Car Guy Magazine Car Guy Magazine issue 115 | Page 37

Without even saying what or where the Black Hills are, most readers will immediately
conjure up a mental picture of either Mount Rushmore, General George Armstrong
Custer, or native American Indians.
While tourists in campers and mini-vans are thinking of things to see, drivers in
machines of the soul are thinking about which roads to drive. Roads like The Needles
Highway, Iron Mountain Road, Horse Thief Lake Road or Spearfish Canyon Scenic
Byway. Packed into the 350 square miles or so of the Black Hills are roads that make
ordinary driving a sightseeing adventure.
With so much variation in geography, one can experience the thrill of the curves
and the twists through rugged hills and mountains or the relaxing long sweepers
which traverse beautiful green meadows populated by hundreds of wandering bison
and sedentary prairie dogs.
As you negotiate these black ribbons to adventure, you will see rock formations
influenced by Mother Nature—the Needles—and rock formations influenced by
man—Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse. All will make you want to stop and just
look. A real long look, because your brain will not believe the images your eyeballs are
sending. How can sculptures the size of mountains be translated from electrical impulses to real
perceptions? Have you heard of visual overload?
While the man-made alterations to the granite mountains only go back about eighty years,
the history of the Black Hills and their meaning
to the American Indian goes back a little further.
White man entered the picture around
1833, when rumors of gold spread across the nation. After much fighting and turmoil, the Black
Hills were closed to white men, and the territory
was given to the Sioux as sacred ground.
Then in 1873, Lieutenant Colonel Armstrong Custer was sent into the hills to find a suitable area to build a fort. In Custer’s
band of merry men, which included 951 soldiers, three Gatling guns, 110 wagons,
1,900 horses and mules, sixty-one Indian scouts and a sixteen-man marching band,
were the two most important members of this miles-long expedition. These two men
were experienced prospectors, who promptly informed Custer that there was gold in
them there hills—gold in paying quantities.
Even in days before the internet and mass communication, it did not take long
for news to spread and gold fever infected thousands of ragtag fortune seekers, dreamers and schemers, all of whom then invaded South Dakota as quickly as they could
obtain picks, shovels, wagons and fast horses. There was a fortune to be had just laying about on the ground “like so much old iron” and there wasn’t a minute to spare.
After refusing an offer of six million dollars for this ancestral holy land, the
Indians had to surrender the hills for nothing in the fall of 1876 in order to get their
rightful allotment of winter provisions. Years before in the east, the Indians at least
got paid $24 for giving up an island. But after the Battle of Little Big Horn in June of
1876, the white man wasn’t feeling too sympathetic. With the Indians gone, and the

influx of thousands of people, towns sprouted up all through the Black
Hills. Towns like Deadwood, Rapid City, Keystone and Lead.
Lead (pronounced LEED) is not only the site of the Homestake
Gold Mine, which was the oldest continuously operating underground
gold mine in the Western Hemisphere until it closed in 2001, but is
also the town where First Sergeant Charles Windolph lived. In 1946,
Medal of Honor recipient and last survivor of the Battle of the Little Big
Horn Windolph related his experiences about the battle in the book,
“I Fought with Custer.” His assessment of the battle was, “There were
simply too many Indians for him that June afternoon…”
These boomtowns had stories to tell and had people to listen, especially when it involved gold. Deadwood, the capital of Black Hills
gold, was home to $100,000 a day banking transactions and $3.75 a
gallon kerosene.
People traveled between these boisterous towns and dens of iniquity on roads that remain to this day. New ones have been added
as scenic byways were laboriously
constructed so travelers could see
the unimaginable wonders of this
wilderness, and curiously seek the
mountain that was going to be
used as the substrate for the sculptor who carved Stone Mountain.
The main artery through the
Black Hills is highway 385, which
runs from Hot Springs in the
southern part of the Hills to Lead
and Deadwood in the north. This
road is a beautiful sightseeing type
road. No real challenging twists and turns, just wonderful things to see
and marvel at. Aside from the bison, forests, meadows and lakes, which
are Disneyland-like, you will pass Crazy Horse Memorial north of