"Fed up on Scenery": The Roots of Tourism in the Black Hills

In 1924, South Dakota state historian Doane Robinson observed that tourists get “fed up on scenery.”  In this statement he referenced the travelers who, every year, visited the Black Hills in the southwestern part of his state.  He believed that this region boasted some of the country’s most unique landscapes and impressive mountain ranges.  However, “scenery alone will not sell the Black Hills to the world,” he concluded.  After seventeen years of careful planning, fundraising, promotion, and persuasion, Mount Rushmore National Memorial was completed.  It offered tourists something to look at, and afforded the region with something to—as Robinson emphasized--“play up and work upon the imagination of the tourists.”[1]

Although a tourist industry existed in the area prior to 1941, the iconic Mount Rushmore generated a new era of Black Hills tourism in post-war America.  In the decades to follow, Black Hills cities developed new tourist industries that highlighted its western past.  Communities such as Deadwood, Sturgis, and Custer, South Dakota, emerged as the quintessential locales for the ultimate experience of the Old West.  Likewise, indigenous communities also participated in the region’s tourism industry through various venues such as pageants, powwows, and parades.             

My presentation will trace the roots of modern tourism in the Black Hills region.  It will reveal how the intersection of race, environment, and the tourist industry continue to influence the regional identity of the Black Hills—a region like no other American landscape.

---

[1] Doane Robinson to Lee Marford, 2 February 1924 and to J.B. Green, 3 March 1924.  South DakotaState Historical Society, Doane Robinson Papers,

Box 9

#149.

See more of: Race, Environment, and the Politics of Tourism in the Postwar American West
See more of: AHA Sessions

Previous Presentation | Next Presentation >>