Rapid City is a city in South Dakota, United States, and the county seat of Pennington County. It is the second most populous city in the state, after Sioux Falls. It is located on the eastern slope of the Black Hills in western South Dakota and was named after Rapid Creek, where the settlement developed. The population was 74,703 as of the 2020 census.
The Mount Rushmore National Memorial is a national memorial centered on a colossal sculpture carved into the granite face of Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills near Keystone, South Dakota, United States. Sculptor Gutzon Borglum designed the sculpture, called Shrine of Democracy, and oversaw the project's execution from 1927 to 1941 with the help of his son, Lincoln Borglum. The sculpture features the 60-foot-tall (18 m) heads of four United States presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln, chosen to represent the nation's birth, growth, development, and preservation, respectively. Mount Rushmore attracts more than two million visitors annually to the memorial park which covers 1,278 acres. The mountain's elevation is 5,725 feet (1,745 m) above sea level.
Smokey Bear is an American campaign and advertising icon of the U.S. Forest Service in the Wildfire Prevention Campaign, which is the longest-running public service announcement campaign in United States history. The Ad Council, the Forest Service, and the National Association of State Foresters, in partnership with creative agency FCB, employ Smokey Bear to educate the public about the dangers of unplanned human-caused wildfires.
The Mann Gulch fire was a wildfire reported on August 5, 1949, in a gulch located along the upper Missouri River in the Gates of the Mountains Wilderness, Helena National Forest, in the U.S. state of Montana. A team of 15 smokejumpers parachuted into the area on the afternoon of August 5, 1949, to fight the fire, rendezvousing with a former smokejumper who was employed as a fire guard at the nearby campground and had been fighting the fire solo. As the team approached the fire to begin fighting it, unexpected high winds caused the fire to suddenly expand, cutting off the men's route and forcing them to flee uphill. During the next few minutes, a "blow-up" of the fire covered 3,000 acres (1,200 ha) in ten minutes, claiming the lives of 13 firefighters, including 12 of the smokejumpers. Only three of the smokejumpers survived. The fire would continue for five more days before being controlled.
The Great Fire of 1910 was a wildfire in the Inland Northwest region of the United States that in the summer of 1910 burned three million acres in North Idaho and Western Montana, with extensions into Eastern Washington and Southeast British Columbia. The area burned included large parts of the Bitterroot, Cabinet, Clearwater, Coeur d'Alene, Flathead, Kaniksu, Kootenai, Lewis and Clark, Lolo, and St. Joe national forests. The fire burned over two days on the weekend of August 20–21, after strong winds caused numerous smaller fires to combine into a firestorm of unprecedented size. It killed 87 people, mostly firefighters, destroyed numerous manmade structures, including several entire towns, and burned more than three million acres of forest with an estimated billion dollars' worth of timber lost. While the exact cause of the fire is often debated, according to various U.S. Forest Service sources, the primary cause of the Big Burn was a combination of severe drought and a series of lightning storms that ignited hundreds of small fires across the Northern Rockies. However, the ignition sources also include human activity such as railroads, homesteaders, and loggers. It is believed to be the largest, although not the deadliest, forest fire in U.S. history.
Black Hills National Forest is located in southwestern South Dakota and northeastern Wyoming, United States. The forest has an area of over 1.25 million acres (5,066 km2) and is managed by the Forest Service. Forest headquarters are located in Custer, South Dakota. There are local ranger district offices in Custer, Rapid City, and Spearfish in South Dakota, and in Sundance, Wyoming.
Schurz Communications, Inc. is an American broadband media group and cloud services provider based in South Bend, Indiana. It previously owned newspapers and television stations.
The Yellowstone fires of 1988 collectively formed the largest wildfire in the recorded history of Yellowstone National Park in the United States. Starting as many smaller individual fires, the flames quickly spread out of control due to drought conditions and increasing winds, combining into several large conflagrations which burned for several months. The fires almost destroyed two major visitor destinations and, on September 8, 1988, the entire park was closed to all non-emergency personnel for the first time in its history. Only the arrival of cool and moist weather in the late autumn brought the fires to an end. A total of 793,880 acres (3,213 km2), or 36 percent of the park, burned at varying levels of severity.
