South Dakota, located in the north-central United States, has only 10 people per square mile, the highest ratio of sites-to-people in the Great Plains. South Dakotans’ ancestors include the Lakota people who followed the buffalo across the plains; German, Norwegian, and Czechoslovakian immigrants; miners who looked for gold; and farmers and ranchers who endlessly worked the land.

This state has a rich and varied history. South Dakota is home to the Sioux Nation of Plains Native Americans, which is made up of the Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota tribes. Names like Crazy Horse, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Calamity Jane, Sparky Anderson, George McGovern, Lewis and Clark, Wild Bill Hickok, and Sitting Bull represent the rich heritage of this state.

South Dakota has a diversity of commerce and resources such as farming, ranching, industry, lumbering, manufacturing, and mining. The chief crops are corn, oats, wheat, sunflowers, soybeans, and sorghum. The main source of income for the state is tourism. Until the early 1600s, the land was home to the Paleo, Arikara, Cheyenne, and Sioux Native Americans, whose descendants live in South Dakota today. In 1868, the Fort Laramie Treaty was signed, which led to the Great Sioux Reservation (which occupies nearly all of present-day South Dakota). However, gold was discovered in the Black Hills in 1874 and, by the end of the nineteenth century, thousands of European and American pioneers moved into the region and their dreams clashed with those of the Native Americans. They built fences and towns, and both the Native American culture and the great herds of buffalo were confined and diminished.

Today, South Dakota offers visitors a variety of spectacular sites, including the forested granite caves of the Black Hills, the glacial lakes of the nor theast, the colossal Mt Rushmore, the Crazy Horse Memorial, the Badlands, the National Caves, state parks, and buffalo roundups.