The Most Interesting Geographic Region Where You'd NEVER Expect it

America is home to hundreds, if not thousands, of interesting and beautiful areas. What I love most about this country is that you can have a nice weekend in Yosemite National Park in California, or Watertown, New York, probably. I haven't spent a ton of time there besides driving through, but I'm sure it's nice. See, look, this looks cool, right? Either way, we can find fascinating quirks and tidbits even in obscure areas of the country. Western South Dakota is a good example of this. You probably know a thing or two about this area, from Mount Rushmore to the Badlands, but don't you think it's kind of weird that they exist? There's a crazy influx of weird and interesting things in such a random area, so today I wanted to attempt to assess that. But before we continue, yet again, I'm taking a nap on company time thanks to Manta Sleep, who sponsored this video. Personally, I genuinely can't nap, I've just never been able to, but this timelapse is real proof that this changes things for me. Mine comes with Bluetooth so I can listen to podcasts to fall asleep. It's very comfortable, especially laying on your side. It's easy to put on, adjust, and just incredibly high quality. You get that premium feel that can really help out your sleep. It can also be really useful for sleeping on planes, trains, or cars. In fact, I took one of the best 3 hour naps of my life in a car on a recent trip because of the mask. It's the best quality sleep mask you're gonna get. If you visit the Manta Sleep website today and use code BEAVER, you can get 10% off your order. I highly encourage you to check them out as it's a really nice product. Thank you Manta Sleep! So, there's two main points of interest here, that being the Black Hills and Badlands. If this were in the middle of the Rockies, it would be a bit less weird. But we're 200 miles from the real Rockies, because I'm not counting the bighorns, so it is naturally cut off. And that feels like the first thing to answer. How'd both of these geographic features get here? Well beginning with the Black Hills, they formed when the flat lands experienced uplift. Deep crust then pushed to the top and was exposed. This happened around the same time as the Rockies were growing, but importantly it is completely separate. So draw a line people, Rockies, Great Plains, then Black Hills. With that uplift, the oldest and most interesting rocks are exposed in the middle. You know the spire type things we see in the Black Hills and are iconic to the region? This rocky feature is that extremely old and formerly buried granite. It already looked like this down underground, so now here we are. Since the uplift was dome-like, we can see this on satellite imagery. It looks like an oval, right? A dome. You also have these barrier island-esque mounds at the very edge of the hills. And this is the newest rocks and signals another change in geology. They're called the Black Hills because of the tree coverage, which I guess made them seem black. It's not the best assessment of color I've ever seen, but I think we already decided a lot of the old settlers in this area were pretty dumb. An important aspect of this area that I wanted to put out there is the indigenous history. The area was extremely important and sacred to the Lakota tribe, which brings up a ton of controversy. Now I'm not educated enough on this to teach you guys, so go look it up or something, because it is an important topic. Now the Badlands, on the other hand, formed from a former inland sea that also created the Ogallala Aquifer. There's a connection for ya. The inland sea disappeared, but much of the sediment remained here. This area specifically has the perfect environment then for erosion, and so this sandy sediment has simply slowly been eroded. Say that ten times fast. And this created tiny canyons, but kept the general landscape. And so here we are with basically a massive beach that you can go mess around on and spend some time. So those are the two main features, but this area has a really nice tourism industry going, even though neither of these things are that crazy compared to what else the country may have to offer. I think it begins with this being a popular drive-thru state. Looking at the bordering states, North Dakota has the least amount of people driving through it of any lower 48 state, and Nebraska and Kansas both don't really do much to help your average driver stay attentive. I think South Dakota realized there's pretty much nothing here between Wisconsin and Butte, Montana, so they took it into their hands to solve this issue. There's four big ones in the Black Hills that make this a decent trip on its own. And the first part of that is Mount Rushmore. Now, being fully real here, Mount Rushmore doesn't do it for me. I've been there probably twice, and it just doesn't really do it for more than 10 minutes. You see it, and then you leave. Plus, I think it's been under construction for probably the last 20 years. If you've been there, you know what I'm talking about. Either way, you know what's way cooler? Everything else. I mean, go south from there, and you'll immediately see maybe America's most enjoyable road. I don't know who the designer was of this, but they decided the best way to get up steep hills was just by building loop-de-loops. They're awesome. You've got one here, one here, and one here. Between that, the road separates from itself, and it does this in two different locations. One road in each direction. Apart from that