THE SOUTHERN COASTLANDS; ON THE SUBTROPICAL MARGINS, Chapter 10

South Dakota is not southern except for being south of North Dakota. It is completely landlocked and has no coastlands, and would more accurately be labeled sub-arctic rather than sub-tropical. People leave the frigid South Dakota winters to retire in Florida. Despite these huge differences, South Dakota and the Southern Coastlands have one thing in common - hazardous weather systems.

Blizzards are to the Great Plains what hurricanes are to the Southern Coastlands.

In the text and lecture, we learned about the devastating 2005 Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Katrina was the costliest and one of the five deadliest hurricanes in United States' history, and Rita was the fourth-most intense Atlantic hurricane ever recorded. Nearly 1900 people died in Katrina and 120 died in Rita, some from indirect effects such as evacuations, storm surge flooding, drowning in off-shore rip currents, and injuries from fallen trees. The lecture states that the one-two punch of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita caused 20 feet and above storm surges. With the failure of New Orleans' levees, Katrina left behind 22 million tons of debris, amounting to 25 times the ruins left in the World Trade Center attack.

Devastation from Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, 2005

Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, 2005

South Dakota is sometimes called the Blizzard State, and has recorded temperatures as low as 58 degrees Fahrenheit below zero. Blizzards are defined as violent, blinding snowstorms with very strong winds, extreme cold, and great amounts of snow, most of which is fine, dry snow picked up from the ground. The National Weather Service definition for a blizzard requires a wind speed greater than 32 miles per hour, temperature less than 20 degrees Fahrenheit, and visibility not greater than 500 feet. A blizzard is classified as severe when winds exceed 45 miles per hour, temperature is less than 10 degrees Fahrenheit, and visibility is less than 100 feet.

Train stuck in snowdrift near

DeSmet, South Dakota, 1880s

The text states that "blizzards begin in winter when a very cold, polar air mass pushes south along the Rocky Mountains to meet moisture from a Pacific storm that has moved inland. High winds, intense cold, and considerable amounts of snow are typical of Plains blizzards." (p.239)

A dangerous type of blizzard is a whiteout. In whiteout conditions, downdrafts and snowfall are so thick it is difficult to distinguish the sky from the ground. People caught in whiteouts lose their sense of direction quickly, and pilots in the air are endangered because they cannot tell how close to the ground they are.

The Weather Service writes, "Blizzards are dangerous storms, possibly second only to tornadoes and hurricanes, and they demand the respect of all who must deal with them. Blizzards occasionally strike suddenly, filling a previously calm air with snow driven by strong winds which reduce visibility from miles to feet in minutes.

It was this feature of blizzards that brought terror to the pioneers and thereby furnished credence to the Dakota blizzard legends. The pioneers feared blizzards because they would strike without a hint of warning, frequently on a mild day, catching them miles from home or shelter on the open prairie. In nearly an instant after a blizzard struck, all vestiges of landmarks needed to guide them home would disappear, and death by freezing was the all-too-often result in those early days." The prairie was so vast, a homesteader disoriented in a blizzard might miss his house by a few feet and wander beyond it to the open prairie, where he would soon die without shelter or warmth.

"Now, the advance warning of impending blizzards given by the National Weather Service has greatly lessened the chances of being surprised by a blizzard, or even being stranded in one. Nearly all North and South Dakotans, while respectful of the consequences, now think of blizzards more as minor and temporary inconveniences to their normal lifestyle than as potential killers to be feared."

Man trying to walk during Great Blizzard, East Coast, 1888

But killers they were. In the winter of 1888, just months before the Great Blizzard ravaged the Northeastern United States, killing 400 people and sinking 200 ships, a succession of blizzards terrorized the Great Plains. One of them, named the Schoolchildren's Blizzard, caught people on the prairie off guard because of the unusually balmy January weather that preceded it. For nearly a week the Plains suffered from brutally cold temperatures, but on January 11-12, a warm, moist front of air from the Gulf of Mexico produced a brief time of spring-like weather. People were out of their homes doing chores, getting supplies in town, walking to school, and just enjoying the warm weather when the blizzard struck. An advancing Arctic cold front colliding with the warm Gulf front caused a rapid drop in temperatures from above freezing to 20, and in some places, 40 degrees below zero. Accompanied by high winds and heavy snow, the fast-moving storm originated in Montana in the early morning hours of January 12th, swept across Dakota territory throughout the late morning and into the early afternoon, and reached the town of Lincoln, Nebraska by 3 p.m. the same day. Thousands of people, including many children on their way home from school, were caught in the blizzard.

