All Quiet at Buffalo Gap
Buffalo Gap, South Dakota in the year 2019….Where the railroad track of the main line on the right is almost as bad as the house track siding on the left.
This lonely place is located about 42 miles south of Rapid City on the RCP&Es Black Hills Subdivision.
The first railroad through here was the Fremont, Elkhorn and Missouri Valley in 1885, which was absorbed into the Chicago and North Western Railway by 1903.
The town itself was founded in 1877 and named for natural sandstone formations that created a passageway, or gap, for herds of bison to move between the eastern prairies up into the Black Hills.
Originally the connecting point of several stagecoach routes, this place became a major supply center for prospectors taking part in the Black Hills Gold rush of 1875-76, and by the mid-1880s Buffalo Gap had become one of the largest cattle shipping points in the entire country, and as rowdy a cowboy town as any in all of the legendary Old Wild West.
But by the Spring of 2019, this place had become what was considered a “Semi-Ghost Town”, so these days it's all quiet at Buffalo Gap. ~~ A Jeff Hampton Photograph ©
All Quiet at Buffalo Gap
Buffalo Gap, South Dakota in the year 2019….Where the railroad track of the main line on the right is almost as bad as the house track siding on the left.
This lonely place is located about 42 miles south of Rapid City on the RCP&Es Black Hills Subdivision.
The first railroad through here was the Fremont, Elkhorn and Missouri Valley in 1885, which was absorbed into the Chicago and North Western Railway by 1903.
The town itself was founded in 1877 and named for natural sandstone formations that created a passageway, or gap, for herds of bison to move between the eastern prairies up into the Black Hills.
Originally the connecting point of several stagecoach routes, this place became a major supply center for prospectors taking part in the Black Hills Gold rush of 1875-76, and by the mid-1880s Buffalo Gap had become one of the largest cattle shipping points in the entire country, and as rowdy a cowboy town as any in all of the legendary Old Wild West.
But by the Spring of 2019, this place had become what was considered a “Semi-Ghost Town”, so these days it's all quiet at Buffalo Gap. ~~ A Jeff Hampton Photograph ©