Black Hills National Forest

The Black Hills National Forest spreads across more than 1.25 million acres of southwestern South Dakota and northeastern Wyoming — predominantly ponderosa pine, with granite peaks rising from surrounding Great Plains. Within it sits Black Elk Peak, the highest point east of the Rocky Mountains. The forest traces its origins to 1897, when President Grover Cleveland established it as a reserve following a series of devastating wildfires. The mountains had been sacred to indigenous peoples for thousands of years before that, and the land carries that weight still.