The Devil's Gulch

 In a rural town in South Dakota nestled between vast, rolling hills of farmland sits a small and very interesting city park that you would not expect to be there. 

 The Devils Gulch in Garretson, South Dakota is surprising with it's natural waterfall that was carved out by millions of years of water flow from Split Rock creek. The creek flows through the exposed mounds of red quartzite stone, a material that is over 1.5 billion years old and is some of the oldest stone in the world. Red quartzite was commonly used by Native Americans to carve ceremonial pipes and is commonly used in landscaping today. Garretson has a great town celebration each year called Jesse James Day to commemorate this small towns rich, Wild West history and remember the day that Jesse James and his horse jumped across the ravine of the Devils Gulch to outrun a posse that was on his tail. 

This town sits in the Coteau des Prairies which is a plateau about 200 miles in length and 100 miles wide rising from the prairie flatlands spanning across South Dakota, Minnesota, and Iowa.

 The plateau is made of glacial deposits and flattened from the Mountain sized Glaciers that travelled their way North. Pioneers settled in the area starting around 1865 in to the 1870s, greatly disrupting the Native’s that lived in the area, displacing the Lakota Sioux nation into reservations as time wore on. This area experienced a short rush when silver was found in Split Rock Creek but it ended quickly as the silver was found to be of poor quality. Climbers often are found on the quartzite formations, enjoying one of few zones in the area that you can experience natural rock climbing.

 Once you enter the Devils Gulch there is a palpable change in energy and the flowing water will prickle along your spine. As you trek the short and mildly steep path toward the bottom of the ravine to the water bank, its easy to become nearly speechless with the beauty of the towering stone walls. If you stand quietly and observe it is almost as if you can feel the print of the thousands of feet that have stepped there long before you, enjoying the serenity of the space, just as you are now. It is a beautiful oasis dropped in hundreds of miles of wetlands and prairie. It is easy to feel, for just a moment, that you are connecting with a deep history that goes back further than humans have been walking this planet. With places like this it’s easy to feel at one with nature. 

The moment you leave you are transported back to vast flatness and you cannot help but to appreciate them for the different kind of beauty that they are, to imagine long ago the mountains of ice that crept along the same dirt under your feet.   

This is a sweet little town and you can’t miss it. If you’re going through Sioux Falls or just passing through on I-90, take the path less travelled to this small town with rich history and beautiful geography.

Sincerely, Clover