Battle Mountain

Much of what this bronze calls tradition reads like the resort's own advertising. The State Historical Society has described the springs' origin stories as early promotional literature unverifiably attributed to Native oral tradition, and the 1869 battle that named the mountain as popular history; an early guidebook already sold the Cheyenne and Lakota fight as the high point of a carriage drive to Wind Cave. The Lakota names hold up better. Minnekahta, warm water, was the town's first name, changed to Hot Springs in the 1880s.

What the plaque says

Battle Mountain According to tradition, American Indians were stricken with an epidemic known as 'fell disease' about the middle of the 16th century that threatened to obliterate the tribes. A messenger arrived from the Great West with news of a wonderful water which, he said, had been touched by the finger of the Great Spirit and would cure all manner of diseases. Indians came to these springs by the thousands. After a lapse of more than 200 years, the Cheyenne took possession of the springs and built an immense tipi city covering hundreds of acres. In the following years, the Sioux migrated west and disputed the ownership of the springs. This culminated in a fierce conflict in about 1869, the memory of which is preserved in the name of the eminence to the east, Battle Mountain, where the besieged Cheyenne established fortifications. The Sioux won the battle and possession of the springs which they called Wi-wi-la-kah-to (Springs-hot). They called the area Minnekahta (Water-hot) and termed the Black Hills a great "Medicine Home." After the Battle Mountain fight, tradition says the Sioux and Cheyenne agreed to allow the springs to be a health sanctuary to give their sick and lame the benefit of the healing waters. Around 1880, pioneers began to settle the area. Erected in 1990 by the City of Hot Springs, the South Dakota State Historical Society and the State Department of Transportation

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Mammoth Site — 1.1 mi
  A housing lot in Hot Springs where a bulldozer turned up a tusk in 1974 and the developer gave up the subdivision for sixty-one mammoths.
• Wind Cave National Park — 8.0 mi
  A cave that breathes through a hole the size of a dinner plate, lined with nearly all the boxwork known on Earth, under a prairie restocked with bison shipped from New York.
• Needles Highway — 22 mi
  Fourteen miles that Governor Peter Norbeck laid out on foot and horseback through the granite spires, threading a tunnel eight feet wide.
• State Game Lodge — 23 mi
  The lodge where Calvin Coolidge spent the summer of 1927, fishing for trout, dedicating Mount Rushmore, and deciding not to run again.

More markers nearby

• The Mammoth Site of Hot Springs, SD — 1.3 mi
• Hot Springs SD — 1.7 mi
• Leslie Jensen Scenic Drive — 3.8 mi
• John Stevenson Robertson: Pioneer Horticulturalist — 4.4 mi