The Schoolchildren's Blizzard, Great Plains, 1888

illustrated by Dick Taylor, 1974

Five years after the event, the Encyclopedia Brittanica of 1893 recorded,

"In one blizzard which visited Dakota and the states of Montana, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Texas in January, 1888, the mercury fell within twenty-four hours from 74 degrees above zero to 28 degrees below it in some places, and in Dakota went down to 40 degrees below zero. In fine clear weather, with little or no warning, the sky darkened and the air was filled with snow, or ice-dust, as fine as flour, driven before a wind so furious and roaring that men's voices were inaudible at a distance of six feet. Men in the fields and children on their way from school died ere they could reach shelter; some of them having been not frozen, but suffocated from the impossibility of breathing the blizzard. Some 235 persons lost their lives. This was the worst storm since 1864; the Colorado River in Texas was frozen with ice a foot thick, for the first time in the memory of man."

The Schoolchildren's Blizzard, Great Plains, 1888

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurrican Katrina
http://en.wikipedia.org/wikiHurrican Rita
http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blizzard
http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/resource/habitat/climate/blizzard.htm
http://islandnet.com/~see/weather/events/childrensblizzard
http://www.wintercenter.homestead.comphotosblizzard.html
http://www.weather.com/blog/weather/archive/200610
http://56755blogspot.com/2009/09/reader-memories
Regional Landscapes of the United States and Canada, 2009
Laskin, David: The Children's Blizzard, 2005, Harper Perennial
The Encyclopedia Britannica, 1893

THE CHANGING SOUTH, Chapter 9

In Chapter 9, The Changing South, the author describes Southern post-Civil War years as ones in which "an institutionalized alternative to slavery suffused Southern life; segregation laws began to be passed. These Jim Crow laws were justified because whites presumed themselves superior to blacks and used the force of law to institutionalize this belief." (p.170)

During this same time period, widespread discrimination existed on the Dakota Plains, perpetuated by the white settlers against the Native Americans. In describing this cultural imperialism, James T. Carroll of the U.S. Catholic Historian writes, "The Spanish, French, and English all carried similar attitudes about the 'savagery' and 'barbarism' of the indigenous peoples and believed the twin engines of Christianity and education would produce a people more palatable to European sensibilities." When they didn't, when the Native Americans rejected the white man's religion, a rationalization of racism began to permeate the national thought. The Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Francis Walker, wrote in 1871, "When dealing with savage men, as with savage beasts, no question of national honor can arise. Whatever action the United States cared to take is solely a question of expediency." Others like William Simms seemed to show remorse, saying, "Our blinding prejudices...have been fostered as necessary to justify the reckless and unsparing hand with which we have smitten American Indians in their habitations and expelled them from their country." James Loewen, author of Lies My Teacher Told Me, comments, "Instead of spreading democracy, we exported the ideology of white supremacy."

After the Homestead Act of 1862 was enacted, giving 160 acres to settlers who farmed and lived on the land for five years, white American expansion clashed violently with Native Americans attempting to preserve their lands, sovereignty, and way of life. Indian wars and skirmishes were frequent on the American frontier throughout the 1860s and 1870s. Congress met in 1865 to study the Indian uprisings and wars, initiating a series of treaties that would force the Indians to give up their lands and move onto reservations further west.

The 1868 treaty with the Sioux at Fort Laramie, in present-day Wyoming, excluded non-Indians and gave the Black Hills of South Dakota, or Paha Sapa, to the Sioux in an attempt to bring peace between the whites and the Sioux. The United States recognized the Black Hills as part of the great Sioux Reservation, set aside exclusively for use by the Sioux people.

Buffalo at Wind Cave, Black Hills, South Dakota

The Black Hills were sacred hunting grounds to the Sioux. In violation of the treaty and Federal law, in 1874, General George Armstrong Custer and a group of miners led an expedition into the Black Hills in search of gold. Once gold was found, miners began moving onto what the treaty delineated as Sioux hunting grounds. These prospectors wanted protection from the U.S. Army. Before long, the Army was defending trespassing whites against Sioux hunting on the range, enjoying the rights the treaty guaranteed.

