July 5 - Keystone SD

Keystone, SD was a mining town in the late 1800's.  Again, the setting is in a narrow valley surrounded by the Black Hills. The Carrie Ingalls (Little House on the Prairie) taught school here for 35 years and Mary Ingalls moved here after their mother died. See pictures below.   The school is now a museum, but unfortunately, we did not see it started to rain so we headed home.

Streams are everywhere here.

When we took the train ride, we rode it from Hill City to Keystone and back again.  This is the train station in Keystone.

Again, businesses and homes are built with the hills behind them.

Laura Ingalls is the one that actually wrote the "Little House" books

Wood carvings done with a chain saw

Borglum designed and sculpted the monuments

At the gold mine  they load dirt from the streams so you can pan for gold.

She found a small piece of gold.

You can see the monuments from Keystone.  We were getting smoke from the Canadian fires so could not see them very well.