Rapid City, SD news and local guide

The public discovery of gold in 1874 by George Armstrong Custer's Black Hills Expedition brought a rush of miners and settlers to the region. In February 1876 a group of unsuccessful miners led by John Richard Brennan and Samuel Scott laid out a town first known as Hay Camp and promoted it as the Gateway to the Black Hills, a nickname shared with neighboring Box Elder. It was named for the spring-fed Rapid Creek that runs through it. The founders measured off a square mile, set aside six central blocks for business and recruited merchants, who sold supplies to miners and pioneers. On the edge of the plains and the hills, with a broad river valley, the town became a natural railroad hub when lines arrived from the south and east in the late 1880s, and by 1900 it had survived a boom and bust to become an important regional trade center.

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After World War I, automobiles, better roads and local promoters brought many more tourists, including President Calvin Coolidge, who spent the summer of 1927 there and announced from his summer office in Rapid City that he would not seek reelection. That year Gutzon Borglum began carving Mount Rushmore, a work his son Lincoln continued until it was declared complete in 1941. Dinosaur Park, opened in 1936, is credited with beginning the city's transformation into a major tourist destination. On June 9, 1972, heavy rains caused flash flooding along Rapid Creek that killed 238 people and destroyed more than $100 million in property, the worst natural disaster in South Dakota history. With donations and federal aid, the city turned the floodplain into a public park and rebuilt elsewhere. Sources Wikipedia: Rapid City, South Dakota