South Dakota

South Dakota has more miles of freshwater shoreline than Florida has ocean coastline. Four dams built along the Missouri River between the 1940s and 1960s created massive reservoirs that gave this landlocked prairie state over 1,900 miles of beaches, bays, and waterfront. Lake Oahe alone stretches 231 miles.

The Badlands hold one of the richest fossil beds on Earth. Scientists have pulled three-toed horses, saber-toothed cats, and dog-sized camels from rocks 35 million years old. One of the most complete T. rex skeletons ever found was dug up near the tiny town of Faith.

The Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota peoples lived here for generations and considered the Black Hills sacred. In 1868, the Fort Laramie Treaty promised the Black Hills to the Lakota forever. "Forever" lasted six years.

In 1874, General Custer led an expedition into the hills and found gold. Thousands of miners flooded in, and the government seized the land. The Lakota resisted, but on December 29, 1890, U.S. soldiers killed as many as 300 Lakota men, women, and children at Wounded Knee Creek.

In 1980, the Supreme Court ruled the government had taken the Black Hills illegally and awarded over $100 million. The Lakota refused the money. They want the land back, and that fund has grown past $1 billion, still untouched.

The mountain the Lakota called Six Grandfathers now holds the carved faces of four presidents on Mount Rushmore. Seventeen miles away, the Crazy Horse Memorial has been under construction since 1948, honoring the Oglala Lakota warrior.

Walk the fossil trails at Badlands National Park, see real mammoth bones still in the ground at the Mammoth Site in Hot Springs, and explore Deadwood, where Wild Bill Hickok was shot dead playing poker in 1876. Custer State Park has roaming buffalo herds, and Wall Drug still offers free ice water to every traveler who walks through the door.