Hot Springs SD

The sanitarium in the bronze is Battle Mountain, opened in April 1907 as a national home for disabled veterans, its sandstone wards set above the town. Since 2011 the Department of Veterans Affairs has proposed more than once to close or shrink the Hot Springs campus and move its care to Rapid City. Veterans, the American Legion and the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which named the sanitarium a National Treasure, have opposed each plan, and decisions have been deferred and revived. The state's own Soldiers Home stands in town too.

What the plaque says

Hot Springs, SD Tribal tradition states that as long ago as the 16th century the Fall River Valley and canyon area were seldom without groups of tipis belonging to North American Plains Tribes. They knew the curative value of the warm springs located there and used them for bathing their sick and lame. Exploration of the area by white men in 1874-75 led to settlement and the discovery of 75 geothermal springs. The crystal clear water issues from clefts in rocks or bubbles up out of the ground. Bathhouses, swimming plunges, hotels, hospitals and sanitariums were built turning the City of Hot Springs into an early national health resort. Some of these structures still exist, including a sanitarium now used as the VA Center, and the South Dakota Soldiers Home. Cowboys and others crippled by rheumatism and other afflictions would arrive in wagons or trains and leave on horseback after three weeks in the springs. From this point the rushing Fall River can be seen and heard. Sponsored by the people and businesses of Hot Springs, the South Dakota State Historical Society and the South Dakota Department of Transportation

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Mammoth Site — 1.3 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 — 9.5 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 — 24 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 — 24 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
• Battle Mountain — 1.7 mi
• Leslie Jensen Scenic Drive — 2.2 mi
• John Stevenson Robertson: Pioneer Horticulturalist — 5.0 mi