South Dakota

For thousands of years the Great Plains of what is now South Dakota were home to the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota Sioux nations, along with the Arikara, whose cultures were built around the vast buffalo herds that once roamed the grasslands. The 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty recognized Lakota claim to the Black Hills, but the 1874 discovery of gold there, in violation of that treaty, triggered a rush of settlers and conflict, including the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee.

South Dakota became the 40th state in 1889, its economy built on farming, ranching and mining. Between 1927 and 1941, sculptor Gutzon Borglum and hundreds of workers carved the faces of Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln into Mount Rushmore, a monument that remains both a national icon and, for many Lakota, a painful reminder of land taken without consent, a tension embodied nearby by the unfinished Crazy Horse Memorial.

Today the state's economy blends agriculture, tourism and a light-regulation financial sector centered in Sioux Falls. The Black Hills, Badlands National Park and Custer State Park's free-roaming bison herd draw travellers from across the continent, while roadside institutions like Wall Drug capture the enduring, slightly eccentric spirit of the northern Great Plains.