George Armstrong Custer, Westpoint

General George A. Custer, Dakota Territory

Two years later, in 1876, Custer and an army detachment encountered the Sioux and Cheyenne at the Little Bighorn River. In this battle, inspired by Sioux warrior Sitting Bull and led by Crazy Horse, the Indians surrounded Custer's troops and annihilated them within an hour. After the fighting ended, women went to the battlefield. Evan Connell gives one woman's account in Son of the Morning Star, writing, "Two women punctured Custer's eardrums with a sewing awl. They did this to improve his hearing because he had not been able to hear what he was told in Oklahoma seven years before. When he smoked a pipe with Medicine Arrow and Little Robe they told him that if he broke his promise and again made war on the Cheyennes he would be killed." The woman said, "Many times I have thought of the handsome man I saw in the South. And I have often wondered if, when I was riding among the dead where he was lying, my pony may have kicked dirt upon his body." (Connell, p.422)

Battle of Little Bighorn

Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument

The U.S. Army continued to battle the Sioux in the South Dakota Black Hills until finally, in 1877, the U. S. government confiscated the land. United States citizens began to settle there.

One hundred years later, in 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court awarded the Sioux 106 million dollars for the broken treaty and the loss of the Black Hills. The Fort Laramie Treaty had stipulated that no changes could be made to the treaty without the written approval of 75% of the adult Sioux men. Only 10% of Sioux had signed the 1876 agreement relinquishing the Black Hills. The Supreme Court concluded that because the U.S. wanted the Black Hills to be mined for gold, it had attempted to starve the Sioux tribe and then forced a small number of them to sign the agreement. In its ruling, the court said, "A more ripe and rank case of dishonorable dealings will never, in all probability, be found in our history." The Sioux refused the money, saying, "The Black Hills are not for sale." To this day, they continue to fight for the return of their land.

Carroll, James T., U.S. Catholic Historian, "Project Muse - The Smell of the White Man"
Connell, Evan, Son of the Morning Star, North Point Press, San Francisco, 1984
www.americaslibrary.gov
www.commonswikimedia.org
www.britannica.com
www.legendsofamerica.com
www.gettyimages.com

APPALACHIA AND THE OZARKS, Chapter 8

Chapter 8, Appalachia and the Ozarks, states that during the Civil War, "People in the mountain areas saw little reason to join their states in secession. The plantation economy and its way of life were foreign to those in the mountains. Opposition to secession was strong and widespread throughout the Appalachian South." (p.154)

Out of the 44 states and territories belonging to the United States in 1861, Dakota Territory provided 206 boys or men who served on both sides, Union and Confederate. The 206 men comprised 8% of the area's population, giving Dakota Territory an overall participation rank of 43rd out of 44.

In 1861 the War Department ordered the forming of the 1st Dakota Cavalry, a Union battalion of two companies raised in the Dakota Territory. They were used for service along the frontier, primarily to protect the settlers during the August, 1862, Sioux Uprising. Company A was stationed at Fort Randall, Yankton,Vermillion, Sioux Falls, and Brule Creek.They served as bodyguards for the settlers as they moved to stockades for protection. Governor William Jayne called for "every able-bodied man to arms in defense of the homes of Dakota." Three hundred, ninety-nine men responded. Company B, formed in 1863, became known as the Dakota Rangers. Both companies protected the Dakota frontier towns, and both were split into detachments, allowing them to spread to several settlements. Soldiers under General Henry Sibley and Alfred Sully sought out hostile Indians throughout the territory.


Regional Landscapes of the United States and Canada, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2009

THE BYPASSED EAST, Chapter 7

Chapter 7, The Bypassed East, gives an account detailing how the British decimated the lush white pine forests of New England to build their navy and merchant marine fleets. The text states, "Almost all of New England's virgin forests are now gone. Northern New England offers a prime example of uncontrolled logging's destructive potential." (p.135,139)

Though there are few trees on the northern plains and prairies of South Dakota, there was a plentiful animal resource reduced almost to extinction during the post-Civil War years - the American buffalo. The buffalo numbered 7.5 million at one time and by the late 1800s were as few as 540. George Catlin, an artist who traveled in the West and painted scenes of buffalo herds, described the sound of a stampeding herd as "thunder on the Plains." By 1900, there were only 30 - 40 buffalo remaining.

