After waxing poetic a couple of days ago about history in the Black Hills, I stumbled on a great image resource for Web-surfing historians with a little time on their hands.

The Black Hills National Forest maintains a searchable image database on their Web site, which you can find at http://www.blackhillsforest.com/res/sites/bkf2. I discovered hundreds of images just poking around for a couple of minutes. I found the historic images to be the most compelling – such as the one above of an unidentified woman standing on the shores of some unidentified lake – but that’s mostly because I’m a history nerd. The site also has cataloged photos in a number of other categories, including wildlife. Take the frigid buffalo below.

Photography buffs probably will have a field day with the gallery, but it’s a great resource for a little armchair traveling – and vacation planning. Since the photos usually have pretty specific location information included in their description (for those of you taking notes, the bison above was shot in Hell Canyon), if you see a photo you absolutely love, you should have enough information to plan a trip there.