Black Hills

If you listen closely while viewing this page, you might hear Calamity Jane launching one of her alcohol-fueled, profanity-laced diatribes!

     Millions of years ago during the Laramide Orogeny, the same mountain-building event that raised the Rocky Mountains, Earth's tectonic forces uplifted a massive chunk of granite over a billion years old. As the granite rose, it pushed aside and mildly deformed the horizontal layers of sedimentary rock above it. Instead of massive faulting and folding as we find in today's Rockies, the Black Hills were uplifted relatively intact, formed from an oval block of Earth's crust (the granite and overlying sedimentary rock) about 125 miles long and 60 miles wide.

     Today, if you removed the forests and other visual obstructions to look directly at the rock from above (in top-down fashion), you would see what resembles a bullseye pattern of rock ages — a core (the "bullseye") of crystalline rocks (mostly granite and gneiss); a middle ring of very old sedimentary rocks like the Madison Limestone and Minnelusa Formation consisting of alternately layered limestones, sandstone, and shales; and an outer ring of younger sedimentary rocks, such as the Inyan Kara Group and Pierre Shale.     

     Originally horizontal sedimentary layers were pushed upward into a dome shape. The sedimentary layers bend upward. Then, erosion shaves off the top, exposing the oldest (deepest) layers at the center and leaving younger layers at the perimeter.

     In our top-down view, this produces a ringed pattern — a geological cross-section resembling a sliced onion or a gobstopper candy. The center shows the most ancient rock, and each ring out represents progressively younger formations.

     At their highest, the Black Hills may have been up to 15,000 feet in elevation, but over millions of years, erosion's never-ceasing efforts have worn them down. Today, the area's tallest peak is Black Elk Peak, formerly Harney Peak, at 7,242 feet. 

     I hold a special affection for the Black Hills since Deadwood was one of the primary stomping grounds for one of the Wild West's most tragic characters, Calamity Jane, born Martha Jane Canary. In 1903, she died in Terry, SD, and was buried less than 15 minutes away in Deadwood, next to Wild Bill Hickok. But that's another story.

BLACK HILLS CONNECTION TO THE WILD WEST — My affection for the Black Hills compels me to be more detailed here than I've been in relating other landforms' connections to the Wild West.
     The Black Hills were the backdrop for broken treaties, sacred traditions, gold fever, gunfights, and a town that would become shorthand for frontier lawlessness: Deadwood. 
     In 1874, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer and his troops entered the Black Hills, an area belonging to the Lakota Sioux per the terms of a recent treaty. Officially, the expedition was for mapping and reconnaissance, but Custer's men found something that would change everything: gold. The news spread like fire through dry grass, igniting what became known as the Black Hills Gold Rush.
     Despite explicit treaty protections, thousands of prospectors swarmed into the region. The U.S. government, unwilling or perhaps uninterested in stopping the influx, soon began pressuring the Lakota to sell the hills. The Lakota refused. The result was the outbreak of the Great Sioux War of 1876, culminating in Custer's death at the Battle of the Little Bighorn — a battle the Lakota and their allies won, though it did not halt the tide of settlers or soldiers.
     Amid this chaos, Deadwood was born. The illegal mining camp quickly grew into a raucous boomtown, attracting gamblers, prostitutes, outlaws, and law enforcement officers in equal measure.
     Wild Bill Hickok met his end here, shot from behind while playing poker at Saloon #10 in 1876. According to legend, the cards he held — aces and eights — became known as the "Dead Man's Hand."
     Calamity Jane, one of the West's most colorful and controversial figures, also made Deadwood her home and claimed a deep personal connection to Hickok. Whether she was his lover, wife, or simply a fabricator of their romance is still debated today.
     Law enforcement officers like Seth Bullock tried to bring order to Deadwood, but the town remained a stronghold of frontier chaos for years.

     Meanwhile, nearby Lead became the site of the Homestake Mine, which would become the largest and deepest gold mine in North America. It operated for more than a century, from 1876 until its closure in 2002, and its riches helped fuel the region's growth — even as its origins remained steeped in the violation of Native lands.
     To the Lakota Sioux, the Black Hills are not just a place of natural beauty — they are sacred. Known in their language as Paha Sapa, the hills are central to their spiritual and cultural identity. For generations, they have fought to reclaim this ancestral land.

     In 1980, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the government had illegally seized the Black Hills and awarded a monetary settlement. The Lakota rejected the money, insisting on the return of the land itself.
     Thus, the story of the Black Hills is more than one of gold and gunfights. It is a tale of geological grandeur, sacred tradition, and violent collisions between indigenous sovereignty and westward expansion. The Black Hills remain a place where the myths and contradictions of the Wild West still echo among the pines.