Rapid City History
Stories from the Gateway to the Black Hills, researched and written by Christopher Gentry, a Rapid City historian. From the 1876 gold-rush founding to the 1972 flood, the City of Presidents, and the sacred Black Hills, this is the history of Rapid City, South Dakota.
Latest from the blog
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The Founding of Rapid City in 1876: From "Hay Camp" to the Gateway of the Black Hills
How a frontier supply town on the banks of Rapid Creek grew out of the 1876 Black Hills Gold Rush to become Rapid City, South Dakota, the Gateway to the Black Hills.
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He Sapa: The Lakota and the Black Hills Before Rapid City
Long before Rapid City was founded, the Black Hills (He Sapa, or Pahá Sápa) were and remain sacred to the Lakota people. The deeper history of the land that became Rapid City, South Dakota.
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The 1972 Black Hills Flood: Rapid City's Most Devastating Day
On June 9, 1972, a catastrophic flash flood tore through Rapid City, South Dakota, killing 238 people. Here is the story of the disaster and how it permanently reshaped the city along Rapid Creek.
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Carving Mount Rushmore: How the Black Hills Memorial Was Built (1927-1941)
The story of how Mount Rushmore was carved into the Black Hills near Rapid City between 1927 and 1941, from Doane Robinson's tourism idea to Gutzon Borglum's dynamite, drills, and four 60-foot presidents.
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The City of Presidents: How Rapid City Lined Its Streets with Bronze
Since 2000, life-size bronze statues of American presidents have stood on the downtown street corners of Rapid City, South Dakota. The story behind the City of Presidents and why it fits a city in the shadow of Mount Rushmore.
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Dinosaur Park: Rapid City's WPA-Era Roadside Landmark on Skyline Drive
High above Rapid City, South Dakota, seven giant green dinosaurs have watched over the Black Hills since 1936. The story of Dinosaur Park, a Depression-era WPA project that became a beloved roadside attraction.
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Ellsworth Air Force Base and Rapid City's Wartime Transformation
How a World War II training field east of Rapid City, South Dakota, grew into Ellsworth Air Force Base and reshaped the economy and identity of the Gateway to the Black Hills.
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The Hotel Alex Johnson: Rapid City's Grand Downtown Landmark Since 1928
The Hotel Alex Johnson has anchored downtown Rapid City, South Dakota since 1928, a railroad executive's dream blending Tudor and Lakota design, host to presidents, and home to the city's most famous ghost story.
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The Stratobowl: How Rapid City Launched Humans to the Edge of Space
In 1935, a giant balloon rose from a sheltered valley near Rapid City, South Dakota and carried two men higher than anyone had ever flown. The story of the Stratobowl and the record-setting Explorer II stratosphere flight.
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Chapel in the Hills: Rapid City's Norwegian Stave Church
On the western edge of Rapid City, South Dakota stands an exact replica of a 12th-century Norwegian stave church. The story of Chapel in the Hills, built in 1969 as the home of a national radio ministry.
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The Custer Expedition of 1874 and the Discovery of Black Hills Gold
How Custer's 1874 expedition into the Black Hills confirmed gold and set off a rush that reshaped the region around Rapid City and the Lakota.
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Hay Camp: The Rough Founding of Rapid City
The 1876 settlement first called Hay Camp was founded by men shut out of the Black Hills diggings who bet on a supply town near Rapid Creek instead.
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How Rapid City Became the Pennington County Seat
Early county organization in Dakota Territory and how Rapid City secured its place as the seat of Pennington County in the Black Hills.
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The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 and the Great Sioux Reservation
The 1868 treaty recognized the Black Hills as part of the Great Sioux Reservation set aside for the Lakota, a promise central to Rapid City's history.
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The Act of 1877: How the United States Took the Black Hills
The 1877 act of Congress that seized the Black Hills from the Lakota, the broken 1868 treaty behind it, and what it meant for Rapid City.
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United States v. Sioux Nation and the Black Hills Claim
The 1980 Supreme Court ruling on the taking of the Black Hills near Rapid City, and the compensation the Lakota have refused to accept.
