Custer State Park is famous for its scenic drives, free-roaming wildlife, and impressively pointy geology. This might not be where you’d expect to find one of the longest-running summer theater companies in the United States, but there it is – tucked unpretentiously off Needles Highway.

The Black Hills Playhouse was established in 1946 by a professor at the University of South Dakota. He moved his company into buildings which had originally been constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1933. Since then, there have been numerous updates and improvements made to the facilities, which now host a world-class theater company composed of people from all over the country.

This year’s season looks to be wonderful, but there’s something extra special in the line-up for lovers of history and the Black Hills: the first production of the summer will be “Dreams Carved In Stone,” an original play by Ric Averill which tells the story both of Korczak Ziolkowski, sculptor of Crazy Horse, and of Crazy Horse himself. The play will incorporate traditional Lakota music and dance, including hoop dancing by Dallas Chief Eagle, one of the nation’s best hoop dancers.

“What audiences can expect to see,” said Nancy Halverson, director of the play, “is a show that celebrates the accomplishments of the Lakota warrior, Crazy Horse, and the artistic accomplishments of Korczak Ziolkowski.” She hopes the play will inspire audiences to give some thought to their own dreams and passions.

Other productions in the summer season will include “Urinetown,” “Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” “Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure,” and “The Boys Next Door.”

I have never been shy about tooting my own horn. I don’t think my ego is out of control, mind you, but if I’ve done something that I’m proud of, I want other people to know about it.

You may have noticed that I haven’t put up many posts here lately (oops, there’s the ego), and that is because I have been spending every free moment wrapped in a babushka and apron, learning to sing “Matchmaker, Matchmaker.” That’s right, Fiddler on the Roof is almost here, and it is going to be wonderful.

The production is the result of a huge collaborative effort of people from all over the Black Hills, including Lead, Deadwood, Spearfish, Sturgis, Rapid City, and probably several I’m forgetting. There are 48 people in the cast, ranging in ages from 5 to 80, plus a 5-member orchestra who are doing an amazing job keeping us in line. We have a students of all ages, professionals from all over the Hills, a former state senator, and I hear a rumor there might even be some chickens.

The point is, this group of people has worked very hard on this show, and it is going to be amazing. Being the first community theater production to be staged at the Homestake Opera House since it burned down in 1984, it is also a significant milestone for the restoration efforts being made there.

If you live in the area, we hope you’ll be able to stop by to support your friends and family. If you’re visiting from somewhere else, you should also come and see the amazing production we were able to put together, not to mention the amazing opera house where it will be produced. Shows are Friday and Saturday evenings plus a Sunday matinées this weekend and next. You can reserve your tickets online or call 1-800-344-5122.

If you come, I’ll try extra hard not to fall off my bench.

As promised in my previous post, here are some examples of posters that advertised different shows at the Homestake Opera House in its early days.

In our image-enriched lives, we look at these posters and think they’re not much to look at. We’re used to explosive color and clever graphics to catch our attention and suck us in. These posters deserve a closer look, however. The descriptions of the productions are definitely worth a second glance. If I was a bored citizen of the early 1900s, I’d have been terribly excited.

Take the first poster up there, for example. It advertises a play called “Better Times.” To begin with, the play was presented by the “The Mammoth Home Talent Minstrel Show.” What a name! Does “Mammoth” refer to the city? To the size of the company? To the amount of talent? A clever choice of wording, regardless. And better yet, they boast that their show has “Catchy songs, the kind you can whistle,” and “Latest in clog and fancy dancing,” not to mention “Electical effects” and “Correct costumes.”

Next we have the play “Partners.” This original show was produced in 1916 and set in the Black Hills themselves. I must let the playbill speak for itself:

In those strange days, people coming from God knows where, joined forces in the Black Hills, and according to the custom of the camp, their very names were soon lost and unrecorded, and here they struggled, laughed, gambled, loved and worked out their strange destinies in a manner incredible to us of today. Of one thing only are we sure – THEY LIVED. You will find in the play of “PARTNERS” living, breathing scenes, and what can be accomplished in this glorious climate of THE BLACK HILLS. It’s a Howler – You Bet!

You bet! And I love the bit about “in a manner incredible to us of today.” 1916 doesn’t seem like it was that long after the gold rush days, though a little math helped me realize it was actually 40 years. Though I can imagine talking about the ’60s or ’70s that way, I bet my parents couldn’t. In any case, this “original comedy dramatic romance” was sure to be a hit.

