Chapter I: Front Matter

The Black Hills
MID-CONTINENT RESORT

BY Albert N. Williams

AMERICAN RESORT SERIES NO. 4

Southern Methodist University Press
1952

COPYRIGHT, 1952, BY
SOUTHERN METHODIST UNIVERSITY PRESS
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
BY AMERICAN BOOK—STRATFORD PRESS, INC., NEW YORK

AMERICAN RESORT SERIES

No. 1: Gatlinburg: Gateway to the Great Smokies, _by Edwin J. Foscue_
No. 2: Taxco: Mexico’s Silver City, _by Edwin J. Foscue_
No. 3: Estes Park: Resort in the Rockies, _by Edwin J. Foscue and
Louis O. Quam_
No. 4: The Black Hills: Mid-Continent Resort, _by Albert N. Williams_

For Chris

Acknowledgments

The research on early Black Hills and Badlands history was ably assisted by Miss June Carothers, whose services were provided the author through a generous grant-in-aid by the University of Denver’s Bureau of Humanities and Social Development.

Miss Ina T. Aulls, Mrs. Alys Freeze, Mrs. Opal Harber, Miss Margery Bedinger, Mrs. Margaret Simonds, Mrs. Elizabeth Kingston, and Mrs. Clara Cutright, all of the Denver Public Library, are particularly to be thanked for placing the resources of that institution at my disposal.

For assistance in preparing the manuscript, I wish to thank Miss Helen Kiamos, Miss Edith Goldfarb, and Miss Lillian Helling.

I am indebted to Bell Photo of Rapid City for the photograph of the Needles highway; to Ned Perrigoue of Rapid City for that of Sylvan Lake; to the Denver Public Library Western Collection for those of Calamity Jane, Wild Bill Hickok, and Deadwood Gulch in 1881; and to Mr. A. H. Pankow of the South Dakota State Highway Commission for that of a Black Hills stream.

And finally, as always, thanks go to my wife, Ann, for her patient editorial help.

Albert N. Williams

_University of Denver
Denver, Colorado_

Books by Albert N. Williams

LISTENING
ROCKY MOUNTAIN COUNTRY
THE WATER AND THE POWER
THE BOOK BY MY SIDE

Contents

I The Black Hills: The Forbidden Land 1
II The Formation of the Black Hills 15
III The Hills Today 27
IV History I: Indians and Gold 47
V History II: Deadwood Days 78
VI The White River Badlands 115
Bibliography 126
Index 127

Illustrations

Along the Needles Highway _facing page_ 34
Harney Peak—older by ages than the Rockies 35
The Four Great Faces: Mount Rushmore Memorial 50
Sylvan Lake mirrors great granite shields at an elevation of 6,250
feet 51
Calamity Jane, during her carnival days 82
Wild Bill Hickok, from an early portrait 82
Cheyenne—Black Hills Stage carrying bullion guarded by shotgun
messengers 82
Deadwood Gulch in 1881 83
Modern Deadwood—seventy years later 83
One of the Black Hills’ many streams 98
The Badlands: Desolate, empty, and seared 99

Introduction

I have had an opportunity to enjoy one of the most readable accounts of the Black Hills I have ever come across. It is written to acquaint traveling America with an area which was long off the beaten path of tourists, and which has only during the past quarter century been recognized as a place where people who wish to “Know America First” may profitably spend some time.

Mr. Williams has outlined the historical reason why this small wonderland was so long outside the consciousness of America, and he has devoted a chapter to telling about the methods of nature in producing the intricacies of this formation, older by far than the Alps or the Himalayas. He has made the subject live, and he includes enough expert terminology to satisfy the reader that he knows whereof he speaks.

In his chapter on “The Hills Today” Mr. Williams outlines what the tourist should see, and how to see it. For that chapter alone his book would be well worth the attention of every prospective sight-seer. He has two chapters pertaining to the history of the region, the first speculating on how the whole economic growth of the West might well have been altered had a confirmed story of “gold in the Black Hills” been released fifty years before it was spread-eagled on the pages of the _Chicago Inter-Ocean_. It is an interesting speculation, and he gives it a pleasing reality.

Another chapter deals with the lives of some of the characters exploited and given semi-permanent fame by the old dime novels. Deadwood without these characters would be just another picturesque town set down in a mountain valley; with them it becomes one of America’s better-known hot spots, vying with the Klondike and Leadville.

Mr. Williams’ last chapter on the Badlands, a neighboring phenomenon, a place of amazing mystery and strange disorder, serves to depict what might be termed the undepictable in terms exactly calculated to excite the reader’s absorbed interest.

Will G. Robinson

_South Dakota State Historical Society
Pierre, South Dakota
December 17, 1951_