You can hike all over the Black Hills and still not see the three best waterfalls. That's because one is lost, one is buried in a mountain and on is bone dry!

    The lost waterfall is Forsyth Falls. It was photographed on George Custer's 1874 expedition. But the whereabouts of this 45 foot cataract has never been determined. All we have is the old photo, which is reproduced in at least two history books. See it on page 199 of Krause and Olson's Prelude to Glory, or on page 142 of Don Progulske's Yellow Ore, Yellow Hair, Yellow Pine.

    The next "missing" waterfall is really very easy to find-because Thunderhead Falls, though 600 feet inside a mountain, is today a tourist attraction. This falls is a man-made and part of the century-old tunnel build for mining gold. The waters of Rapid Creek roar through the tunnel and over a 32-foot precipice. This creates the underground falls. The falls became a tourist stop in 1950 but before that, it had been all but forgotten.

    Spearfish Falls is bone dry. But when water cascaded down its face the sight was enough to halt excursion trains near Savoy in Spearfish Canyon. The tracks of the Burlington Line ran almost over the top of this falls, nicknamed "Baby Niagara." Old photos show trains stopped while passengers peer out the windows and down the nearly 60 feet of waterfall.

    Spearfish Falls was the biggest waterfall in the Hills. It stopped running in 1917. That's when Homestake Company diverted the waters of Little Spearfish Creek into a hydroelectric pipeline.

    Go up little Spearfish Creek and you'll find Roughlock Falls. And in frontier times, this was the site of a steep wagon road. Covered wagons descending the road had only one way to apply the brakes-by chaining wagon wheels together. Muleskinners called this braking a "roughlock," which gave the falls its name.

10/01/03