Our day started bright and early at 7am in the beautiful Game Lodge campgrounds in Custer State Park, South Dakota. Right off the bat Gary swept us into a barn west of our campsite, threw us a pop quiz and gave us a lecture on the Black Hills, which we have been exploring for the last two days. Immediately following Gary’s lecture we rushed to the vans and headed to a small mining town forty miles west of Custer called Lead, a former gold mining town. Upon arrival, we were presented with a list of tasks to complete in four hours. The list read as follows:
1) Go to the mining museum and find out what a “Lead” is,
2) Complete a two-page, composite drawing of Lead that includes an image of the open pit mine, an image of the townscape, and an image of an element of our choosing and,
3) Eat lunch.
With that we set off on the town to complete our tasks. After enjoying a fantastic lunch, we re-assessed the list. I just so happened to have my Place Project today, so our list included another task: take a minimum of 100 pictures of the town for a project to be completed at a later date. With this laundry list of tasks we set off with our cameras and began taking pictures of the town.
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| Lead Pit Mine photo by Julie |
Many locals approached us, each of whom asked us, “Are you guys geologists?” Needless to say we responded no and explained that we are Landscape Architecture students from Iowa State University and we are studying the vernacular of their town. We noticed that many other students were questioned in a similar manner while sketching in different locations of the city. One resident informed us that Lead is a very common place for undergraduate and graduate geologist to go for their studies.
After taking many pictures we pulled out our sketchbooks and rushed to finish the assigned work in the last hour and a half. We finished the two-page composite, but failed to find out what a “Lead” is.
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