Bijou Hills Game Management Area

Above the tract the Bijou Hills rise about 400 feet over the surrounding fields and cover roughly three square miles. Their tops are capped with quartzite, hard stone that meltwater from the last glacier began to lay bare about 10,000 years ago, and the hills hold unusual fossils and fauna. Two centuries ago they lay on a migratory buffalo route, and Dakota visitors built ceremonial pillars on the summits and worked the quartzite into arrows and other tools. The Hoover land lies at their foot.

What the plaque says

Bijou Hills Game Management Area This 840 acre tract was donated by Everald H. Hoover to the people of the Bijou Hills area. It honors his pioneer relatives who homesteaded or bought land here. The tract is in the care of the South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks Commission. John T. Hoover, grandfather, was born in 1835 and married Elnor Jacobs in Bassett, Iowa. Their second son, John N. Hoover, was Everald's father. The family moved to Bijou Hills, Dakota Territory in 1882 and homesteaded the N. E. quarter of Section 25. They started the town of Granville which prospered until 1888 when the scarcity of water forced a move to Chandler. John N. Hoover married Clara Angelia Heath in 1890. They spent all their years near Bijou Hills except for a trip by covered wagon to Grand Rapids, Michigan which lasted a year. In the mid-90's Everald's parents bought the S. E. quarter of Section 23 and later added more. The parents of Clara Hoover, Johnathan and Ellen Heath, as well as her uncle, Joseph Hoffman, and her grandfather, William Larrabee, all homesteaded in the Bijou Hills area. Everald H. Hoover, only child of John N. and Clara Hoover, was born May 5, 1905. He never married but remained at home caring for his parents in their declining years. He suffered a stroke in 1969 and died April 1, 1975. In his own words, he said "I doubt if I could have had a better life if I had to do it over again. Dakota has been good to me so I want to leave a memorial to the residents of this county." Erected 1977 by the S. D. Dept. of Game, Fish and Parks and the Brule County Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Dignity of Earth and Sky — 20 mi
  A fifty-foot stainless-steel Lakota woman on the bluff above the Missouri, her star quilt made of 128 blue diamonds that shiver in the wind.
• Akta Lakota Museum and Cultural Center — 22 mi
  A museum on the campus of a Catholic boarding school for Lakota children founded in 1927, built from gifts of the school's alumni and named to honor the people.

More markers nearby

• Ward Academy — 6.7 mi
• Historic Highway Map Marker Iona — 13 mi
• Historic Highway - Brule — 17 mi
• Lewis and Clark Memorial Bridge at Chamberlain — 20 mi