I-90: Sioux Falls to the Badlands
About 378 miles across South Dakota on I-90 from the falls of the Big Sioux to the edge of the Black Hills: the Corn Palace, Dignity above the Missouri, a car museum in Murdo, a Minuteman silo, the Badlands Loop and the free ice water at Wall.
The Route at a Glance
I-90 crosses South Dakota in one long line from the Minnesota border to the Black Hills, and it is easy to drive it as nothing but distance. Taken slowly, it is a cross-section of the state: tallgrass farm country in the east, the Missouri in the middle, and the shortgrass, the Badlands and the hills in the west.
It starts at Falls Park in Sioux Falls, where the Big Sioux drops over pink quartzite beside the ruin of the Queen Bee Mill, built to make the falls pay and closed within two years. The interstate runs west through corn and soybeans to Mitchell and the Corn Palace, redecorated every year in murals of corn, and on the north edge of town the Mitchell Prehistoric Indian Village is still giving up the earth lodges of a farming town a thousand years old.
At Chamberlain the road drops to the Missouri, the line South Dakotans use to divide East River from West River, and on the bluff above the crossing stands Dignity of Earth and Sky, a fifty-foot steel Lakota woman holding a star quilt open to the wind. West of the river the farms give way to ranches and the towns thin out. At Murdo the Pioneer Auto Show fills forty-odd buildings with the cars and everything else a dealer's family could not stop collecting.
Beyond Kadoka the ground begins to break up. At exit 131 the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site keeps a launch control center and the story of the 150 nuclear missiles that waited under these fields during the Cold War. From the same exit SD-240, the Badlands Loop, climbs over the Badlands Wall into Badlands National Park, past the fossil lab and the overlooks above the Pinnacles, and comes out at Wall, where Wall Drug has given away ice water since 1936. The silo at Delta-09 sits near exit 116 for anyone who wants to see a missile in place.
From Wall the interstate runs on to Rapid City and the hills, where the drive ends at the Journey Museum. The whole route is about 378 miles, a long day without stops and better as two, with a night at the Badlands or in Chamberlain. The Loop Road adds little distance over the interstate and much more to see.
The Drive, Stop by Stop
9 stops along the route, in driving order from Sioux Falls, South Dakota to Rapid City, South Dakota.
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That's the drive. Take your time, pull over often, and let I-90: Sioux Falls to the Badlands do what it does best.
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