More Than a Stop on the Way to Yellowstone: The Parks of the Black Hills and Their Impact on Wilderness Preservation

Abstract

This thesis examines the ideologies that contributed to the establishment of public parks in the Black Hills of South Dakota as a microcosm for nationwide conversations about preservation, tourism, nationalism, colonialism, and commerce. Wind Cave National Park, Custer State Park, and Mount Rushmore National Memorial each complicate and enhance understandings of how public preservation projects emerged out of debates that included ideas outside environmental protection efforts. The people who supported the establishment of these parks, such as the McDonald and Stabler families, South Dakota Senator Peter Norbeck, state historian Doane Robinson, and sculptor Gutzon Borglum, implemented their own ideas across a spectrum of motivations for preserving the environment. While establishing these parks, they contributed their personal perspectives about how nature preservation could support commerce, settler colonialism, and moral development and engaged with national and regional dialogues in the process. The Black Hills became a locus of these debates because of the quantity of parks established in a relatively small area in a relatively short period of time, yet the region is not analyzed in this context by previous scholarship. As a result, this thesis engages with the region’s contributions to preservation ideology and park practice by investigating the establishment of three Black Hills park sites in relation to the national and regional conditions that favored or hampered preservation efforts.