South Dakota

If you imagine South Dakota as a dry and dusty plains state, you are partly right, says author John Milton in this gracefully written history. But the image of flat, barren prairies fails to convey other qualities that have lured people there—the cool fragrance of the pine-covered Black Hills, the grand sweep of sky and earth on the prairie. Gold sparked the major migration of white settlers to the Dakota Territory a century ago, but for South Dakota, grass proved to be the real bonanza. Today more and more Americans are coming to understand the almost mystical appeal of the horizon and the primitive pull of the earth that make South Dakota one of the few remaining places where the individual can enjoy real isolation and a sense of standing apart from the crowd.