Washington).


The Black Hills are a small, isolated mountain range rising from the Great Plains of North America in western South Dakota and extending into Wyoming, USA. Set off from the main body of the Rocky Mountains, the region is somewhat of a geological anomaly. The region is considered sacred by many of the Plains Native Americans. It is accurately described as an "island of trees in a sea of grass." The Black Hills are home to the tallest peaks between the Rocky Mountains and the Alps in Europe (not counting undersea mountains).

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History

After the public discovery of gold in the 1870s, the conflict over control of the region sparked the last major Indian War on the Great Plains, the Black Hills War. The Black Hills are considered by the Lakota (Teton Sioux) to be the axis mundi, or center of the world; the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868) had previously confirmed their ownership of the mountain range.

Although rumors of gold in the Black Hills had circulated in North America for decades (See Thoen Stone and Father DeSmet), Brevet Major General George Armstrong Custer of the 7th US Cavalry led an expedition into the Black Hills in 1874; an official announcement of the presence of gold was made through newspaper reporters who accompanied the expedition. The following year, the first detailed survey of the Black Hills was conducted by the Newton-Jenney Party. The surveyor for the party, Dr. Valentine McGillycuddy, was the first person to ascend to the top of Harney Peak, the highest point in the Black Hills.

During the 1875–1878 gold rush, thousands of miners went to the Black Hills; in 1880, the area was the most densely populated part of Dakota Territory. There were three large towns in the Northern Hills: Deadwood, Central City, and Lead. Around these lay groups of smaller gold camps, towns, and villages. Hill City and Custer City sprang up in the Southern Hills, and railroads were already reaching the previously remote area. From 1880 on, the gold mines yielded about $4,000,000 annually, and the silver mines about $3,000,000 annually.

Image:Inyan-Kara.jpg Following the defeat of the Lakota and their Cheyenne and Arapaho allies in 1876, the United States "purchased" the region from the Lakota. However, no actual purchase was ever completed and the area remains under dispute to this day. In 1980, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the Black Hills were illegally taken and that remuneration of the initial offering price plus interest — over $100 million — be paid. The Lakota refused the settlement, as they wanted the return of their land instead. The Lakota Nation still demands the return of the Black Hills to this day; with the help of former Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey, a bill was introduced in Congress for the return of a portion of the Black Hills. The bill eventually failed due to lack of support from the South Dakota congressional delegation.

Unlike the rest of the Dakotas, the Black Hills were settled primarily from population centers to the west and south of the region, as miners flocked there from earlier gold boom locations in Colorado and Montana. Today, the South Dakota side of the Black Hills is economically and socially more like Wyoming or Colorado than the Dakotas. The nearby reservations and Ellsworth Air Force Base make for a unique diversity in population unlike the rest of Wyoming or South Dakota.

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Geology

Image:Black-Hills-Road.jpg The geology of the Black Hills is complex. A Tertiary mountain-building episode is responsible for the uplift and current topography of the Black Hills region. This uplift was marked by volcanic activity in the northern Black Hills. The southern Black Hills are characterized by Precambrian granite, pegmatite, and metamorphic rocks that comprise the core of the entire Black Hills uplift. This core is rimmed by Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic sedimentary rocks.

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Biosystems

As with the geology, the biology of the Black Hills is complex. Most of the Hills are a fire-climax Ponderosa Pine forest, with White Spruce and Rocky Mountain Douglas-fir located in the Northern Hills, especially in the Bear Lodge Mountains, which make up most of the Wyoming portion of the Black Hills. However, large open parks (mountain meadows) with lush grassland rather than forest are scattered through the Hills, and the southern portions of the Hills, due to the rainshadow of the higher elevations, are made up of dry grassland and scrub pine and juniper. Wildlife is both diverse and plentiful, with trout and other species in the creeks, while the forests and grasslands offer good habitat for buffalo, deer, antelope, big-horn sheep, mountain goats, mountain lions, and a variety of smaller animals, including prairie dogs. Biologically, the Black Hills is a meeting and mixing place, with species common to regions to the east, west, north and south all sharing a common habitat.

