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Keystone Wye Interchange, A Famous Architectural Landmark Located In The Black Hills Of South Dakota

The Keystone Wye is a three-level interchange in the Black Hills of South Dakota, joining U.S. Route 16 and U.S. Route 16A just north of Keystone on the way to the area's best-known sights. Key Features: The Architecture: Built in 1967 and 1968, the interchange is known for its two interlocking bridges carried on massive glued-laminated timber (glulam) arches. The Design: The engineers chose timber so the structure would blend into the evergreen forest of the Black Hills National Forest. The Road: Driving under the arch along this road takes you southwest toward Keystone and Mount Rushmore National Memorial.

Schwabacher Landing Area Near The Teton Range In Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming

Below the Teton Range, the Snake River winds through its valley past rolling sagebrush hills and groves of cottonwoods, typical of the park's eastern side. Grand Teton, Mount Owen and Teewinot Mountain fill the skyline under a dramatic, cloudy sky.

Unique Profile George Washington At Mount Rushmore National Memorial, Black Hills, South Dakota

George Washington in profile at Mount Rushmore National Memorial, a side view of the sculpture that visitors at the Grand View Terrace never see, framed by the surrounding granite. Key Features: The Profile: From this angle only Washington's face is in view, showing the precision of sculptor Gutzon Borglum's work on the granite cliff. The Scale: The face is about 60 feet (18 meters) tall, rising above the ponderosa pine forest and rugged rock of the Black Hills. The History: Carved between 1927 and 1941, the memorial also includes Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, just out of view to the right.

Historic Mountain Town Of Cripple Creek, Colorado

Colorado State Highway 67 winds down the hillside into Cripple Creek in this view looking southwest from a scenic pull-off above the historic gold mining town. Key Features: The Town: At 9,494 feet (2,894 meters), the 1890s gold rush camp spreads across a high valley floor. The large building with the long blue roof on the right is the Cripple Creek-Victor High School campus. The Backdrop: The jagged Sangre de Cristo Mountains, a subrange of the Rockies that stays snow-capped well into the warmer months, run along the far horizon. The History: The hills around town are part of the Cripple Creek Historic District, site of the greatest gold boom in Colorado history.

Prada Marfa, Valentine, Texas

Prada Marfa stands alone beside a desolate stretch of U.S. Highway 90 in Jeff Davis County, Texas, about 26 miles northwest of Marfa itself, despite its name. Key Features: The Concept: Created in 2005 by Elmgreen and Dragset, the "pop architectural land art" piece looks exactly like a luxury storefront. It was made as a comment on consumerism and gentrification, left to weather slowly into the Chihuahuan Desert. The Inventory: Its glass windows hold genuine Prada shoes and handbags from the Fall/Winter 2005 collection, chosen by Miuccia Prada herself. The Landscape: Gravel pull-offs, a barbed-wire fence, sparse desert scrub, a lone utility pole and the flat Texas horizon are all that surround it.

Badlands Yellow Mounds

Rolling green prairie gives way to a striped golden mound at the Yellow Mounds Overlook in Badlands National Park, South Dakota, with the pale, jagged Badlands Wall rising in the distance. Key Features: The Yellow Mounds: These bright layers are paleosols, ancient fossilized soils, colored mustard yellow by the mineral goethite. Ancient Seabed: The golden soil formed when an ancient sea retreated and exposed dark ocean mud, which weathered into the yellow paleosol seen here. The Rock Record: The Chadron Formation above these mounds, mostly light gray claystone, was laid down about 37 to 34 million years ago on an ancient floodplain. The Prairie: The green grassland is part of the mixed-grass prairie that borders the park's eroded buttes and spires.

1880 Town Church

A small white clapboard church with pointed gothic windows and a wooden cross on its gabled roof stands alone behind a split-rail fence at South Dakota's Original 1880 Town, a recreated pioneer village on Interstate 90 near Murdo. The open grassland running to the horizon is the homestead country the village recalls. Key Features: The Village: More than 30 authentic buildings from 1880 to 1920, moved from towns across the region and refurnished with period pieces. The Setting: West of Murdo along Interstate 90, on open prairie, with Main Street running toward the horizon. The Church: Its steeple, wood frame and arched windows are typical of the small chapels early homesteaders built on the Dakota plains.

Mount Rushmore National Memorial

Looking up from a pine-covered slope near Keystone, the granite faces of Mount Rushmore National Memorial rise above the Black Hills against blue sky and scattered clouds. Key Features: The Sculpture: The 60-foot faces of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, carved into granite. The Construction: Carved between 1927 and 1941; funding problems made the work take longer than planned. The Setting: The mountain sits in the Black Hills, about twenty miles from the nearest city. The Draw: Remote as it is, the memorial welcomes about two million visitors a year.

Mount Rushmore National Memorial

Ponderosa pines frame the granite cliff of Mount Rushmore National Memorial from below, near Keystone in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The sixty-foot carved heads of Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln stand against a bright blue sky above a rocky talus slope. Key Features: The Sculptors: Gutzon Borglum carved the memorial with his son, Lincoln Borglum. The Subjects: From left to right, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. The Timeline: Gutzon Borglum began drilling into the mountain in 1927. The Setting: Pennington County, South Dakota, near the town of Keystone.

Horsethief Lake In The Black Hills

Horsethief Lake lies still in the Black Hills National Forest of South Dakota, near Mount Rushmore and Custer State Park, mirroring the ponderosa pines, pale granite and sky along its wooded shore. A massive granite boulder crowned with a lone pine juts in from the right, anchoring the reflection and giving the scene its scale. Key Features: The Granite: The Black Hills owe their pale, rounded rock to ancient granite pushed up through the plains and slowly exposed by erosion, forming the spires and boulders along the shore. The Forest: Dense ponderosa pine covers the hills and gives the range its dark look from a distance. The Lake: Prized for its calm water and granite backdrop, with a trail nearby into the Black Elk Wilderness. The Reflection: Still air turns the lake into a mirror, doubling pine, rock and sky.

