Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary Tour

Our big adventure today was a two-hour bus tour of the Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary, which is owned and operated by IRAM, the Institute of Range and the American Mustang. We started out at 9:00 a.m. with our guide, Walter, and a tour group of 20 in an old school bus. Our tour took us in close quarters with several herds, including domesticated paints, wild mustangs, and Spanish mustangs.

Walter and Goldie, the bus

Walter points out the canyon below

The Visitor Center seen from an overlook--look closely and you'll see Venture.

Walter told us that we might see some of the other wildlife, too. We did see wild turkeys and prairie dogs, but fortunately no rattlesnakes or other snakes. We didn’t see any mountain lions or bobcats, either.

In addition to the horses, we saw a movie set where part of Crazy Horse was filmed. We missed the petroglyphs because last night’s storm tore up the road leading to them. Walter did an excellent job of guiding the bus along some very rough roads and even across the prairie to bring us up close and personal with the horses. Some of them were horses that had been prepared for sale but not purchased, so they had been worked with and gentled. The kids enjoyed petting them.

One unexpected part of the tour was a visit to a sacred Sun Dance site used by the Lakota Sioux and other participants from around the country. It overlooks the Cheyenne River in an area the Indians call “Four Rivers” because the river snakes around and flows north, south, east, and west in a short span.

From Walter’s description, the Sun Dance ceremony is a very intense ritual. Participants who wish to make a flesh and blood sacrifice pierce their chests with a sharpened bone fragment and then attach a rope to the bone. The rope is attached to the prayer tree, and participants dance in and out around the tree. On the final move outward, they do not stop, but instead continue until the bone has pulled out, taking with it some of their flesh.

Walter is an interesting young man. He was a student in Maryland, working two full-time jobs and studying biomedical engineering when he volunteered to come to the sanctuary to lead tours for three months. Two years later he is still here and is a permanent employee of the sanctuary, not only leading tours, but caring for the horses and doing general maintenance work. He likes the job because it’s never boring—he never does the same thing from one day to the next—and of course he is dedicated to the cause of allowing the horses to run free.


We haven’t got an Internet connection, but when we took our walk tonight, we did get a signal on the Droid up on the hill leading in, so I did get to read my email and check Facebook. Tomorrow we’ll head towards the Denver area. We hope to have a connection so we can make some plans and some phone calls.