Can the north-western states of North and South Dakota, Wyoming and Montana live up to their claim to be ‘The Real America’? Intrigued, Paul Wade set out to investigate Wyoming and Mary Moore Mason the other three states. This is what they found.
FAMED FOR THEIR SPECTACULAR SCENERY, array of National Parks and colourful cities and towns, all four
states also offer attractions that are not only uniquely American but unique to the individual states. For instance, where but in South Dakota would you find the giant presidential heads of Mount Rushmore, the equally-impressive mountainside statue of Native American warrior Crazy Horse, America’s largest and deepest mine, and the
‘World’s Only Corn Palace’? North Dakota claims the world’s largest statue of a buffalo, the Native American village where explorers Lewis and Clark first met Sakakawea, the young Native American translator who helped them survive their perilous journey to the Pacific Coast, and the ranch that helped transform a young Teddy Roosevelt into
a future US president. Montana has the Little Bighorn battlefield where Lt Col George W Custer met his maker at the hands of Crazy Horse and other Native American leaders, the Great Falls studio of famed cowboy artist Charles W Russell, and a National Park featuring 25 glaciers. As for Wyoming, there’s everything from Yellowstone National Park’s world-famous geysers to the Devils Tower where the aliens landed in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. But let Paul Wade tell you more about that ‘Cowboy State’.
WYOMING – HIT THE TRAIL IN THE COWBOY
Steer wrestling is a highlight of Wyoming’s Cheyenne Frontier Days
STATE YELLOWSTONE – AMERICA’S OLDEST NATIONAL PARK
Founded in 1872 and now one of America’s bestknown, loved and visited National Parks, 3,500sqmile (2,219,791-acre) Yellowstone is a wonderland of geysers (the most-famous being Old Faithful), hot springs, mud volcanoes, waterfalls, canyons and wildlife.
CHEYENNE – THE WORLD’S LARGEST OUTDOOR RODEO
Since 1897, July’s Frontier Days in Cheyenne, the state capital, has celebrated all things Western. Boots and Stetsons are the dress of choice; the finer points of bull riding and bronco busting are discussed; nightly concerts feature the finest country singers, from Tim McGraw to Toby Keith; Native Americans explain their heritage in the Indian Village; and chuck-wagon cooks compete for prizes.
AMERICA’S FIRST NATIONAL MONUMENT
Remember Close Encounters of the Third Kind? For me, the star of the film was Devils Tower, the outcrop of rock standing 1,267 feet tall in the north-eastern corner of the state where the aliens landed. In 1906, President Teddy Roosevelt declared it America’s first national monument. For nearby Native American tribes, however, the name Devils Tower is disrespectful. They consider this unusual formation to be a sacred place and last year applied to have the name changed to Bear Lodge.
A FIFTH-GENERATION GUEST RANCH
For more than a century, urban Easterners have travelled out West to play at being cowboys. And no family in America has a longer history of welcoming these ‘dudes’ than the Eatons, whose fifth generation still dispenses hospitality in Wolf Creek, near Sheridan.
LET’S HEAR IT FOR BUFFALO BILL!
Cody’s Buffalo Bill Center of the West was inspired by one of America’s first great showmen, William F ‘Buffalo Bill’ Cody, buffalo hunter, Pony Express rider, Army scout and founder of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, the show which, reputedly, greatly amused Queen Victoria when it came to London in 1887. Encompassing five museums, it covers everything from the colourful life of its namesake Western hero to the heritage of the Plains Indians, and from local flora and fauna to Western firearms, paintings and sculptures.
SOUTH DAKOTA – MOUNTAIN-TOP EXPERIENCES
Mount Rushmore – South Dakota
MOUNT RUSHMORE – US PRESIDENTS AT THEIR PEAK
Your jaw has to drop when you first view the huge sculptured heads of US presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln crowning this South Dakota mountain-top. But even as I paid homage to these four great Americans, I couldn’t help but chortle at the remembrance of Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint clambering down Abe Lincoln’s nose as they escaped suave baddie James Mason in the classic Hitchcock film North by Northwest.
CRAZY HORSE – CRAZY MAN
People thought Boston-based sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski was crazy in 1947 when he announced that his dream was to create a gigantic mountain-top sculpture of iconic Native American warrior Crazy Horse. But even though he is now deceased, his family plugs ahead and year by year more of the dream comes true.
FROM BUFFALOES TO BIKES
Each September, Custer State Park, south of Rapid City, stages a round-up of its herd of 1,300 buffalo – this year, the event’s 50th anniversary, was particularly memorable. Meanwhile, Sturgis to the north, is settling down after hosting some 500,000 fans at the annual August Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, one of the world’s largest, most famous and noisiest events!
DEADWOOD – A GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY
Best known as a once-lawless, gold-mining town frequented by such colourful characters as Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane – and, more recently, by Kevin Costner, who owns the local Midnight Star restaurant – Deadwood is also the gateway to the town of Lead’s former Homestake Gold Mine, the largest and deepest in North America. Accommodating one of the world’s most-advanced research units at its bottom, it is now the site of the new Sanford Lab Homestake Visitor Center.
