Northern Hills Rest Area

This bronze sits beneath one of nine concrete tipis that Sioux Falls architect Ward Whitwam designed for South Dakota's interstate rest areas between 1968 and 1979. This one, finished in 1977, stands on the eastbound side only, and all nine are on the National Register. Its eight prestressed lodgepoles rise fifty-six feet and weigh six and a half tons each, as the panel says. Whitwam meant to evoke a tipi, not copy one. The panel's Thoen Stone paragraph, given as evidence, describes a slab still unproven.

What the plaque says

Northern Hills Rest Area South Dakota's rich western heritage has been remembered along the inter- state highway system at safety rest areas and tourist information centers. The eight pillars which thrust skyward here merge in the framework of a tipi, the Plains Indian home. The one-by-one-and-one-half foot concrete lodgepoles rise fifty-six feet in the air and weigh six-and-one-half tons each. The structures were executed in an architectural manner reflecting the spartan lifestyle of the nomadic Lakota (Sioux) Nation. To the south and east of here lie the northern Black Hills. Before the arrival of the Lakota, the Kiowa, Cheyenne, and Crow roamed these foothills. A band of Oglala Sioux first entered the Hills in 1775-76, according to a tribal winter count. White goldseekers were also early arrivals to the Black Hills. The oldest evidence of their presence was written on a small sandstone slab called the Thoen Stone, discovered in 1887 on Lookout Peak, about ten miles (16 kilometers) east of here overlooking Spearfish. It tells of an expedition of seven men who in 1833 and 1834 dug into the Hills, getting "all the gold we could carry" before being killed by Indians. The last member of the party, Ezra Kind, scratched the message while being hunted down. The community of Spearfish was founded on the shirttails of the Black Hills gold rush in May, 1876, by townsite speculators. Even while gold fever was at a high degree, settlers were also moved by the prospect of land and its long term dividends. Black Hills Normal School, now Black Hills State College, was founded at Spearfish in 1887. The Black Hills rise quickly from this point south; within 20 miles, the major peaks reach above 7,000 feet west of Lead and Deadwood. Several scenic canyons and passes provide access into the inner Black Hills, notably Spearfish Canyon, carved by Spearfish Creek in the 19 miles (30 kilometers) from Spearfish to Cheyenne Crossing.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Vore Buffalo Jump — 6.1 mi
  A gypsum sinkhole where hunters trapped bison for 250 years, each hunt sealed in its own layer, and the reason Interstate 90 bends south here.
• Aladdin Coal Tipple — 9.0 mi
  The last nineteenth-century wooden coal tipple believed to stand in the country, which fed Black Hills gold smelters and is now close to falling.
• Spearfish Canyon — 14 mi
  A limestone canyon nineteen miles long whose waterfalls ran dry for most of a century while the Homestake piped their water to its power plants.
• Homestake Open Cut & Sanford Lab Visitor Center — 19 mi
  A 1,250-foot pit on Lead's Main Street, the visible top of a gold mine that went down 8,000 feet in 125 years and is a physics laboratory now.

More markers nearby

• Thoen Stone — 9.3 mi
• Custer Expedition — 18 mi
• Crook County — 18 mi
• 1940 DAR Penny Pines Forest — 18 mi