South Dakota
The Rapid City alley between Main and St. Joseph streets and connecting 6th and 7th streets isn’t some sort of tribute to New York City of the 1970s and 1980s. Instead, Art Alley is a place where established, burgeoning and wannabe artists put up their best work. Artists can procure a permit to paint on buildings’ walls along the alley, making it an ever-changing public art display.
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Custer State Park includes more than 71,000 acres and is South Dakota’s first and largest state park. The state park and wildlife reserve is home to an assortment of animals, including free-roaming bison and prairie dogs. The park, established in 1912 and named for Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer, is famous for Needles Highway and its wildlife loop, offering incredible views of a bison herd and prairie dog towns. In the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps built roads and laid out campgrounds
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The 60-acre Founders Park sits on the site where the original “founders” of Rapid City camped in 1876. Most of the land, which serves as a trailhead for paths along Rapid Creek, was acquired following the 1972 Flood.
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The Minuteman Missile National Historic Site includes three sites along a fifteen-mile stretch of Interstate 90 in Western South Dakota. Congress authorized the park in 1999 to preserve components of the Minuteman II intercontinental ballistic missile system. The site includes the Delta-01 Launch Control Facility, the missile silo at Delta-09 and the visitors center. “The Delta-01 Launch Control Facility provides a remarkable opportunity to view the front line of the Cold War,” Superintendent Eric Leonard said in a 2020 news release.
Mount Rushmore National Memorial, located about 30 minutes southwest of Rapid City, features portraits of four presidents carved into granite — George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. Measuring 60-feet-tall, the portraits are perhaps the definitive American attraction. Crews completed Mount Rushmore between Oct. 4, 1927, and Oct. 31, 1941. Sculptor Gutzon Borglum selected the four presidents to memorialize on Mount Rushmore. More than two million people visit Mount Rushmore, sometimes called the “Shrine of Democracy.”
Recent news releases from Mount Rushmore National Memorial:
- Change to Fall Hours at Mount Rushmore National Memorial
- Fall Adjustment to Operations at Mount Rushmore National Memorial
- Mount Rushmore National Memorial Rope Access Team will be working on the Sculpture, September 15 - 17
- Special Patriot’s Day Programming to be held at Mount Rushmore National Memorial on September 11 and 12, 2021
- Fall Opportunities at Mount Rushmore National Memorial
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The South Dakota Air and Space Museum displays more than 30 aircraft ranging from World War II to active-duty bombers, such as the B-29 Superfortress and the B-1B Lancer. The museum is part of the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force and is located just outside Ellsworth Air Force Base.
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President Theodore Roosevelt in 1903 created Wind Cave National Park. It was the seventh national park and the first cave worldwide designated as a national park. While the park is known as the home of one of the longest caves globally, measuring more than 149 miles, it is home to the largest remaining natural mixed-grass prairie in the country. The park, which covers 33,847 acres, is home to an array of animals, including bison and prairie dogs. Access to the caves has been closed since 2019 because of a broken elevator.