Pure Pierre Politics

The recent announcement of an important donation to the South Dakota State Historical Society’s archives brings to mind an important book recently published by the society. The donation was a scrapbook bearing more than 200 photographs of the Black Hills during the 1920s. The book is A Marvelous Hudnred Square Miles: Black Hills Tourism, 1880-1941, written by Suzanne Barta Julin. She not only documents the creation of many long-standing tourist attractions and practices, she also traces some of the very interesting and contentious politics behind such milestones as the development of Custer State Park and Mount Rushmore National Memorial, as well as the significance of President Calvin Coolidge’s visit to the Black Hills. The book is both substantial and enjoyable, coming in at a handy 183 pages of main text and photographs. The book is helpful toward understanding how today’s Black Hills tourism economy came to be. As to the recent donation, the Knight Museum and Sandhills Center at Alliance, Nebraska, gave to the South Dakota archives a leather-bound album containing more than 200 photographs of the Black Hills collected by a true admirer, Alice Jesse Lowe of Alliance, who described South Dakota as a place where “all nature forgets the way to grow old.” The photos portray events and conditions during her vacations in the Black Hills during 1926 and 1927, including images of President Coolidge during his visit.