I went biking and trail-running yesterday. I rode up Spearfish Canyon to the Iron Creek trailhead. I parked the bike by a tree and jogged uphill... and uphill... and past some cows... and more uphill.
Even though I knew the return would be all downhill, I was concerned about getting lost and burning up all my Pop-Tart energy. I considered turning back. Then I decided to take just a few more steps, another half-mile. What might I find?
Oh, that.
And that.
Sometimes you run four miles uphill and get blisters. Sometimes you get a great view. This loop of the Red Lake Trail led me to a spectacular view from the edge of a cliff.
I could hear the Little Spearfish Creek rushing below... about 600 feet below me. Roughlock Falls was less than a half mile away. Here's a video pan from cliff's edge:
Breathe deeply. Smell the pines. Scan that far horizon. Feel that sun a couple thousand feet closer. Then watch your step, get back on that trail, and run some more!
I can hardly wait to see some of that scenery. Are there bears and snakes in that area? Sounds like Spearfish and looks like the area is fantastic. Hope you enjoy each new thing you see and do there.
Ruth,
I've lived here for seven years. Never heard of any bears up here. Certainly not any grizzlies. We have some mountain lions and a few timber rattlers, and a heck of a lot of deer. However, statistically, the lions and snakes represent a minimal threat. (If you really want to worry about a natural-source danger, you might try lightning.)
...or falling off a cliff!
I'll second Stan's observation: no bears. General Custer and his scout did shoot a grizzly down by Nahant on today's Mickelson Trail during the 1874 expedition.
While your pictures and video are nice, they don't do the area justice. You have to be there to truly enjoy it
[CAH: True, that!]
Hey, just did that canyon thing (in the car) this morning on the way back from CA. Nice. Spearfish seems like a great town. Noticed they have a Common Grounds coffee shop. A Walgreens, a Safeway. Their historic downtown is coming alive. Lots of road work going on. Clean town with energy!
John! I hope your trip went well! Send pictures! :-)
Indeed, Spearfish does feel energized. Perhaps that's the feeling of a century of population growth momentum: since 1910, Spearfish has seen double-digit percentage population growth in every decade. The last time Madison saw double-digit percentage population growth was the 1960s.
You are right about Spearfish, but if you like it now you would have loved it forty years ago. Smaller, everybody knew each other and their kids, and booming.
It was first and foremost a tourist town promoting not only the scenery, but also the Passion Play. When it finally shut down you could feel the air leaking out of the town itself.
It gave everyone something to do on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursday nights. I even got in on the fun once in a while when I would go visit my Collins cousins. Joseff Meier ruled with an iron fist but it still gave people enough time to get into trouble while you weren't on stage. I can remember running down Golgotha and not going strictly by the script. It seems like “crucify him crucify him, string him up†was looked on poorly by the boss.
It was a very different experience both watching and being in the play.If you were going to be in the play you had to go by two women setting at a table just inside the back of the grounds. They would ask what church you represented and then put a mark by that churches name. At the end of the summer the churches got money for however many marks they got in the big book. If you said you were an atheist, it threw a monkey wrench into the whole thing for a minute or so, and there were a few of those.
The only pay you got was free food at the cafeteria, but that was ok with most of the kids that went there. I might add that this one event in Spearfish kept the kids off the streets for at least four nights a week and that in turn meant very little mischief in town.
I got to play in crowd scenes', I was a roman guard a couple of times, I herded sheep once and led a camel once.
It was a love hate relationship that the town had with the Passion Play. On the one hand the town survived because of the play and there were many businesses that made a pile of money form it. On the other hand Joseff Meier thought of himself as God and pretty much told the rest of the town what it could do and when it could do it.
There are several places that you still need to go to truly be a Fisherite. Lookout Mountain, Crow Peak, the fish hatchery, the old opry house on main street, and the park pavilion. The last two are great places to see what Spearfish was like many many years ago.
Progress is great but it always comes at a cost. From the sleepy little college town of yesterday to the present where you either get out of the way or get run over seems like a high price to pay for that progress. Most of the kids that I used to run around with are now in their fifties and sixties. You need to go to one of the local watering holes and find some of these people for a talk. It would make for some interesting listening.
The Blindman
Bill: the "park pavilion": which park?
Hatchery: lovely! I think I could bring my dad here, and he might just gaze at the trout all day. Lovely trails, engaging history, good volunteers (but oh! those invasive species! ;-) ).
You're right, Bill: I definitely need to connect with some of the long-timers to get a sense of the town's history. As my wife and I took our little one around the neighborhood for a walk, I noted how odd it is not to have personal knowledge of how the town has grown, how certain parts may have been open ground just 10 or 20 or 40 years ago. But until I can get down to the watering holes, please do keep telling me (and everyone else here!) your stories, Bill!
The Passion Play -- I saw that show once, back in 1987, during 4-H drama camp. We saw it two days before going down to the Black Hills Playhouse to see Jesus Christ Superstar... and the summer before I played Jesus in Godspell at MHS. That was quite a year of comparative dramaturgical theology!
Bill, Census data shows Spearfish's population growing pretty strongly every decade. The Passion Play closed down in 2008; do you think Spearfish's growth (pop, econ, cultural) has slowed since then? Have hunting, camping, other tourism caught up to fill that gap? Is there a market for a new Passion Play or some other such use of the grounds?
Cory I'm not going to say that the Passion Play had a big effect on the Spearfish economy by the time it closed. It did however change a town that had for years identified itself as the home of the Passion Play. By the time it closed its gates there were so many other things to do in and near town that its closing was just a blip in the history of what is well on its way to becoming a small city. Its loss was felt way more by the older generation then by those that have moved there or were born there in the last twenty years.
If you look at a map of Spearfish you will see that there is a Spearfish proper and then there is North Spearfish. What is now North Spearfish was known for a long time as the Lower Valley. My brother in law and my sister live just out of the Spearfish city limits and for years those that lived north of there fought the annexation efforts of the city. At that time north of the college there were huge truck gardens where now there are hundreds of houses. And that is just a small part of its growth.
The real growth of Spearfish lies outside of town in the housing developments that now spread more then ten miles from the town itself. Where the Holliday Inn is, there used to be nothing but that motel. And on the south side of I90 from there to the gulf course there was nothing except pasture land. Under Lookout Mountain there were just a couple of families that lived on the east side of the I , now it looks like several hundred call that part of town home.
Housing has always been a problem there. Even when I was in college you had to know someone to get a place to stay off campus, and it always came at a price. I see that part of Spearfish hasn’t changed much. What the rest of western South Dakota sees as high property taxes hasn’t slowed the growth any. People came from all over the US, and the world, and just didn’t ever leave. And why not, it has all the things that a much bigger city has without the hassle. Great shopping, good food, one of the best medical facilities in the state along with supporting staff, and a higher education system that has and continues to grow with the city and the times.
The park that I was talking about in my last post is on the south side of town right on the creek and I think it is still called Spearfish Park, but that might have changed. One of the things that I think I would like if I lived there now is the bike and running paths that you can get from just about any part of town to another. Forward thinking, progressive people had to be in charge for that to happen.
This is just an interesting side note. There are at least a dozen homes in Spearfish that only have people living in them for less then a month each year. That would be during the rally. The rest of the time a house keeper looks in once a month and then gets them ready just before people show up for the big party.
I still love the town but it isn't the warm fuzzy feeling that I used to get when I came to visit. Now I only get that feeling here on the ranch on Pass Creek.
The Blindman