And then we have Mr. Chaplin. Between live performances, the Opera House functioned as a movie theater. The original showing of this movie was in 1926, and it was reprised in the 1980s as Lead brought a little of the past back to the present.

And finally, I’m happy to announce that I have landed the staring role in the upcoming production of “Fiddle on the Roof.” Okay okay, not exactly the staring role, but I got a good part. You should all stop by and see! First two weekends in May. I’ll save you seats.

Last night, I went up to Lead to audition for Fiddler on the Roof. The Historic Lead Deadwood Arts Council is putting on the production, directed by a woman from Pierre who is remarkably talented at coaxing talent out of small communities. Auditions were held (and the production will be) at the Homestake Opera House.

Until a couple years ago, I didn’t even know Lead had an Opera House. I thought of Opera Houses as being big city commodities; I thought of Lead as being a grubby mining community whose entertainment venues were much more likely to include bars and dance halls.

Then I realized I was blaming Lead for what I know of Deadwood’s habits during its early mining camp days. With establishments such as the Gem Theater providing the most notorious sorts of entertainment, who would expect something as high-brow as an Opera House to pop up?

In fact, the Opera House did not appear until 1914, more than a decade after the Gem (and most of the rest of Deadwood’s original buildings) had been reduced to ashes, and after both towns had begun to settle in as respectable communities. The construction of the Opera House was the idea of Phoebe Apperson Hearst, whose late husband, George Hearst, had grown very wealthy through mining ventures, including the Homestake Mine. The Opera House, along with an attached recreation center, was to be a gift from Homestake Mining Company to the people of Lead.

Through its life, the Opera House put on operas, vaudeville shows, movies, and even boxing matches. In 1984, it was badly damaged by a fire. Work is still progressing as the community attempts to restore it to its original grandeur. They’ve made a remarkable amount of progress, and even with certain things (such as the box seats inside the theater proper) still in skeletal form, you can easily tell that when the work is finished, the building will be beautiful.

And it sounds like Fiddler will be the first show to happen inside the theater since the fire, nearly a quarter-century ago. I can’t wait to see how it goes. You’re all invited!

In the meanwhile, stop back tomorrow and I’ll put up some info taken from production posters throughout the Opera House’s history. There’s some great stuff in there.

Love chocolate? So do I, in case my quest for the perfect hot chocolate wasn’t enough indication. Today’s chocolate report, however, is about truffles – “obscenely good” truffles, no less.

Located on the outer edge of Deadwood, as you head through town up toward Lead, Chubby Chipmunk Chocolates is a chocolate-lover’s dream come true. No polite, demure, uniformly-sized chocolates these, but lopsided monsters in festive garb. You wonder, looking at these chocolates, if they can possible be more fun to eat than they are to look at and the answer, amazingly, is yes!

In addition to all the flavors you might expect to find in a truffle shop (buttercream, toffee, raspberry), there are house specialties such as the “Hot Mama,” a dark chocolate truffle with habanera, jalapeno, and cayenne pepper, or the white chocolate Key Lime and Lemon Meringue. I am drooling just thinking about this.

Even Rachel Ray was impressed. On a trip through the Black Hills to film an episode of $40 A Day, one of her crew folk stopped in at the Chubby Chipmunk and was so impressed that the little shop made it into Every Day With Rachel Ray. A fine compliment indeed! But trust me when I tell you that you don’t want to take my word for it. If you have any excuse at all to stop by and try one of these truffles for yourself, do it. Sizing in slightly larger than golfballs, you can even share – IF you have the self-control.

Today, the South Dakota Tourism website was featured on IgoUgo.com’s travel blog. In an entry titled “Top Ten State Tourism Sites,” our tourism website was lauded for its wonderful Trip Planner and fascinating Fuel Facts. And (last but certainly not least!) our very own Black Hills Travel Blog got a nod. Thank you, thank you!

IgoUgo is a travel site devoted to reviews and recommendations made by their users. Their goal is to provide information from “real” people (as opposed to Zombies or people who maybe never even visited the places they’re reviewing). In this, we have a similar mission here and are doubly pleased to have them recognize us as a worthwhile source of information.

Running a little behind with your Valentines plans? Here is a list of some of the great restaurants around the Black Hills to help you set hit the right note with your sweetie. I can’t promise you’ll be able to get reservations at any of the restaurants by Thursday, but maybe this will give you a few tips for your next hot date.