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Tourism and economy

The region is home to Mount Rushmore National Memorial, Wind Cave National Park, Jewel Cave National Monument, Harney Peak (the highest point east of the Rockies), Custer State Park (the largest state park in the US), Bear Butte State Park, Devils Tower National Monument, and the Crazy Horse Memorial (the largest sculpture in the world). The Black Hills also hosts the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally each August. Started in 1940, the 65th Rally in 2005 saw more than 550,000 bikers visit the Black Hills; the rally is a key part of the regional economy.

The George S. Mickelson Memorial Trail is a recently opened multi-use path through the Black Hills. It follows the abandoned track of the historic railroad route from Edgemont to Deadwood. The train used to be the only way to bring supplies to the miners in the Hills. The trail is about 110 miles in length, and can be used by hikers, cross-country skiers, and bikers. The cost is two dollars per day, or ten dollars anually.

Today, the major city in the Black Hills is Rapid City, with an incorporated population of 60,000 and a metropolitan population of 85,000. It serves a market area covering much of five states: North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, and Montana. In addition to tourism and mining (including coal, specialty minerals, and the now declining gold mining), the Black Hills economy includes ranching (sheep and cattle, primarily, with buffalo and ratites becoming more common), timber (lumber), Ellsworth Air Force Base, and some manufacturing, including jewelry (Black Hills Gold Jewelry), cement, electronics, cabinetry, guns and ammunition. In many ways, the Black Hills functions as a very spread-out urban area with a population (not counting tourists) of 250,000. Other important Black Hills cities include Belle Fourche, a ranching town; Spearfish, home of Black Hills State University; Deadwood, a historic and well-preserved gambling mecca; its twin city of Lead, home of the now-closed Homestake Mine (gold); Keystone outside Mount Rushmore; Hill City, a timber and tourism town in the center of the Hills; Custer City, a mining and tourism town and headquarters for Black Hills National Forest; Hot Springs, an old resort town in the southern Hills; Sturgis, originally a military town (Fort Meade, now a VA center, is located just to the east); and Newcastle, center of the Black Hills petroleum production and refining.

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Black Hills in film

Several major motion pictures have been filmed in the Black Hills including North by Northwest, How the West Was Won, A Man Called Horse, Lakota Woman and Dances with Wolves. The Black Hills has been the setting of still more movies or portions thereof, including Walt Disney's "The One and Only Genuine Original Family Band" and several movies based on Louis L'Amour novels. The Black Hills is also the setting for the popular HBO series Deadwood, although the show is actually filmed in California. However, the City Fathers of Deadwood have created a wooden "false front" street similar to the television set and the original town - a series of fires in the late 1800s destroyed all the original log and frame buildings, which were replaced with the brick and stone structures which grace the city today.



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See also

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Sources

Regions of South Dakota Image:South Dakota state flag.png
Black Hills - Coteau des Prairies
Largest cities
Aberdeen | Belle Fourche | Brandon | Brookings | Canton | Ellsworth | Hot Springs | Huron | Madison | Mitchell | Mobridge | Pierre | Rapid City | Rapid Valley | Sioux Falls | Spearfish | Sturgis | Vermillion | Watertown | Winner | Yankton
Counties
Aurora - Beadle - Bennet - Bon Homme - Brookings - Brown - Brule - Buffalo - Butte - Campbell - Charles Mix - Clark - Clay - Codington - Corson - Custer - Davison - Day - Deuel - Dewey - Douglas - Edmunds - Fall River - Faulk - Grant - Gregory - Haakon - Hamlin - Hand - Hanson - Harding - Hughes - Hutchinson - Hyde - Jackson - Jerauld - Jones - Kingsbury - Lake - Lawrence - Lincoln - Lyman - Marshall - McCook - McPherson - Meade - Mellette - Miner - Minnehaha - Moody - Pennington - Perkins - Potter - Roberts - Sanborn - Shannon - Spink - Stanley - Sully - Todd - Tripp - Turner - Union - Walworth - Yankton - Ziebach

da:Black Hills de:Black Hills fr:Black Hills pl:Góry Czarne (USA) pt:Black Hills fi:Black Hills

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