A Buffalo Wallow, George Catlin, 1861/1869

For centuries, "Hunting for buffalo was the primary economic activity" among Plains Indians. (p.139) Not wasting any of the animal, they used the buffalo for at least 50 different things, including food, clothing, teepees, water cups and spoons, and fishing line. Because their only domesticated animals were sled dogs, they were limited in their pursuit of buffalo herds until after the European/Spanish explorers left horses behind on the Southern Plains in the 16th century.

The first threat to the buffalo herds occurred after the Indians began hunting them on horseback, rather than following the roaming herds on foot. The second threat, which nearly led to the buffalo's extinction, began when American settlers slaughtered the buffalo for sport and to deprive the Native Americans of their primary food source.

Buffalo being slaughtered by hunters on trains, 1870

In 1883, Teddy Roosevelt, son of a wealthy New York City family, traveled west on the Northern Pacific Railroad to the Badlands in Dakota Territory. "He hired a local guide, rode for days on horseback to find a single buffalo, kill it, remove its head for shipment back to New York to be mounted on his wall."(p.63 Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns)

Theodore Roosevelt, Badlands of North Dakota, 1883

Roosevelt wrote, "The very toil I had been obliged to go through made me feel all the prouder of it when it was at last in my possession. I felt the most exulting pride as I handled and examined him; for I have procured a trophy such as can fall henceforth to few hunters indeed."

Roosevelt, later the 26th President of the United States from 1901 to 1909, described his first trip west to Dakota Territory as a turning point for him. He returned to the West numerous times over the next several years, exploring ranchlands, hunting in the mountains, pursuing, as he wrote, "the strenuous life,...becoming at heart as much a Westerner as I am an Easterner."

Roosevelt never stopped hunting, but his trips instilled in him an imperative to protect the open spaces as national parks and forests. His legacy, writes Ken Burns, "was rescuing large portions of America from destruction."

www.nps.gov
www.museumgreatplains.org/lawtoncentennial/returnofthebuffalo
Burns, Ken and Dayton, Duncan, National Parks, America's Best Idea - An Illustrated Journey, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2009
Regional Landscapes of the United States and Canada, John Wiley and Sons, 2009.

THE NORTH AMERICAN MANUFACTURING CORE, Chapter 5

South Dakota differs from the manufacturing core because it is primarily an agricultural region. In the United States, it is the second-leading producer of sunflowers, third in oats and millet production, fourth in rye and flaxseed, and fifth in alfalfa hay. South Dakota also is a primary supplier of wheat, corn, and cattle.

Manufacturing and service industries are beginning to play an increasing role in the state's economy. Computers and machinery are manufactured in South Dakota, and meatpacking and food processing are important industries.

Farming began declining in the 1980s, but as of 2007 ten percent of the people in Sioux Falls worked at call centers, answering phone calls from customers around the country. Citicorp, HSBC, and other financial institutions had call centers in Sioux Falls, but in recent years these companies have outsourced to foreign markets, primarily India. "India is our fastest growing market in the world," a top HSBC official reported. "We achieved 64 percent growth in the past fiscal year."

Call Center

MEGALOPOLIS, Chapter 4

Regarding population, there is no comparison between South Dakota and Megalopolis - they are opposites. The population of Megalopolis's combined cities is in the teen millions. The entire state of South Dakota's population is 804,194. In 2000, population density in New York City, the most compacted urban area of Megalopolis. was 26,404 people per square mile. South Dakota's average population density is 5 people per square mile, with many counties less than five.

South Dakota is known for its small towns. Its largest city, situated east of the Missouri River, is Sioux Falls, with 136,696 residents. Rapid City, in the west, has 61,000 residents. The remainder of South Dakota's towns are much smaller. The 2000 census was the first one in which more people in South Dakota lived in urban areas rather than rural areas. The population distribution in 2008 was 86.1% Caucasian, 8.5% American Indian and Alaska Native, 2.6% Hispanic or Latino, 1.1% African American, and less than 0.7% Asian.

There is one week each year when a South Dakota city resembles a mini-Megalopolis - during the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. Held the first full week of August every year since 1938 (with exceptions during World War II), it was founded by the Jackpine Gypsies Motorcycle Club, who still own and operate the tracks, hillclimb, and field areas. Each year the Sturgis crowd honors the founder of the rally, Clarence "Pappy" Hoel. The main focus of the Sturgis Rally is racing and stunts, though there are also concerts, beauty contests, vendors, etc. The population of Sturgis is 5,990, but during the Rally week it swells to half a million. Attendance rivals the entire population of the state. In 2007, 507,234 people attended the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.