THE WORLD’S ONLY CORN PALACE
Mitchell, along Interstate 90 in the eastern part of the state, is home to a remarkable structure that could have come straight out of The Arabian Nights or, perhaps, Disneyland. With a colourful façade that features murals constructed from thousands of corn kernels, grains and native grasses and equallyimpressive interior design, it is now, according to the state tourist board, being revamped and is under corn-structure!
MONTANA – BIG SKY COUNTRY
St. Mary Lake is one of the attractions of Montana’s Glacier National Park
BIGHORN – BIG MISTAKE
Lt Col George Custer made his famous and fatal ‘Last Stand’ against Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors in 1876 on the Little Bighorn Battlefield, now a National Monument near the Wyoming border. Wander around the tombstones that stud the fields of rippling grass and learn more in the local museum.
A GLORIOUS NATIONAL PARK AND NATIVE AMERICAN FESTIVITIES
Covering more than a million acres, Glacier National Park offers more than 700 miles of hiking trails, 200 lakes, cloud-piercing mountains, picturesque valleys and a wealth of wildlife; much of it is accessed by the colourfullynamed Going-to-the-Sun Road. Bordering Glacier to the east is the Blackfeet Indian Reservation and Browning, capital of the Blackfeet Nation and home to the Museum of the Plains Indians. Each July it’s also the site of one of America’s largest annual Native American powwows, North American Indian Days.
TINY ART TREASURES AND MASSIVE DINOSAURS
Among the art works in the Great Falls home and log studio of famous Western artist Charles Russell are the delightful little colour sketches on the letters he wrote to family and friends. By way of a contrast, head for one of the world’s largest collections of dinosaur fossils in Bozeman’s Museum of the Rockies or Fort Peck’s Interpretive Center and Museum in Montana’s north-east corner, home to one of the largest T-Rex skeletons ever found.
NEW LIFE IN GHOST TOWNS
Only a mile apart in the south-central part of the state, Virginia City and Nevada City are full of historic buildings that testify to their days as Gold Rush boom towns. Take in a performance of the Virginia City Players at a former livery stable converted into an opera house and ride the Gulch Shore Line Railroad to Nevada City.
NORTH DAKOTA – A PEACE GARDEN AND FAMOUS US PRESIDENT
The tranquil
International Peace Garden straddles the US-Canadian border
THE MALTESE-CROSS CABIN – TEDDY ROOSEVELT’S SANCTUARY
This simple log cabin on the edge of Theodore Roosevelt National Park in the state’s scenic Badlands was where the young, future-US President Teddy Roosevelt spent 1884 recovering from the death of his wife and mother, and developing his love of ranching, the out-back and conservationism. After this evolved into his major championing of what became America’s National Park Service, he wrote: “I would not have been President had it not been for my experience in North Dakota.”
KNIFE RIVER AND FORT MANDAN – REMEMBERING SAKAKAWEA
Although nobody is absolutely sure how to spell her name, the Native American woman known in North Dakota as Sakakawea is commemorated at the Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site, where she lived with her French Canadian trapper husband, and nearby Fort Mandan, where, in 1805, she joined the famous Lewis & Clark expedition as a translator and, in many cases, their life-saver, as she travelled with them, her infant son strapped to her back, to the Pacific Ocean. Also see her statue in front of Bismarck’s North Dakota State Museum and her image on the back of the American dollar coin.
THE INTERNATIONAL PEACE GARDEN – CROSS-BORDER TRANQUILITY
This unique, 2,300-acre botanical garden straddling the border of North Dakota and Manitoba was built in 1932 to commemorate the peaceful co-existence of the USA and Canada. The only boundary marker is a stone cairn inscribed with these words: “To God in His Glory … We two nations dedicate this garden and pledge ourselves that as long as men shall live we will not take up arms against one another.” The garden is free and open year round.
THE ENCHANTED HIGHWAY – FROM TIN MAN TO TEDDY
Ride the 35 miles of the Enchanted Highway between Gladstone and Regent in the south-west corner of the state and you can view the World’s Largest Tin Family, a statue of Teddy Roosevelt on a bucking bronco, and numerous other giant metal statues, over-nighting in Regen’s The Enchanted Castle inn – it comes complete with drawbridge and knights in armour.
THE CHATEAU DE MORES – A FRENCH TREAT
Who would have expected to find the summer home of a French nobleman tucked away in western North Dakota. But there it is – the 26-room Chateau de Mores, built by the Marquis de Mores, who came to Dakota Territory in 1883 to seek his fortune. He established Medora, a town named after his wife, plus cattle and sheep ranches, a stagecoach line and a refrigerated meat-packing scheme, all of which collapsed within three years. But his legacy lives on in Medora’s chateau and his statue gracing the local park.
JAMESTOWN – AMERICA’S ‘BUFFALO CITY’
This community in the south-eastern corner of the state is best known as the site of the the world’s largest buffalo statue and the National Buffalo Museum, which pays tribute to the North American bison and includes a live herd with two rare albino buffalo.
