Familier. Bairds. 2004. Black Hills

A small town on I-94 bears the name: Sundance - the movie: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid makes me think, if there is any relation - and there seems to be:

Harry Longbaugh (a.k.a. Sundance Kid), nicknamed possibly from Sundance, Wyoming, where he was caught as a horsethief
ref.: http://members.aol.com/Gibson0817/butch.htm

We are not going in that direction, coming from Cody we will be going more south through Newcastle to enter South Dakota via Custer.

From Wikipedia: The region [Black Hills] was considered sacred by the Native Americans of the plains. After the discovery of gold in the 1870s, the conflict over control of the region sparked the last major Indian Wars on the Great Plains. Following the defeat of the Sioux and their allies in 1876, the United States purchased the region. In 1877-8 thousands of miners went there, and in 1880 there had already sprung into existence three towns, Deadwood, Central City, and Leadville.

We have to see two sites:

Mount Rushmore National Memorial, located in Keystone, South Dakota, memorializes the birth, growth, preservation and development of the United States of America.
from www.nps.gov (public domain)
official link: http://www.nps.gov/moru/
Crazy Horse Memorial, located on hiway 16 between Custer and Hill City, is going to be the worlds largest sculpture
- carved right out of the mountain. See more photos from our visit here ..

But .. the most holy place for the Native Americans was Bear Butte, which is located right next to Sturgis. "Bear Butte Has Been Designated a Registered National Landmark under the provision of the Historic Sites Act of August 21, 1955 This site possesses exceptional value in illustrating the natural history of the United States U.S. Department of the Interior National Park Service 1965"
ref.: http://www.sacredland.org/black_hills.html

Sturgis is another place, which we might come by on our return to North Dakota. It is known for reunions or rallies of Harley Davidson motor cycles each year in august. Deadwood city could be interesting to visit, if time permits - since it is one of the gold cities of the Black Hills - nowadays more of a Las Vegas, as I understand it.