Sturgis Motorcycle Rally

FOUNDATIONS OF HUMAN ACTIVITY, Chapter 3

South Dakota's first inhabitants were the Paleo-Indians, descendants of the people who crossed the Bering Strait from Russia into Alaska. They were hunters who lived off buffalo, elk, and other large mammals. As climatic conditions grew drier, they began hunting smaller animals, fishing, and eating berries.

Following the Paleo were the Plains Villagers, who gardened and hunted. They raised corn and hunted bison, living in large towns in earthen homes with mud walls. A one-thousand year old site exists today near Mitchell, South Dakota. As many as one thousand people may have lived together there, probably to protect themselves from outside invaders.

In A.D. 500, a group called the Mound Builders lived along the Big Sioux River in the northeastern part of the state. Their name represents the large earthen mounds they used to bury people that died.

From the Plains Villagers, tribes including the Arikara, Cheyenne, Crow, and Pawnee descended. In the 1700s, the Sioux, forced from Minnesota's forests by the armed Chippewa, who had traded with the French for guns, began moving onto the Plains. The Sioux split into subgroups as they spread across the Plains. The Dakota were those who stayed in southwestern Minnesota. In eastern South Dakota, the tribe was called the Nakota. Native Americans that moved west of the Missouri River called themselves the Lakota.

Sioux Indians, Dakota Territory, 1865

The Sioux acquired horses on the Plains that had been left behind in the 1600s by the Spanish explorers. They hunted buffalo on horseback, using every piece of the buffalo to supply their daily needs. The hides were used for teepees and clothing, bones were used as utensils and tools, sinew was made into thread, and of course, the meat was used for food. The Sioux flourished on the Dakota Plains, and were known as excellent horsemen, hunters, and warriors.

Lewis, Clark, and Sacagawea, early 1800s

Lewis and Clark passed through the Dakotas in 1804, and for the most part, their encounters with the Sioux were friendly. After the passage of the Homestead Act in 1862, white settlers began moving west onto the Prairies and Great Plains. As they moved into the territory, skirmishes between the Indians and whites became more frequent. The Sioux dominated huge areas of land for their buffalo hunts. Many settlers coexisted with them, but others began to kill the buffalo, in the hopes that, without their primary food source, the Indians would be forced to move to the reservations to avoid starvation.

Nasset Homestead, Dakota Territory, 1865

www.ushistoryimages.comimages/sioux-indians/
www.blogs.ancestriy.com/circle/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/Bev

THE PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT, Chapter 2

Southern East River - low prairies, excellent farmland, population hubs

Prairie Grass, South Dakota

Northern East River - more noticeable rolling prairies with lakes and small ponds; prairie potholes which are important to the state's animals

Southern West River - land too dry for crops to grow, scrub grass that cattle and sheep graze on, fewer ponds, steeper hills that are closer together

Northern West River - flatter land except for many huge buttes, or isolated hills with steep sides and flat tops that can rise as high as 600 feet

Bear Butte, South Dakota

Southwestern corner of state:

Badlands - A badland is any area where water erosion has worn away soft rock and left narrow canyons and drainage creeks that are dry most of the year. The Badlands of South Dakota are unique and beautiful because the minerals in the soil have left different-colored stripes.

Badlands National Park

Badlands National Park

Black Hills - Eroded domes that were named "Hills of Black" by the Lakota Sioux. From a distance, they appear black because they are covered with dark pines. Harney Peak, at 7242 feet, is the highest spot in South Dakota, and the highest peak in the United States east of the Rocky Mountains. The Black Hills, formed when molten rock from the earth's interior forced its way upward through a limestone layer, are known for their granite peaks and deep canyons. When the limestone cracked, water ran through the cracks and the rock was gradually worn away, creating the vast cave mazes in the hills.

Black Hills of South Dakota

Wind Cave - Wind Cave National Park, in the Black Hills, is the most famous of the caves, known for its delicate formations such as popcorn, boxwork, and frostwork. Boxwork, a paper-thin formation that resembles honeycomb, is found in only one other cave in the world. Frostwork looks like a small bush covered with frost, and popcorn looks like popcorn that you eat.

