When people heard that an ancient walled city lay beneath a Black Hills cow pasture, they couldn't believe it! But excavation of such a site began in 1927. It was called Hidden city, and three workers unearthed an apparently man-made stone wall 1,200 feet long. They also uncovered the cobblestones of a street or courtyard, something that looked like an archway, an unusual rock with marks thought to be hieroglyphics. Between the stones was mortar-like material.

    Hidden City's discoverer was C.H. Reich. He had been plowing a hillside five miles south of Rapid City when his plowshare uncovered part of a stone wall. Reich took one of the stones to a fortune-teller, who told him the stone was somehow connected to a "temple of gold." Since the stone wall merged into the hillside, some speculated that the hill might conceal such a temple.

    Tourists flocked to Hidden City. Among the curious was President Calvin Coolidge. The President was so impressed with the "ruins" that he later sent his son. Another of the visitors was a Swedish archeologist, who stated, "This could not possibly be a natural formation." HE and others pointed to the straightness of the walls, and the right angles. In Minneapolis and Chicago, people wanted to know more. If proven true, the discovery would rewrite many pages of history.

    From the start, there were skeptics. "The whole thing may be some freak of nature," wrote the Rapid City Journal on May 23, 1927. Then geologist from the South Dakota School of Mines passed their verdict. What they found was not the sole surviving remnant of a "hidden city," but a natural, though very unusual series of sandstone "dikes."

    So Hidden City was definitely not man-made. But the curious still lined up to pay their 50 cent admission. Whatever Hidden City was, people wanted to see for themselves. By early 1930's it was the top tourist attraction in the Black Hills.

    Then things went sour for Hidden City. The big museum building burned to the ground. And traffic that had gone to Mt. Rushmore via nearby Highway 79 was shifting over to Highway 16. Hidden City closed sometime before World War II. Today a visitor would see only the museum chimney, evidence of excavation, and a few curious rocks. All else has been reburied.

10/01/03