Another Drive Out Into The Badlands 7/21/2010

This morning we decided to have a fairly quiet day because yesterday was a long day so we just hung around the coach until about 11:00 then decided to take another drive out into the Badlands on a PAVED road this time to get some different looks at it. We drove about 12 or 13 miles and did run across some beautiful landscape as you can see by the pictures. We also came upon a small Indian reservation called The Red Shirt.


Red Shirt is a small unincorporated Oglala Lakota village southeast of Hermosa in Shannon County, South Dakota, United States. It is on the Pine Ridge Reservation, just outside Badlands National Park.
Red Shirt is located just past the east end of SD 40, which becomes BIA Highway 41 at the bridge over the Cheyenne River (boundary between Custer County and Shannon County and of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The built-up area of the community, including Red Shirt School, is located on the flats of the valley of the Cheyenne River, below the north end of Red Shirt Table, a prominent feature of the landscape of northwestern Shannon County.
Red Shirt, as are many Oglala and Lakota communities, was named for the chief (Red Shirt, Ogle Luta, ?-1925) whose band settled in the area in the late 1870s.
In 2009, the village consisted of approximately 23 houses (including some mobile homes) in two clusters (Upper and Lower Red Shirt), the Red Shirt School (both the modern (constructed 2005-2008) school with two large domes, and the older school buildings), a dance ring, sports fields, several community buildings, and a sewage plant. As the community is the closest on Pine Ridge Reservation to Rapid City, it is a desirable place to live as it offers a relatively easy year-round commute. Red Shirt is the last community (that is, at the end of the pipeline) served by the massive Mni Wiconi water project which pumps water from the Missouri River near Fort Pierre, South Dakota up to the Rosebud and Pine Ridge Reservations. The village is located near the Cheyenne River but outside the Special Flood Hazard Area (100-year floodplain) of the river.
Red Shirt School is part of the Shannon County School District, and is an elementary school, but also is a campus/coordinating/test center for the Shannon County Virtual High School (SCVHS), which provides instruction via internet and is the only public high school located on the Pine Ridge Reservation.


After we turned around and headed back we did pull off on a dirt road and drove in to some of the rock formations so I could take a look and see if I could find any fossils or agates which are very prevalent here in the Badlands. Well no fossils but I did find a few agates and some other very lovely rocks. Then after I was done wandering around the buttes it was back to the coach for the afternoon. Well that's about all from South Dakota for today so until tomorrow we love and miss you all. Mom & Dad Dori & Dick