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The Great Sioux War of 1876
The 1876 campaigns and battles, including the Little Bighorn, that followed the invasion of the Black Hills near Rapid City.
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The Thoen Stone and the Legend of the 1834 Gold Seekers
The inscribed sandstone slab found near Spearfish that hints at Black Hills gold seekers decades before Custer reached the region near Rapid City.
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Stagecoaches Between Rapid City and the Deadwood Diggings
The freight and passenger lines that linked Rapid City to the Deadwood gold camps in the Black Hills before the railroad arrived.
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The Railroad Reaches Rapid City
How the arrival of the railroad in the mid-1880s remade the economy of Rapid City and tied the Black Hills to national markets.
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The Crouch Line: The Crooked Little Railroad Up Rapid Canyon
The scenic, winding short line that climbed Rapid Canyon from Rapid City toward Mystic and the interior Black Hills.
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Doane Robinson and the Idea That Became Mount Rushmore
The South Dakota state historian whose 1923 tourism idea set the carving of Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills near Rapid City in motion.
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Gutzon Borglum: The Sculptor of Mount Rushmore
How the restless sculptor Gutzon Borglum chose a Black Hills cliff near Rapid City and four presidents for the carving that became Mount Rushmore.
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The Workers Who Carved Mount Rushmore
The drillers, powdermen, and call boys who did the dangerous labor on the Black Hills cliff that became Mount Rushmore, near Rapid City.
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The Hall of Records: Mount Rushmore's Unfinished Vault
Gutzon Borglum's planned chamber behind the Mount Rushmore faces, meant to hold the nation's founding documents, near Rapid City in the Black Hills.
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Why Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Roosevelt?
The reasoning behind the four faces on Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills near Rapid City, and the eras of American life each president was chosen to mark.
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Lincoln Borglum and the Completion of Mount Rushmore
After Gutzon Borglum's death in 1941, his son Lincoln finished the carving of Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills near Rapid City.
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Korczak Ziolkowski and the Crazy Horse Memorial
The self-taught sculptor who began blasting a Black Hills mountain in 1948 to carve the Crazy Horse Memorial, southwest of Rapid City.
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Henry Standing Bear's Vision for the Crazy Horse Memorial
How the Lakota elder Henry Standing Bear invited a sculptor to carve the Crazy Horse Memorial in the Black Hills near Rapid City.
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The Crazy Horse Memorial: Carving a Mountain Since 1948
The decades-long, privately funded Crazy Horse Memorial in the Black Hills near Rapid City, and the family that has carried it forward.
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Crazy Horse: The Oglala War Leader
The life of Crazy Horse, the Oglala Lakota war leader whose name the great Black Hills memorial near Rapid City bears.
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Red Cloud and the War for the Bozeman Trail
How the Oglala leader Red Cloud forced the United States to the 1868 treaty table, shaping the history of the Black Hills near Rapid City.
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The Ghost Dance and the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890
The Ghost Dance movement and the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre that ended armed resistance on the plains, in the region south of Rapid City.
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The Rapid City Indian Boarding School
The federal Indian boarding school that operated in Rapid City for decades, and the lasting legacy it left for Native families in the Black Hills.
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Sioux San: From Indian School to Hospital
The grounds of a former federal Indian boarding school in Rapid City, South Dakota, became Sioux San, a long-running health campus serving Native people.
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The Black Hills Powwow (He Sapa Wacipi)
Each fall the Black Hills Powwow fills a Rapid City, South Dakota, arena with dancers, drum groups, and families in one of the region's largest Native gatherings.
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From Harney Peak to Black Elk Peak
The highest point in the Black Hills of South Dakota was renamed Black Elk Peak in 2016, honoring the Oglala holy man over a controversial general.
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The Rapid City Army Air Base in World War II
In 1942 the Army built an air base east of Rapid City, South Dakota, training heavy bomber crews and binding the Black Hills town to military aviation.
