City: Spearfish, SD

Category: Tours & Attractions

Address: Heritage Drive

Description: The center’s impressive building sits alone atop a high hill, where it is whipped by wild plains winds and overlooks the green hills beyond. If you’re lucky you might get to watch a High Plains thunderstorm blow in from far away—complete with roiling black clouds and jagged lightning. The setting is perfect for a museum dedicated to High Plains life, which is greatly affected by the landscape and the weather. Inside the center you’ll see many forms of western art and artifacts, including old buggies and wagons; saddles and spurs; a barbed-wire collection (old barbed wire is an art form itself); recreations of shops from the past; wood carvings; original art and photographs; and plenty more. A 17-foot-high sculpture of legendary trail boss Tennessee Vaughn astride his rearing horse is especially impressive. Outdoors, get a close-up look at grazing longhorn steers and buffalo, a one-room schoolhouse, a log cabin, and a sod dugout. Kids will love the petting farm in the summer months. The museum is open year-round seven days a week, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. To get there, take I-90 to exit 14 south and go to Heritage Drive, 1 mile south.