Spearfish, SD to Lead, SD - Monday, August 30, 2010

Spearfish's city campground is beside the DC Booth Historic National Fish Hatchery. The first thing we did this morning was tour this historic site.

When the whites stole these hills from the Indians for the gold, the whites also discovered the streams are a perfect environment for trout. Trout are not native to the Black Hills because the fish can't get here on their own. So the federal government sent D. C. Booth to establish a program for seeding the streams with trout. Over the next 30 years, Booth built a hatchery that provided over a million tiny trout a year to streams in the Black Hills, around the country and even Europe. In the picture, Kathy stands in front of a bronze statute about restocking a stream.

One of the most interesting exhibits on hatchery grounds were the fish railroad cars. The government had 10 railroad cars specially designed and built to transport tiny trout across the country. The car had a dozen of wooden fish tanks, plus facilities for the room and board of a crew of five people. These railroad cars were discontinued in 1947 with the building of more hatcheries across the country, more and better roads, and the development of better trucks for transporting stock fish.

The historic hatchery still stocks some trout even today. Though they now release fewer numbers, the fish are larger, the size is called "catchable." We fed the fish.

Our next stop in Spearfish was the workshop art gallery of Dick Termes. Termes creates six-point perspective spherical art called Termespheres. Since visiting his workshop, we have seen a number of them hanging around the Black Hills. (Google images of Termespheres)

We left Spearfish through Spearfish Canyon. We saw Roughlock Falls
and one place where they filmed the Black Hills scenes of Dances with Wolves.

Roughlock Falls has changed a lot since Kathy first saw it as a child; it's even changed a lot since she began taking her own children to see it! Where once we climbed down the bank to the stream and then walked in the water to go under the Falls, you now can not even go down to the stream! There are now fences and viewing platforms around the Falls. The banks near the falls are now pretty much straight up and down and there is a lot more vegetation everywhere.

It's still a beautiful little falls; quite photogenic. But part of the magic is gone now. It was always fun to walk in the freezing cold water (in our tennis shoes) and struggle up the rocks to find shelter in a "cave" under the Falls. I hope our grandchildren will still get to see Roughlock Falls, but I regret they won't get the same fun experiences three other generations of the family had!

Near Cheyenne Crossing, we found the road and Hanna campground Kathy remembered from her childhood visits to this area. She also camped here with her children.

We camped five miles from Lead.