"The Giant is Dead," said newspaper headlines in 1972. That's when a 122-foot-tall ponderosa pine tree crashed to earth southeast of Custer. Known as the Giant of Herbert Draw, this 400-year-old tree was possibly the oldest living thing in the Black Hills. Yet it didn't die of old age.
Here was a tree that started growing in 1575, and survived the winds of and fires of four centuries-a pine monarch that was already tall and healthy when the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. Yet it was laid low by a little bug, called the Mountain Pine Beetle, whose repeated infestations can kill even the biggest tree.
A forest crew salvaged several cross-sections from the giant's trunk. One of these is on display at the Custer office of the National Forest. There you can point to the rings when Shakespeare died, or when Napoleon was born. You can see when the Hills enjoyed rainy years or suffered through drought.
In 1981, the Rapid City Journal's contest to find the biggest tree in the Black Hills located other living ancients, like the Council Oak near Hermosa. Core sample from the tree, reputedly a council site for Indian tribes, indicate it may be over 400 years old.
A most curios stand of 200-year-old trees is found near the center of the Hills. Here we find only the lodge pole pines in the region. No one is sure how they got there or why there aren't others scattered through the Hills. Some botanists call them "relic" trees-remnants of a once much larger lodge pole pine forest. Others suggest that Indians brought the lodge pole seeds here from the Bighorn Mountains. They theorize that certain tribes prized this species for the trunks, which made the finest poles for a lodge or teepee.
Hikers can find the lonely lodge pole pines two miles northwest of Nahant on either side of Buskala Creek.
10/01/03