The Black Hills and the Badlands - Caves, Famous Faces and a Rodeo

South Dakota is a bit hard to get to, but there's a lot of stuff there. First off, the Black Hills Mining Museum in Lead, SD (Pronounced 'Leed', as in the direstion you lead off a mine shaft with), home of the Homestake Mine: The Homestake Mine started out as an open pit - The Big Cut: When that played out, they started digging and drilling:
The first ore was often pulled out by donkeys or mules, but then by 'donkey engines'
Our tour guide (her husband was a miner for several years) and one of the modern bits, which digs out a whole lot of rock at once. Important, since this particular rock is hard rock - silica schist.
Being a miner here wasn't bad - good wages and full medical benfits - which she and her husband still get.
The mine was discovered by a couple of brothers, who then sold out to George Hearst, father of William Randolph Hearst, who used the money fhe inherited or other purposes. The whole shebang was run extremely well. It was the first mine to be sold on Wall Street - capitalized at $10,000,000, in 1878. They started with the Big Cut, on the surface, then sunk shafts and deep-mined to 8000 feet (a mile and a half, straight down!) This is 2800 feet below sea level; the ambient temperature there is 132 degrees F. So they needed to be good technically; and they were.

Homestake is the oldest, biggest and deepest mine in the Western Hemisphere. It finally closed in 2002, and is now in line to host an important experimental setup on neutrinos.

A Shay LKocomotive Engine: Notice the cylinders. There are three of them; the pistons move vertically to drive a driveshaft, which in turn drives the wheels (every single one of them, not just the 4 or 6 big ones. The engine is articulated, so it can bend in the middle to go around sharp curves.
Deadwood, South Dakota. All the big guys used to meet here, including Teddy Roosevelt at times. Wild Bill Hickock was shot dead, in the back, while playing poker (the hand he is supposed to have held, aces and eights, is called the Dead Man's Hand).

Now, there is nothing here but several gambling casinos. Yes, Deadwood is dead. (Nothing all that romantic about the name, either; apparently when they were building the town - to house mine workers - there were a lot of dead trees around. The Gold Rush proper only lasted about 2 years - 1875-1877; by then all the good claims were taken.)

And then, the Famous Faces. Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln, sure; but why Teddy Roosevelt? Well, one poll of historians called him the best president of the 20th Century (personally, I agree); but mainly, he started the National Park System; and this is a National Park. OK?
A minor bonus, according to exhibits at the attached museum: They agonized a whole lot over which portrait of Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln to use. But with Teddy, all you need is the square jaw, the spectacles and the moustache, and you can't miss.



Lots of hoopla connected with it...

Also at night: Excellent presentation on the four presidents (Including a trivia quiz: Which president once sued a man for defamation, and collected 16 cents? Ans: Roosevelt; the defendant called him a drunkard); big flag ceremony, and then fireworks.
Then, on down the road, the statue of Chief Crazy Horse. He led the Indians at the Battle of the Little Bighorn; of course the Cavalry won in the end.

This statue is being done by a private foundation, which has refused to let the govt help - perhaps the Indians have had all the experience with Government ' help' that they care for. As a result, it's taking awhile; all that's done up to now is the face and this hole, which is under Crazy Horse's outstretched arm.

This is how the statue will look when it's done:

Crazy Horse is pointing to his ancestral lands (which, of course, the govt forced them off of, onto a reservation, so the White Man could mine gold there). He's saying "My country is where my dead lie buried."

