Rapid City

Lia noticed the first statue before I did — Abraham Lincoln, cast in bronze, leaning against a lamppost on a downtown corner as if waiting for a bus. It turned out every corner of downtown Rapid City holds one: all forty-four presidents, part of a public art project called City of Presidents, scattered block by block through the historic core. We spent our first evening doing something neither of us expected in South Dakota — a slow, aimless presidential scavenger hunt through a compact grid of Main Street bars, ice cream shops, and Western-wear stores, with the dark shape of the Black Hills rising just beyond the rooftops.

Downtown and the presidents

Rapid City’s downtown is small enough to cover on foot in an afternoon, but it rewards lingering — the Alex Johnson Hotel’s Tudor-Gothic tower anchors Sixth Street, and the old rail depot has been reborn as shops and breweries. We found ourselves drawn back to the statues after dark, when the streetlights threw long shadows off Teddy Roosevelt’s outstretched arm and a handful of teenagers posed for photos with a stern bronze Nixon. Lia’s favorite ended up being a laughing FDR outside a coffee shop; mine was Eisenhower, positioned, fittingly, near a stretch of the interstate system he championed.

Gateway to Mount Rushmore and the Black Hills

Everyone passes through Rapid City on the way to Mount Rushmore, twenty-five miles southwest, and we were no exception — but the city itself is the practical, unglamorous heart of the whole Black Hills region, the place where you stock the cooler and check the tire pressure before heading into the pines. We took the scenic Iron Mountain Road out toward the monument, its pigtail bridges and rock tunnels perfectly framing Washington’s granite profile from a distance, then circled back into town for dinner rather than fighting the crowds at the visitor center at sunset. Locals here talk about the Hills the way coastal people talk about the ocean — a fixed, comforting presence just past the edge of town.

Dinosaur Park and Skyline Drive

On our last morning, we drove up Skyline Drive to Dinosaur Park, where seven concrete dinosaur sculptures — relics of a 1936 WPA project — loom over the city from a ridge of red Dakota sandstone. It’s a strange, slightly kitschy landmark, but the view is unexpectedly good: all of Rapid City laid out below, the plains beginning where the Hills end, badlands hinted at on the eastern horizon. Lia climbed up next to the big green Triceratops for a photo while I just took in the geography — this really is the hinge point where the Great Plains give way to the Black Hills, and from up there you can see exactly why the town grew where it did.

Getting There

Rapid City Regional Airport offers direct flights from several major hubs, making it the most practical air gateway to the Black Hills. The city sits right on Interstate 90, about five hours east of Billings and roughly six hours west of Sioux Falls by car, and a rental vehicle is essential for reaching Mount Rushmore, Custer State Park, and the rest of the surrounding hills, none of which are served by public transit.