There is a legend of the Black Hills flood so terrible that it would dwarf even the great floods of 1883, 1907, and 1972. Called the B.C. (Before Custer) Flood, it occurred before the arrival of General Custer and white settlement. Just when this flood happened no one can be sure.

    But evidence of the great deluge can still be seen at boulder canyon near Sturgis and Little Elk Canyon by Piedmont. Scattered east of these canyons are huge car-sized rocks, thought to have been carried out of the canyons by a flood of terrifying power. Some of the great stones were pushed half a mile or more.

    Frank Thomson wrote of the B.C. flood in his little book Last Buffalo of the Black Hills.

    Thomson's theory was that a great flood exterminated buffalo from the central Black Hills. His guess was that the flood happened in 1852, and for him it explained why early settlers found buffalo skulls in the Hills, but no living buffalo.

    Thomson's study was long on speculation and short on historical evidence. But there are other accounts suggesting a catastrophic flood. The Sioux Indian Chris Colome related a story told him by relatives. "During the early 1850s,"said Colome, "there came a mighty winter such as no Indian had ever seen before. Snow piled up 30 feet deep." A record snowfall like that could have caused flooding especially if quickly thawed by warm rains. And deeply drifted snow might explain why pioneers saw stumps of trees cut off nine feet above the ground, or why an elk skull was once discovered 25 feet high in the forks of a pine.

    Amidst the lack of hard evidence, this much we know; Deep in the Black Hills past was a great flood witnesses by few and recorded by none.

10/01/03