The Black Hills is an isolated mountain range rising from the Great Plains of North America in western South Dakota and extending into Wyoming, United States. Black Elk Peak, which rises to 7,242 feet (2,207 m), is the range's highest summit. The name of the range in Lakota is Pahá Sápa. It encompasses the Black Hills National Forest. It formed as a result of an upwarping of ancient rock, after which the removal of the higher portions of the mountain mass by stream erosion produced the present-day topography. The hills are so called because of their dark appearance from a distance, as they are covered in evergreen trees.
The Station Fire was the largest wildfire of the 2009 California wildfire season, as well as the largest wildfire in the history of Los Angeles County. It burned in the Angeles National Forest, igniting on August 26, 2009, near the U.S. Forest Service Angeles Station 11 ranger station on the Angeles Crest Highway, and burned through October 16. It threatened 12,000 structures in the National Forest and the nearby communities of La Cañada Flintridge, Pasadena, Glendale, Acton, La Crescenta, Juniper Hills, Littlerock and Altadena, as well as the Sunland and Tujunga neighborhoods of the City of Los Angeles. Many of these areas faced mandatory evacuations as the flames drew near, but as of September 6, all evacuation orders were lifted. The Station Fire burned on the slopes of Mount Wilson, threatening numerous television, radio and cellular telephone antennas on the summit, as well as the Mount Wilson Observatory, which includes several historically significant telescopes and multimillion-dollar astronomical facilities operated by UCLA, USC, UC Berkeley and Georgia State University.
On August 18, 1937, a lightning strike started the Blackwater Fire in Shoshone National Forest, approximately 35 miles (56 km) west of Cody, Wyoming, United States. Fifteen firefighters were killed by the forest fire when a dry weather front caused the winds to suddenly increase and change direction. The fire quickly spread into dense forest, creating spot fires that trapped some of the firefighters in a firestorm. Nine firefighters died during the fire and six more died shortly thereafter from severe burns and respiratory complications. Another 38 firefighters were injured. The fire killed more professional wildland firefighters in the U.S. than any other in the 103 years between the Great Fire of 1910 and the Yarnell Hill Fire in 2013.
The 2015 California wildfire season was a series of wildfires that burned across the state of California. By the end of 2015 a total of 8,745 fires were recorded, burning 893,362 acres (3,615 km2) across the state. Approximately 3,159 structures were damaged or destroyed by wildfires, and at least 7 fatalities were recorded.
The Frog Fire was a fatal fire that occurred during the 2015 California wildfire season that burned 4,863 acres (1,968 ha) of land in the Modoc National Forest. The fire was one of many fires that was started on July 30 during a lightning storm.
White Draw Fire was a wildfire in South Dakota, United States, that started on Friday, June 29, 2012. The fire burned a total area of 14 square miles, mainly the U.S. Forest Service land. The fire did not harm any civilian population or livestock; however, a military C-130 MAFFS air tanker crashed in the Black Hills during firefighting.
A Fireworks Celebration at Mount Rushmore held on July 3, 2020, was the first and only use of fireworks at Mount Rushmore since 2008. President Donald Trump spoke at the event, which was also attended by South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, host of Entertainment Tonight Mary Hart, First Lady Melania Trump and Trump's eldest son Donald Trump Jr.
The Jasper Fire was a wildfire that occurred between August 24 and September 25, 2000, in the Black Hills of South Dakota, United States. Burning a total of 83,508 acres across the southern hills, it is the largest wildfire in both state and Black Hills history. It burned over 90% of the total land area of Jewel Cave National Monument. As of 2024, efforts to replenish the natural vegetation inside the burn scar are still ongoing.
The Legion Lake Fire was a wildfire that occurred in December 2017 in the Black Hills of South Dakota, United States. It burned 53,875 acres (218.02 km2), making it the third-largest wildfire in South Dakota and Black Hills history. Custer State Park and Wind Cave National Park were particularly affected, and the fire disrupted the parks' wild bison and burro herds and other wildlife. The fire was later determined to have been caused by a tree knocking over a power line. Affected landowners later sued the telephone company, claiming negligence was to blame for the fire.
The McVey Fire was a wildfire that occurred in July 1939 in the Black Hills of South Dakota, United States. It burned 20,729 acres (8,389 ha) and is one of the largest fires in Black Hills history. After the fire, the United States Forest Service (USFS) accidentally planted thousands of acres of a non-native species of ponderosa pine inside the burn scar. In 2022, the USFS began replacing the trees.