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General Richard Ellsworth and the 1953 Crash
How a fatal 1953 bomber crash near Newfoundland gave Rapid City, South Dakota, the name it still uses for the air base east of town: Ellsworth.
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The B-36 Peacemaker Era at Ellsworth
In the early Cold War, enormous B-36 Peacemaker bombers flew from the prairie east of Rapid City, South Dakota, part of the Black Hills region's nuclear watch.
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Minuteman Missiles on the South Dakota Prairie
For decades, Minuteman nuclear missiles waited in silos buried across the ranchland around Rapid City, South Dakota, and the Black Hills, hidden in plain sight.
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The Minuteman Missile National Historic Site
Near the Badlands east of Rapid City, South Dakota, a preserved launch control center and missile silo let visitors stand inside the region's long Cold War watch.
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The South Dakota Air and Space Museum
At the gate of Ellsworth Air Force Base near Rapid City, South Dakota, the South Dakota Air and Space Museum gathers the aircraft of the Black Hills region's military century.
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Ellsworth Air Force Base and the Rapid City Economy
For generations Ellsworth Air Force Base has been a major employer near Rapid City, South Dakota, and the Black Hills, and a near-closure once shook the city.
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Skyline Drive and the Ridge Above Rapid City
A Depression-era ridge road above Rapid City, South Dakota, Skyline Drive gave the Black Hills town its concrete dinosaurs and one of its finest overlooks.
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Reptile Gardens: The World's Largest Reptile Collection
A roadside snake show south of Rapid City, South Dakota, grew into Reptile Gardens, one of the best known attractions in the Black Hills tourist country.
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Bear Country USA: The Drive-Through Wildlife Park
Bear Country USA near Rapid City lets visitors drive among black bears and other animals of the Black Hills, a family-run park open since the early 1970s.
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Storybook Island: Rapid City's Free Fairy-Tale Park
Storybook Island in Rapid City is a free, volunteer-built children's park of nursery-rhyme scenes, a Black Hills summer tradition for generations of families.
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The Cosmos Mystery Area
The Cosmos Mystery Area south of Rapid City is a classic Black Hills gravity-illusion attraction, drawing curious motorists since the 1950s with tilted rooms.
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Sitting Bull Crystal Caverns
Sitting Bull Crystal Caverns near Rapid City was one of the Black Hills' early commercial show caves, opened to the public in the 1930s tourist era.
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The South Dakota School of Mines and Technology
The South Dakota School of Mines, founded in Rapid City in 1885, grew out of the Black Hills mining frontier into a respected engineering and science school.
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Halley Park and Rapid City's First Museum
Halley Park in downtown Rapid City was an early gift to the city and once held its first museum, a green square at the center of Black Hills civic life.
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The Journey Museum and Learning Center
The Journey Museum in Rapid City gathers the Black Hills story under one roof, from geology and Lakota culture to pioneer history and regional archaeology.
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The Dahl Arts Center
The Dahl Arts Center in downtown Rapid City is the Black Hills region's longtime community arts hub, known for its panoramic cyclorama mural of American history.
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The Pennington County Courthouse
The Pennington County Courthouse has anchored civic life in Rapid City for generations, the seat of justice and government for the Black Hills region.
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Rapid City's Carnegie Library
Rapid City's Carnegie library brought free public reading to the Black Hills in the early 1900s and later found new life as a downtown arts and cultural space.
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Memorial Park and Its Berlin Wall Segment
Memorial Park along Rapid Creek rose from the 1972 flood scar and holds a piece of the Berlin Wall, a Cold War relic in the heart of Rapid City.
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The Rushmore Plaza Civic Center
The Rushmore Plaza Civic Center has been Rapid City's arena and gathering place for decades, the Black Hills region's stage for concerts, sports, and events.
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Main Street Square and Downtown's Revival
How Main Street Square became the gathering place at the center of downtown Rapid City, and what its arrival meant for the wider Black Hills hub.
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Art Alley: Rapid City's Open-Air Gallery
The story of Art Alley, the downtown Rapid City lane where murals and graffiti turned a service alley into one of the Black Hills' most-photographed places.
