PIERRE, S.D. — From historical details of Native Americans’ final great wild buffalo hunts to tales of the species’ rescue from near extinction, a new self-guided tour across 10 sites in the western Dakotas tells the story of the last stand of the American bison, the national mammal.
The trail, accompanied by the tour book “Buffalo Trails in the Dakota Buttes” oriented toward history and nature enthusiasts, opens June 11. Starting in Hettinger, North Dakota, the route runs — at times across gravel or pasture roads — into South Dakota before returning north to see the Standing Rock Sioux’s tribal bison herds.
“They’re authentic places, and not only that, but most of them are unspoiled,” said Francie Berg, the tour book’s author. “There’s one place where it’s good to be able to roll under a fence.”
Tens of millions of bison, also known as buffalo, once thundered across a range from central Canada to the Great Plains and northern Mexico. After a century-long slaughter driven by hunting for buffalo pelts, the population dwindled to a thousand or fewer near the end of the 1800s.