road, we have Custer State Park, which I would argue could definitely reach National Park status. It's on that level with things like Sylvan Lake, among others. There's also more cut-off areas within the Black Hills National Forest if you don't like people. Bring a jeep and a tent, I'm sure you'll have a good weekend. Another geological feature that brings us into Wyoming is Devil's Tower. This fascinating beaut is in the Black Hills, and it's another decent place to stop for a while, since it's such a pretty area. I'm also a big fan of the town of Sundance, Wyoming. Really pretty area. And shout out Wind Cave, too. The whole area is limestone, which is very friendly for caves, and it has to be pretty cool since it's one of the three cave-related national parks, the other two being Mammoth Cave in Kentucky and Carlsbad Cavern in New Mexico. Now, we are very far into this video without me mentioning the interesting cities, and you know I love my cities. Wall, South Dakota is a city of 699 residents, but if you're within 500 miles of it, you've probably seen a billboard for Wall Drug. The roadside attraction is how Wall created a name for itself, and personally, I'm all for the idea of these roadside attractions, because it definitely gave Wall some direction. New Underwood down the road has basically the same population, but nobody cares about New Underwood. I don't see New Underwood Drug being a big thing, that's a win if you ask me. Past Rapid City, we have Sturgis, home to the Motorcycle Museum and Hall of Fame. It's a pretty hip city, home to several other festivals, and you do notice the amount of motorcycles in this region almost fully because of this city. Finally, the economic heart of this entire region is Rapid City, South Dakota. The metropolitan area has a population of 156,000, and I do absolutely love this metropolitan area. It's currently experiencing some pretty crazy growth, the 2024 estimate shows a 12.3% growth over 4 years, and I saw this while driving through recently. The development in this specific area is pretty crazy. It's mostly commercial, but we see some new subdivisions going up too. It's a very attractive size, pause, but this goes into it now just starting to really hit its stride in growth. We also have Ellsworth Air Force Base to the northeast, with a population of around 8,000 active military personnel. You also get my overall aviation thoughts here, because Rapid City's regional airport is very small for an area in which tourism is a main economy, and people are coming to visit. Sure, it's the second busiest airport in South Dakota, with around 400,000 employments per year, but that's also less than just the international flights coming out of Nashville, which is around 600,000. I'm not personally sure if that's a good comparison, but it feels like it's smaller than it should be is what I'm trying to get across here. Western South Dakota is also home to several Indian reservations. The first and most important is the Pine Ridge Reservation, home to Oglala Lakotas, and the Rosebud Reservation next to it is home to the Sioux Tribe. You also have the Cheyenne River and Standing Rock Reservations, but I mostly want to focus on the Pine Ridge, since this is known as one of the most impoverished places in the country, with a per capita income of $36,000. The area is in rough shape. They inherited a poor economic and physical starting point after a history of federal land loss and policy, and putting that together with the remote location, and the absence of any economic stimulation, you've got a tough situation. Finally, just a few more things I wanted to highlight here. This entire route through South Dakota is so oriented towards people driving. Obviously, we have Waldrug and Sturgis, which I mentioned, but there's also the 1880 Town, a Wild West recreation just off the highway. Then you have the Badlands Ranch Store, Prairie Dog Town, and World's Largest Prairie Dog, which for whatever reason, is also shoved in your face on billboards for like 100 miles. I personally, no disrespect, would argue this prairie dog is not large enough to be advertised as anything cool. Look guys, it's the largest globe in the world, with one Lego Lightning McQueen, and exactly two glow in the dark Teenie Mates on top of it. Whoa! Woo! In the east, we obviously have the Corn Palace, which you all know and love, and there's a few other ones. They do very good at this here in South Dakota. Also, Interior is an interesting railroad town that I find funny because of its totally random location. I didn't know when to say that, so I'm just including it here. All in all, the region hits well above its weight when it comes to interesting geography and development. I'm sure it all comes together interestingly because of its location in the country. Something I didn't mention is that this is the geographic center of the nation. That's literally a monument in Belfort. People drive through here all the time, and it's far enough from the mountains that people want to stop here, and I-90 is a popular cross-country route that people do use. So with all this being said, it ends up being a perfect area for all these beautiful geographic oddities. Thanks for watching. Thank you so much to the members this week, I appreciate you guys so much. If you want to become a member, the link is down in the description below. All the money goes straight into my savings, so if you want to help me out as a person, this is the best way to do it. Also, make sure to subscribe if you made it this far in the video. Thank you!