This is considered the best likeness of Chief Crazy Horse, drawn from descriptions; there were no photographs, He was stabbed in the back by an American soldier in 1877, while under a flag of truce.
But this is the face that's on the statue - a little more statesmanlike. Note the cleft chin, the farseeing eyes-
Quite a museum connected with it.
Palefaces
Flags on some of the many Indian nations involved

The sculptor who started this was named Korczak Zialkowski; he was already fairly famous when he was recruited by Chief Henry Standing Bear of the Nez Perce. He and the Indians made quite a thing of it; all sorts of famous people visited the works. Several of them left rather elaborate gifts: A mirror once owned by Marie Antoinette:
A Fr3ench state coach
A table and wall hanging copied from Tut's tomb, which was ordered by King Farouk of Egypt before he was deposed.
Custer State Park (Well, Lt Col Custer did command near here for a while; he was killed over in Montana). They raise buffalo very seriously; at an annual auction the excess are sold ($1 million worth last year). A number of parks and zoos got their stock from here, as well as various purveyors of meat.

Buffalo is leaner and somewhat stronger-tasting than beef; and more expensive.

A donkey jam

Pronghorn antelope
Wind Cave: The ranger standing next to the origianl entrance. A local noticed wind coming out of theis hole in the ground, and investigated. You can't get very far in here; there are other entrances.

This is called Boxwork;
The little white knobs are Popcorn

This cave is huge - perhaps the second biggest in existence, after Mammoth Cave. When outside temperature is higher than indide, air blows into the cave, and when lower, it blows out. Based on measurements of the amount of air, they believe they may have only explored about 5% of the cave...
A visitor. Note the radio collar. They study everything here...
But everything. It turns out that there not being a whole lot of rain here, even a little bit of disturbance to the water table could affect the water flowing into and out of the cave. So they have a special system for flushing the toilets, which involves a lot of comnpressewd air (and electrical power) but very little water. When flushed, it soulds like a subway train.
Nearby, Jewel Cave, which may be the 4th biggest (3d is Optimisticeskaia Gypsum cave in Ukrainia). Flowstone:




Draperies

More flowstone. 81.3 miles of Jewel Cave have been explored; a 1960 air-exchange study indicates this may represent 1-2 % of the total!
Driving on thru the Black Hills: The Needles

The Needle's Eye

A fallen tree. Most treew out here seem to have very shllow roots. What rain falls needs to be taken up quick, before some other plant does, and the soil is often not very deep anyway. So very shallow root systems seem to be often the rule. It does cause problems in a strong windstorm:

The tunnel next to the Needles
On from the Black Hills, toward the Badlands. On the way, a Minuteman II base. We have decommissioned all of these, which only have one warhead. The Minuteman III, still in service, has ten, Multiple Independently Retargetable Vehicles (MIRV's).
Barb with the chair the launcher sits in. He has safety straps because the sahaking of the earth when the thing launches is enough to throw him out of his chair.
Wall, SD, home of the wWall Drug Store. In the 30's, they advertised Free Ice Water! which was a big deal in those pre-air-conditioned times. They also had signs all over a half-dozen states. It worked,\; the pkace is an institution.

It turned out that Wall was celebrating its 100th Anniversary, with among other thigns, a rodeo. Cattle, with brands:

Locals, or maybe contestants
Pretty girls with flags
Measuring something or other, very carefully.
Calf-roping: First you have to get the rope onto the calf:

Which this gent has done
And this one has not. You only get one shot; if you miss once, the calf is clear across the arena.

Then you jump down and hogtie him; a rope around both front and one hind leg.

Then you walk away; the rope has to stay tied for several seconds. Since speed counts, sometimes the guy ties the knot in such a hurry that it comes loose again.

About to open the gate for a buckin' bronco:

And there he is: Quite a ride. Interesting that while the rider has done this mahy times before, so has the horse-
About to come unstuck:
If a cowboy stays on the horse for the designated time - I believe it's eight seconds, which seems like a long time when you're watching - he gets rescued.
Bulldogging a steer - you ride alongside the steer, jump of your horse next to the steer, grab his long horns and try to twist his head so he ends up on the ground. Of course, the steer tries not to let this happen-

But more often than not, the cowboy wins.
Locals enjoying the spectactle, or just chatting.
There's more - bareback bullriding, for one - but it got too dark to take pictures.