Candle-Lit Dining: Think Outside the Chains

1. Enigma, Rapid City: They have a mouth-watering Chateaubriand for two, or if you’re feeling adventurous, you can try the Mystery Dinner – a chef prepared special created just for you.
2. Alpine Inn, Hill City: For dinner, you can order one of two menu items: Steak, or Big Steak. The salad comes in a wedge and the potatoes only come baked, but I’d be willing to give the Alpine Inn the award for being the steak authorities of the Hills.
3. Jakes, Deadwood: Located at the top of the Midnight Star, Jakes has tons of ambiance and the waiters wear towels over their arms. Live piano music and an impressive wine list round out a wholly elegant (and delicious) dining experience.
4. Latchstring, Spearfish Canyon: Situated in one of the most beautiful locations in the Hills, the Latchstring is also one of the oldest restaurants in the area.

I could actually go on and on. We have an amazing variety of wonderful restaurants around here, covering most of the major ethnic options (Chinese, Italian, Mexican, French, Steakhouse) – (what? Stakehouse is ethnic… American. ) and a few more obscure options, such as Indian (American and Asian) and Thai. We have great burger joints and sandwich shops and even a really good soup joint or two. Stay tuned for more suggestions!

Imagine: there used to be a time when people in one part of the world didn’t know a thing about what was going on in other parts of the world. News came by word of mouth, and for big city folk, news of happenings on the expanding Western frontier was exciting and exotic.

In 1904, the world at large got one of its first tastes of life in the Wild West when a photographic display called “Scenes in the Black Hills” was presented at the St. Louis World’s Fair. The display, featuring “mammoth glass plate transparencies” (really big glass plates with a tinted photographic images imposed on them) was created by the Detroit Photographic Company. They, like vendors at fairs today, were showing off to impress the masses. I suspect they succeeded.

Many of the scenes featured in the glass plates were photographs taken by a man named Clarence S. Jackson, who was commissioned by the Burlington & Missouri Railroad Company to take photos of scenes along the rail route. The black and white photos were then enlarged, transferred to glass plates and hand tinted.

On February 13th, the transparencies featuring Deadwood scenes will once again be unveiled, this time by the Deadwood Historic Preservation Committee. Though the transparencies were returned to Deadwood shortly after the 1904 World Fair, they faded into the background until 2005, when they were donated back to the City. Since then, the transparencies have been cleaned, restored, and duplicated.

To get a glimpse of Deadwood the way it was seen over a century ago, anyone is welcome to stop by Deadwood City Hall and see the new display. If you can make it this Wednesday at 5:00, experts will be on hand to discuss how the transparencies were restored and dated.

The stock show is in town!

When I was little, my parents always took me and my siblings out to see the animals. As the frilly girl I was, I always liked the bunny rabbits the best, which my brother was quick to inform me was not the point of the stock show at all.

“You can see bunnies in our back yard!”

Yes, okay, true. But those bunnies never let me pet them. The petting zoo was the highlight of my visit.

I was not raised around stock animals. To me, the most notable feature of a cow is the way it smells. I have to be careful who I say that to, though, because people around here take the stock show very seriously. This year, in fact, they are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Black Hills Stock Show.

If you want to take a gander at the animals, check out the multitude of vendor booths, or cheer on the miniature cowboys and cowgirls at the World’s Smallest Rodeo, you still have a chance! The stock show continues through next Sunday, February 3.

If I tell people from out of state that I live in South Dakota, the first thing most of them think of is our terrible weather. Of course, they are basing this opinion on sources like Laura Ingalls Wilder, which is all many people know about South Dakota.

But the Black Hills aren’t nearly as brutal, weather-wise, as people seem to think. North Dakota, Minnesota, and all the other states in the easterly direction, can get much worse weather than we do in terms of total snowfall and total very-cold-days. Even Florida has occasional bouts of being worse off than we are. But weather here in the Black Hills is more fun because it is likely to change so very fast. Sun in the morning, snow by lunch, and a little rain after dinner isn’t out of the question.

Today, in fact, we had an amazing little heat wave. Maximum temp was reported at 56°F. I realize that may not sound like a heatwave if you’re reading this from California, Arizona, or Tahiti, but consider this: last week, we had a high temperature of 7°F one day. Nope, not a typo. It gets cold here, no denying it. South Dakota, Spearfish to be exact, holds the world’s record temperature change: a 49° increase in two minutes as a chinook wind blew through.

While that isn’t a typical occurrence, the occasional insanity of weather is one of the things that makes this region one of the most beautiful and fascinating areas in the country. The weather over the last hundred thousand years (or so) is largely responsible for the incredible geologic features like the Badlands and Needles. And it’s great for winter recreation. Snow all last week and temperatures in the 50s this week makes for perfect skiing, snowmobiling, or sledding weather.