Rocky Water Lake

A still forest lake lies below a pine-covered ridge where weathered granite breaks through the trees, with a small dock and bench on the near shore and a campground along the far bank. Key Features: The Setting: Pine forest rings the water, and granite outcrops rise along the ridge line. The Reflection: Calm evening water mirrors the trees and rock face, as it does on small, sheltered lakes tucked into forested canyons. The Shoreline: The dock, bench and campground make this a lake for camping and quiet recreation.

Badlands Chadron

Eroded buttes and pinnacles of the South Dakota Badlands rise in layered mounds of rose, tan and gray sediment toward a jagged ridge of spires, with a thin band of green prairie marking the flatter tableland above the basin. Key Features: The Rock Layers: The Badlands are a colorful layer cake of sedimentary rock laid down between 75 and 28 million years ago by shallow seas, rivers and wind, which gives the buttes their striped bands. The Volcanic Ash: Some layers hold ash from volcanoes more than 500 miles away, carried east on the wind before settling here. Ongoing Erosion: The soft rock wears away about an inch a year; at that rate the hills will be gone within half a million years.

Badlands Peak

A jagged pyramid of sandstone and claystone rises in Badlands National Park in southwestern South Dakota, its layered slopes striped in muted tan and rose. The spire sits above a broad green apron of prairie grass, with lower buttes and eroded gullies fanning out under a wide, cloud-streaked sky. Key Features: The Landscape: Erosion has carved the region into spires, pinnacles, hoodoos, buttes and mesas known together as the White River Badlands. The Formation: Thick layers of sediment settled across western South Dakota, then were slowly cut by erosion into ridges, gullies and sharp spires. The Timeline: This serrated terrain did not exist until about 500,000 years ago, when water began cutting through the sediments. The Scale: The park covers more than 244,000 acres of spires, canyons and rugged rock.

Clark's Fork Range Cody Wyoming

Freshly cut hay fields and center-pivot irrigation lines fill a ranch valley near Clark, Wyoming, looking north toward the Absaroka Range along the Clarks Fork of the Yellowstone River. Beyond the dry, eroded foothills, a jagged band of pale limestone reef rises before the higher, timbered summits fade into blue haze. Key Features: The Community: Clark sits about thirty miles north of Cody, on a scenic drive toward Yellowstone National Park and the Beartooth Highway. The Climate: This is semi-arid sagebrush country with less than ten inches of rain and snow a year, as the bordering mountains wring the moisture from the air. The Geology: The tilted reef of rock marks the mountain front, where basin sediments meet the rising Absaroka Range.

Badlands Rockyford Ash

Pale, eroded buttes of the South Dakota Badlands rise abruptly from green mixed-grass prairie, catching afternoon light under a deep blue, storm-streaked sky. From a low spot at the edge of the grassland, the soft rock shows the spires, domes and channels carved by wind and water, with wildflowers and prairie grass running right up to its base. Key Features: The Ash: The Rockyford Ash is a volcanic tuff from eruptions in the Great Basin, carried from what is now Utah and Nevada, and it gives these layers their gray color. The Formation: Above the Brule lies the Sharps Formation, the park's youngest at 30 to 28 million years old, with the Rockyford Ash at its base. The Park: Badlands National Park covers more than 381 square miles of South Dakota, known for its bright colors and layered rock. The Name: The Lakota people called this country "mako sica," meaning land that is bad.

Churning Caldron

Churning Caldron roils in the Mud Volcano area of Yellowstone National Park. Steam rises from the muddy, sulfur-laden water as it froths over its scorched banks, with open meadow stretching toward Hayden Valley behind. Key Features: The Mud Volcano Area: A cluster of acidic, sulfurous features along the Grand Loop Road, including Sour Lake and Black Dragon's Caldron. Earthquake Driven: Earthquakes make the ground beneath it heat and cool; nearly five hundred shook the area between July 1 and July 15, 1995. Roiling, Not Boiling: The water is scalding but not boiling. Gases rise through vents opened by earthquakes and bubble to the surface, making the water churn. Ongoing Change: In 1971 the pool grew calm enough for mats of microorganisms to cover its surface, until earthquakes in 1978 and 1979 raised its temperature again.

Badlands Norbeck Pass

Striped buttes rise sharply above a green valley floor at Norbeck Pass, on the Badlands Loop Road in the North Unit of Badlands National Park, South Dakota. Key Features: The Rock Layers: Deposition began about 75 million years ago, and the youngest major layers settled about 28 million years ago, building the striped pinnacles seen here. The Fossil Record: The White River Badlands hold the richest known deposits of Oligocene mammal fossils, famous worldwide. The Setting: The park protects sharply eroded buttes and spires alongside the largest undisturbed mixed-grass prairie in the United States. The Pass: Norbeck Pass is one of the classic overlooks on the loop road, where the formations meet open grassland.

Badlands Bighorn Sheep Ridge

A bighorn sheep stands alert atop an eroded clay pinnacle in Badlands National Park, South Dakota, framed by prairie grass in front and dense juniper behind, surveying the rugged ground from its high perch. Key Features: The Terrain: Layered sedimentary rock and clay have eroded over millions of years into the park's spires, ridges and pinnacles. The Comeback: In 1964, 22 Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep were brought from Pikes Peak, Colorado, to the Badlands, decades after the species had been wiped out in the region. The Habitat: Grassland and juniper woodland give the reintroduced herds the cover and forage they need among the steep formations.