The “Wild West” of the Black Hills / Devil's Tower, WY

Monday, August 15

Just up the road from our campsite lay the “Crazy Horse” memorial, a private monument to honor the Lakota Sioux warrior and the home to a museum for Native American history. Work on the mountain was begun in 1948, and Crazy Horse’s head was dedicated in June 1998. Work continues on his horse and body; the work is funded by private donations.

After that, we took a jaunt up another curvy, serpentine road to Lake Sylvan in Custer State Park, and we took a cool hike around the beautiful lake. We had a very nice afternoon.

Then it was on farther north to Deadwood, South Dakota, where “Wild Bill” Hickock was shot dead in August 1876. I did not previously have any idea that the Black Hills were the buzzing center of the Wild Wild West. (So much for remembering my American history!) Here is where gold mining took off, and we read about some colorful characters like Potato Creek Johnny (a.k.a. John Perrett), who was famous for having dug up the largest nugget of gold ever unearthed, at 7.75 troy ounces (whatever a troy ounce is).  The man was only 4’3” – let’s hear it for big things from small people!

“Downtown” Deadwood still looks like a wild west town, and today it’s the center of the Black Hills gaming and casino industry, preserving the “wild” reputation of the place. We walked around, found Saloon No. 10, where Wild Bill was shot, and then we drove up a very steep hill to St. Moriah cemetery, where the likes of Calamity Jane, Potato Creek Johnny and, yes, Wild Bill are buried.  How fun.

We jumped back onto Interstate 90 then and headed west again. We looked at the map and decided we were close enough to Devil’s Tower National Monument that it made sense to go and take a look. We camped at a pretty crappy campsite, but it had a great view of Devil’s Tower.

You can see in that photo that heavy clouds were coming in, and we got a bit of rain. But we mostly got  wind and an amazing lighting show in the distance. We were probably about 20 miles away from the storm itself, but the lightning show was like 4^th of July in DC when you are standing on a hill – you can see all the other regional fireworks shows in the distance, lighting up the night sky. I stood on the picnic table to get up higher and see the sky. Wow! The very cool moments were when lightning struck behind Devil’s Tower and lit it up from behind!  (Sorry, folks, I have no pictures of that. Some times life is better experienced without a camera in front of my nose!)