In the southwestern corner of South Dakota's wind-swept prairie are the Black Hills—those mineral-studded, green timbered mountains, and the nearby Badlands with their unearthly beauty of utter desolation. Our guided picture tour to this unique vacationland will begin at Rapid City, west of Chicago 900 miles. It is here that you cross that invisible line that marks, "Out Where the West Begins." The original of this life-sized dinosaur overlooking Rapid City once roamed through the Badlands.

VIEW-MASTER REEL ONE

(1) RAPID CITY, GATEWAY TO THE BLACK HILLS Rapid City, founded in 1876, was dubbed "Hay Camp," a place where gold-seekers stopped only long enough to feed their horses before rushing on to the Black Hills. It remained but a stopover for passers-by until 1927. That year President Coolidge visited the Hills and Sculptor Gutzon Borglum began the Mt. Rushmore Memorial. Throngs swarmed to the area to watch Borglum at work and to catch a glimpse of Silent Cal, discovering the wonders of the Hills. Today Rapid City annually plays host to almost 2 million people visiting this vacationland.

(2) MT. RUSHMORE MEMORIAL Imagine the awe of some future man a thousand centuries from now as he gazes up at the likenesses of Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Lincoln carved here on the 6,000-foot-high granite cliffs of Mt. Rushmore*. They will still be here, these giants of early American history, their faces eroded less than an inch. Borglum began his Shrine of Democracy in 1927, telephoning his instructions to his skilled workmen from his studio across the valley. These men suspended from the ledge like a pendulum on a giant clock, drilled, blasted, and chiseled out the features. Lincoln's face measures 60 feet from chin to hairline. His nose alone is longer than the entire face of Egypt's Sphinx; the twinkle in his eye is a 30-foot slab of granite. Built to the proportion of a man 465 feet tall, he would tower three feet above the 36-story Chicago Tribune Building!

3 BUFFALO AT CUSTER STATE PARK (D Iron Mt. Road, leading from Mt. Rushmore into Custer State Park, passes over two pigtail bridges, the second one is 1111: claimed to be the longest spiral bridge in America. Each curve passes over the last one, winding upward and upward. Once upon a time over 50 million bison covered America's plains like one giant buffalo robe. Then came the hide hunters and by 1900 less than a thousand survived. Today 1,200 old monarchs of the plains feed the year 'round in the Buffalo Pastures in Custer State Park. With a mighty swing of his head, the buffalo, in winter, sweeps away as much as 30 inches of winter snow to uncover the pasture grass.

(4) FRIENDLY DONKEYS IN CUSTER STATE PARK These burros aren't gossiping with the tourists. They are panhandling for food! Some of their "kissing kin" are still the prospector's beast of burden, trudging through the Hills loaded down with mining gear. This band heard how easy the bears had it in Yellowstone Park. Now they operate the same tourist attraction on Iron Mt. Road. Gold was discovered in the Black Hills, in 1874, just west of Custer State Park, at French Creek. ETC ETC