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Rapid Creek: The Stream That Made the City
Rapid Creek drew the first settlers to the future Rapid City, South Dakota, watered the Black Hills hub, and in 1972 turned against the town it had created.
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Canyon Lake and the Dam That Failed in 1972
Canyon Lake was a beloved Rapid City, South Dakota recreation spot until its dam failed during the 1972 Black Hills flood. The story of the reservoir and its rebuilding.
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Pactola Dam and Reservoir
Pactola Reservoir, the largest in the Black Hills, drowned an old gold camp to secure water for Rapid City. The story of the dam west of town.
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The Greenway Born From the 1972 Flood
After the 1972 flood, Rapid City turned its ruined floodplain into a greenway of parks and trails. How tragedy reshaped the Black Hills hub.
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M Hill: From Hangman's Hill to Cowboy Hill
The hill above downtown Rapid City carried a grim early name, Hangman's Hill, long before its big white letter. A look at M Hill in the Black Hills.
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The History of Rapid City Regional Airport
From a small municipal field to the air gateway for Black Hills travelers, the story of how Rapid City Regional Airport grew over the decades.
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Peter Norbeck: The Governor Who Shaped the Black Hills
Peter Norbeck, the conservationist South Dakota governor and senator, shaped Custer State Park and the scenic roads that define the Black Hills today.
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The Needles Highway
The Needles Highway, opened in 1922, threads through the granite spires of the Black Hills. Once called impossible, it remains a scenic route near Rapid City.
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Iron Mountain Road and the Pigtail Bridges
Iron Mountain Road frames Mount Rushmore through granite tunnels and loops over wooden pigtail bridges, a great scenic drive near Rapid City.
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Custer State Park and the Buffalo Roundup
Custer State Park in the Black Hills holds a great bison herd gathered each autumn in a thundering roundup, a major draw for Rapid City and the region.
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Wind Cave: The World's First Cave National Park
Wind Cave in the southern Black Hills near Rapid City became the first cave national park in 1903, known for rare boxwork and Lakota emergence stories.
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Jewel Cave: One of the Longest Caves on Earth
Jewel Cave, west of Custer in the Black Hills near Rapid City, is one of the longest known caves on Earth, its mapped passages still growing each year.
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Sylvan Lake: The Jewel of the Black Hills
Sylvan Lake near Custer in the Black Hills west of Rapid City began as an 1880s dam and became a favorite of Governor Peter Norbeck.
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Spearfish Canyon and the Northern Black Hills
Spearfish Canyon in the northern Black Hills, north of Rapid City, cuts deep through limestone past waterfalls and forest. A look at its geology, history, and roads.
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The Mammoth Site of Hot Springs
The Mammoth Site at Hot Springs, south of Rapid City in the Black Hills, is an ancient sinkhole that trapped dozens of mammoths and remains an active excavation.
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Deadwood and the Gold Rush Next Door
Deadwood, the lawless gold camp in the northern Black Hills, drove the rush that shaped Rapid City, South Dakota and the whole region in the late 1870s.
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Lead and the Homestake Gold Mine
The Homestake mine at Lead, in the Black Hills near Rapid City, became one of the deepest and richest gold mines in the hemisphere over more than a century.
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The Sanford Underground Research Facility
The Sanford Underground Research Facility, in the old Homestake mine at Lead near Rapid City, hosts deep physics experiments nearly a mile beneath the Black Hills.
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The George S. Mickelson Trail
The Mickelson Trail follows old railroad grades the length of the Black Hills near Rapid City, a rail-trail of more than a hundred miles for walkers and cyclists.
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Sturgis and the Black Hills Motorcycle Rally
The Sturgis motorcycle rally began in 1938 with a small Black Hills club near Rapid City and grew into one of the largest gatherings of riders in the world.
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Bear Butte: Mato Paho, a Sacred Mountain
Bear Butte, called Mato Paho by the Lakota, rises near Sturgis north of Rapid City and remains a sacred site for many Plains tribes to this day.
