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The Black Hills
The Black Hills are a small,
isolated mountain range rising from the Great Plains of North
America in western South Dakota and extending into Wyoming. Set off
from the main body of the Rocky Mountains, the region is something
of a geological anomaly—accurately described as an "island of trees
in a sea of grass." The Black Hills encompass the Black Hills
National Forest and are home to the tallest peaks of continental
North America east of the Rockies.
Native Americans have a long (but scantily documented) human history
in the Black Hills. When gold was discovered in 1874, a gold rush
swept the area prompting the US government to re-assign the local
Native Americans to other reservations in western South Dakota.
Unlike the rest of the Dakotas, the Black Hills were settled
primarily from population centers to the west and south of the
region, as miners flocked there from earlier gold boom locations in
Colorado and Montana.
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