The Great Plains
The Great Plains is the broad expanse of prairie which lies east of the Rocky Mountains in the United States of America and Canada, covering all or parts of the U.S. states of New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota and North Dakota and the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta. Much of Minnesota and Iowa and much of the Canadian province of Manitoba also lies in the Great Plains. The Rocky Mountains form its western margin.
The Great Plains cover most of the western 2/3 of South Dakota. West of the Missouri River much of the landscape becomes more rugged and consists of rolling hills, plains, canyons, and steep flat-topped hills called buttes. These buttes sometimes rise 400 to 600 feet above the plains. In the south, east of The Black Hills, lie the South Dakota Badlands. Badlands National Park is located here. Within the Great Plains are many large areas that differ greatly from adjoining areas. The Black Hills stands out distinctively from the surrounding lower land, and its dark, forested prominence can be seen for scores of miles from any direction.
The Black Hills is a huge, domed area in northwestern South Dakota and northeastern Wyoming, about 125 miles long and 65 miles wide. Major earth movement in the past caused uplifting and erosion to create the granite outcroppings and other ledges of rock now visible in the Black Hills. The peaks of the central part of the Black Hills presently are 3,000 to 4,000 feet above the surrounding plains. Harney Peak, with an altitude of 7,242 feet, is the highest point in South Dakota. The heads of four of our great Presidents are sculpted from this granite at Mount Rushmore National Memorial.
Before it was broken by the plow, most of the Great Plains from the Texas panhandle northward was treeless grassland which became known as prairies. Trees grew only along the floodplains of streams and on the few mountainous areas of the northern Great Plains. These lush prairies once were the grazing ground for immense herds of bison, and the land provided a bountiful life for those Indians who followed them - the Native American tribes of the Blackfeet, Crow, Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche and others.
After the near-extintion of the buffalo and the removal of the Native Americans to Indian reservations, the Great Plains were devoted to ranching. Where once native grasses waved on the prairies of the Great Plains, rolling wheat fields now greet each traveler.
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