A great stop for the entire family is the Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary, a nonprofit horse rescue just past the southern end of the Black Hills. If you’re going to be in the Black Hills more than a few days you’ll not want to miss this.
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While there you can see rescued horses from BLM lands throughout the west, where management of horse populations has been a controversial issue for decades, horses rescued from slaughterhouses or other owners, horses placed into retirement by their owners for a donation, as well as a herd of Spanish Horses (seen below) which are being raised to revive America’s oldest breed of modern horse.
We took the half day SUV tour with a private guide for about a hundred dollars each. If you can afford it, it’s well worth the money and proceeds support the nonprofit. On the tour, you see extensive areas of this beautiful ranch, which consists of thousands of acres on a landscape so picturesque it has been used in multiple films. Unlike the bus tour, on the private tours you can get out and see the horses up close – and they love to ham it up.
Many will come up to the cars to take a peek. You don’t feed them – that would probably train the horses into mobbing cars – but they seem interested nevertheless, perhaps due to occasional treats from the staff.
In one section of the property is a sandstone wall in which can be seen petroglyphs dating back thousands of years. There was a herd of mixed horses, rescues, wild horses, and happy military retiree, gathered there. First, the girls. This photo reminds me of the Chauvex cave in France, horses layered upon horses. Perhaps the world is really just horses all the way down.
The boyfriend of these ladies is Freedom, the military veteran below. He was an honor guard horse who retired here. Boy, does he have it made.
The sanctuary is truly a great place to see spectacular paint horses, and they’re everywhere. Flashes of white and black, profiles broken up by color. I read a while back that some animals use this type of coloring as camouflage - Zebras, or Tapirs, as two examples. Apparently some predators are looking for the outline of their juicy prey, but get confused by blocks of color. But to me the paint horses stood out like bright flags on the green hills.
This final image is of the stallion of the Spanish herd, just as he was running down his ladies, a large herd of brood mares. As far as I could tell he wanted to get them away from our SUV in case our SUV had any ideas. Stunning animal – I was glad I was safely behind the car door. These were the horses the Conquistadors rode, the first horses the Native Americans rode. The all seemed to carry a bit of their tumultuous history with them.
Travel tips: if you want the all day tour, reserve ahead. Though we had no trouble getting a spot two days in advance, you don’t want to be disappointed. Bring a bag lunch – the tour ends around lunchtime, and there’s not much in the way of concessions. They do, however, have a couple of nice picnic tables and a pleasant place to eat in the company of a very lazy cat. The gift shop is quite dangerous for horse lovers, with a well-chosen selection as well as books by the sanctuary’s founder, Dayton Hyde. My mother read several of them and enjoyed them immensely – great for animal lovers.
The Hot Springs area also features the Mammoth Site, another attraction well worth a visit for those interested in the science of ancient animals. The partially excavated pit contains remains of thousands of fantastical, but now extinct, creatures, including mammoths and others. Though we stayed far enough south (at Custer State Park) that we could make two separate trips for these attractions, those staying in Rapid City or closer to Rushmore might want to combine the trip.
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