Formations in Wind Cave, Black Hills

www.coyotescall.wordpress.com/
www.sojournersguide.comwww.eqtravelphotography.com/badlands-scenic
www.lasplash.com/publish/Domestic_150/South Dakota
www.pro.corbis.com
222.igougo.com/journal-j23998-Badlands_Nation

REGIONS AND THEMES, Chapter 1

South Dakota, situated in the north-central United States, part of the Great Plains and Prairies region, is the nation's fifth smallest state by population. The Missouri River splits the state in half - each half is known as West River and East River. The land east of the Missouri has a larger population than the west part of the state, is better for farming, and has the flat, seemingly endless prairies made popular in the Little House on the Prairie books and television series. West of the river is drier land more suited to grazing and ranching than farming, with steeper hills closer together than those east of the Missouri River. The southwestern region of the state has a varied geography in the Black Hills and Badlands, and the northwestern part of South Dakota has buttes, which are isolated mountains or hills with steep sides and flat tops.

Chapter 1 of the text lists the average population density of the United States as 77 persons per square mile. With the exception of the Black Hills, South Dakota's population density west of the Missouri River is about 5 people per square mile. In the state's northwestern corner, Harding County has less than one person per square mile. "In the nineteenth century, when white settlers were still spreading over the continent, the definition of frontier was 'having fewer than two people per square mile. As of 2007, eleven of South Dakota's sixty-six counties still fit that description.' " (Celebrate the States, p.12)

www.myonlinemaps.com/south-dakota.php
McDaniel, Melissa, Celebrate the States-South Dakota, Marshall Cavendish Corporation, 2007.

SOUTH DAKOTA ROAD TRIP

In August, 2008, I drove from Los Angeles north through Utah to Highway 80 and across to Missouri. Without planning, I discovered what Chapter 2 describes as the Wyoming Basin -
"Complex geographically, it serves as a western peninsula of the Great Plains and has allowed millions of east-west travelers to circumvent the Rockies' more rugged stretches." (p.23) Having driven Interstate 70 through the Colorado Rockies the year before, I was well aware of my Scion's 1.4-liter engine's limitations. Interstate 80 across southern Wyoming seemed flat, and, just as the book described, "Travelers are unaware of the high elevations through which they are passing." (p.23) At the time, all I knew was that I didn't have to drive in the far right lane.

Returning home, we drove north to Interstate 90 and traveled across Iowa, South Dakota, and Wyoming, then down the I-15 through Utah to California. It was the summer before the 2008 election, and it was fun to see which candidates' signs dominated different regions. Gas was over $4 a gallon when I left, and after traveling much of what I now know to be the Empty Interior and Great Plains and Prairies, it seemed to me there was abundant open space to develop energy alternatives. The sun blared non-stop in the deserts and the prairie winds acted as a natural air-conditioner. How about solar panels across the Southwest and windmills from the Dakotas to Texas?

My mom read the Little House on the Prairie books to me when I was little. I remember thinking Ma Ingalls was dumb because she insisted on settling in South Dakota "so her daughters could be near civilization" rather than continuing on to Oregon, as Pa and Laura wanted. I loved Oregon, and never had any desire to visit South Dakota. In fact, I had met only one person from South Dakota in my life.

I was pleasantly surprised. We saw rainbows stretching across the prairie on a scale of vastness I could never have imagined. The Badlands' haunting winds and eery land formations evoked images of terrified Indians trying to outmaneuver the U.S. Army just before Wounded Knee. In Custer National Park, we had to wait almost an hour for a small herd of buffalo to cross the Wildlife Loop Drive. A guy on a Harley (our timing was great-we were in the Black Hills the same weekend as the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally) tried to drive through the middle of the herd, only to have a large bull chase him for a distance. Mount Rushmore inspired patriotism, until, with a little research, I realized they began carving up the sacred hunting and burial grounds of the Black Hills just fifty years after displacing the Sioux. And the Crazy Horse monument, still unfinished, is immense. What is it with South Dakotans carving human faces into their mountains? They are beautiful sculptures, but it almost seems to violate some ancient code about graven images. What if El Capitan was John Muir's face? We'd have the Nixons, Reagans, Clintons, and Bushes searching for mountains like they hunt out locations for their presidential libraries.

Regional Landscapes of the United States and Canada, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2009.