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The Badlands East of Rapid City
The Badlands east of Rapid City, South Dakota, are a maze of eroded buttes and fossil beds where the prairie breaks into bare rock at the edge of the plains.
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Gold, Gypsum, and Cement: Early Rapid City Industry
How mining, milling, and building materials shaped the early economy of Rapid City and the Black Hills in the decades after its 1876 founding.
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The Black Hills Lumber Industry
Logging in the Black Hills near Rapid City, from the gold-rush sawmills to the first regulated federal timber sale in the United States.
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Ranching on the Western Dakota Prairie
The cattle country around the Black Hills and how ranching tied the grasslands to Rapid City as a market, shipping point, and supply town.
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The South Dakota State Cement Plant
The story of the state-owned cement plant that operated in Rapid City for generations, an unusual experiment in public enterprise in the Black Hills.
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How the Black Hills Sold Themselves to America
The slogans, roadside attractions, and promoters who turned the Black Hills and Rapid City into one of the nation's enduring vacation destinations.
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The Central States Fair
The late-summer fair and rodeo that has gathered ranchers, families, and carnival crowds in Rapid City, South Dakota, for more than a century.
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The Blizzard of 1949
The brutal winter storms of 1949 that buried western South Dakota, stranded Black Hills ranch country, and forced an emergency relief effort near Rapid City.
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Rapid City's Streetcars and Early Transit
The brief era of electric streetcars in Rapid City, South Dakota, when a growing Black Hills town reached for the trappings of a modern American city.
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Sioux Pottery and the Native Arts Trade
The Rapid City pottery works and the wider trade in Native-made art that shaped how the Black Hills region marketed Lakota craft to visitors.
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The Days of '76 and Black Hills Frontier Pageants
Deadwood's Days of '76 celebration and the wider habit, across the Black Hills near Rapid City, of staging the frontier past for paying visitors.
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The West Boulevard Historic District
The tree-lined West Boulevard neighborhood in Rapid City, South Dakota, where early-century homes record the city's years of growing confidence.
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The Floods Before 1972
Long before the 1972 disaster, Rapid Creek rose against Rapid City more than once. A look at the early floods in the Black Hills and the warnings the city missed.
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The Civilian Conservation Corps in the Black Hills
During the Depression, CCC crews reshaped the Black Hills near Rapid City, building roads, dams, and park structures that visitors still use today.
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The Cold War Boom: Rapid City Grows Around Ellsworth
After World War II, the air base and its missile mission reshaped Rapid City, South Dakota, driving the growth that made it a true regional center.
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The Mount Rushmore Evening Lighting Ceremony
For decades a summer night ritual has lit the faces at Mount Rushmore and honored veterans, a quiet tradition close to Rapid City and the Black Hills.
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The Rapid City Journal and the City's Newspapers
From frontier weeklies to a daily of record, the newspapers of Rapid City chronicled the Black Hills through gold, war, flood, and growth.
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The Early Churches of Rapid City
The first congregations in Rapid City built more than sanctuaries, anchoring community life on the Black Hills frontier through gold-rush years and beyond.
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The Hotel Harney and Lost Downtown Landmarks
The Hotel Harney once anchored downtown Rapid City. A look at the lost buildings of the Black Hills city and what their disappearance cost.
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The Rockerville Flume and the Gold Camps South of Rapid City
To work the dry placer ground at Rockerville, miners built a long wooden flume across the Black Hills near Rapid City. A look at an ambitious gamble.
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Calvin Coolidge's 1927 Summer White House in the Black Hills
In 1927 President Coolidge spent a long summer in the Black Hills near Rapid City, running the country from a state lodge and lending his weight to Mount Rushmore.
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Buffalo Gap and the Gateway to the Hills
A natural break in the hogback ridge, Buffalo Gap funneled bison and then people into the Black Hills near Rapid City. A look at a quiet landmark.
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From Gold Rush to Statehood: Dakota Becomes South Dakota, 1889
In 1889 the Dakota Territory split and entered the Union as two states. A look at the road to statehood and what it meant for Rapid City and the Black Hills.