Origin of state's name: Dakota is a Sioux Indian word for "friend"
The South Dakota flag features the state seal surrounded by a
golden blazing sun in a field of sky blue. Letters reading "South
Dakota, The Mount Rushmore State" -- the official state
nickname -- are arranged in a circle around the sun.
Entered Union: November 2, 1889; 40th State
Capital: Pierre
Motto: Under God, the people rule
Flower: Pasqueflower
Bird: Chinese ring-necked pheasant
Tree: Black Hills spruce
Song: Hail, South Dakota
A LITTLE HISTORY
The Verendrye brothers (French) explored the region in 1742-1743. Lewis and Clark passed through the area in 1804 and 1806. The first white American settlement was at Fort Pierre in 1817. Gold was discovered in 1874 on the Great Sioux Reservation; miners rushed in. The U.S. first tried to stop them, then relaxed its opposition. The 'Great Dakota Boom' began in 1879. Conflicts between the Indian and white communities climaxed in 1890 with the massacre of Indian families at Wounded Knee.
FACTS AND TRIVIA ABOUT SOUTH DAKOTA
Theodore Roosevelt is the only president carved in Mount Rushmore wearing glasses.
South Dakota contains the geographic center of the U.S.
The Black Hills are the highest mountains east of the Rockies.
A memorial to Crazy Horse is being carved in granite near Custer.
The Badlands of SD, a region of barren ravines and cliffs, were created by
volcanic action as well as by wind and water erosion.
The Spirit Mound near Vermillion served as a vantage point for Lewis and Clark
as they viewed the Prairie Plains.
The Mammoth Site in Hot Springs has 100 Columbian and Woolly Mammoth
fossils buried there.
Some of the logs in Petrified Wood Park in Lemmon weigh more than 10,000
pounds. Others contain the fossilized remains of snakes and early marine life.
Sitting Bull's grave sits on a bluff overlooking the Missouri River near Mobridge.
It wasn't always there. In 1953 under the cover of darkness, a group of South
Dakotans snuck into ND, exhumed his bones (with his relatives' permission) and
reburied them in their rightful home.
The jocular proprietor of the Holy Terror Mine, discovered in 1894, named it after his wife.
The Homestake Mine, still in operation, was named by miners who felt the find would pay their way
home. The Homestake
produced more than $100 million in gold between 1877 and 1901.
The polyphonous namesake of the town Hisega derives from the casual daydreams of six young girls
whose first-name initials combined to spell "Hisega."
South Dakota holds the record
for the greatest temperature swing, as recorded in the Guiness Book of World Records. The figure?
From -4 to 49 in two minutes, 1943, in Spearfish, South Dakota.
Two hundred soldiers from General Rommel's Africa Corp were detained from fall,1944
through summer,1945 at Fort Meade, South Dakota. These predominately older men (Hitler's younger troops were engaged on the
European front) worked the sugar beet fields around the town of Belle Fourche. Their construction
talents were used to restore Fort Meade's decaying buildings.
"Poker Alice," born Alice Ivers on February 17, 1853 in Devonshire, England, has become a
Deadwood legend. A gambler, bootlegger, and madam, Alice is still represented in Deadwood's "Days
of '76" parade.
![[NetNanny -- Who controls the net? You do!]](sdnetnanny.gif)
