I found my inner cowgirl and went buffalo chasing in the Wild West

Sabi Phagura

Published October 27, 2024 12:01pm Updated December 12, 2024 4:34pm

In South Dakota ‘dirt is cowgirl glitter.’(Picture: Supplied)

Picture this: cowgirls and cowboys on horseback wielding whips, and the clopping and whooshing sounds as they herd more than a thousand bison across the wild, open plains.

The dust swirls and the ground thunders as the cattle rumbles over the ridge and the hills, and into corrals.

But I’m not watching some movie that’s set in the Wild West. I’m right here in the thick of the action in South Dakota in the American Midwest, watching the 59th Annual Custer State Park Buffalo Roundup from the back of a pick-up truck.

Covered head-to-toe in dirt, I am reminded of US professional rodeo cowgirl Fallon Taylor’s words: ‘Dirt is cowgirl glitter.’

I embrace it – after all, I’m here to learn what life is really like for a cowgirl.

As I’m thrown around in the monster vehicle, chasing the herd of 1,300 beasts, I can’t quite believe the spectacle unfolding right in front of me.

The Buffalo Roundup

The official park roundup dates back to 1965 but the tradition, one of the Wild West’s greatest, is a century old here in the isolated Black Hills mountain range. It’s free to visit and open to the public on the last Friday in September every year – and tourists can’t get enough of it.

This year’s roundup attracts more than 24,000 spectators, who have travelled far and wide to watch from dedicated viewpoints as the herd stampede right past for sorting, branding testing and treatment.

The Buffalo Roundup is part of Custer State Park’s management plan to maintain a healthy balance between the number of bison and available grazing for them.

Bison Herd Running Across the Great Plains — The official park roundup dates back to 1965 (Picture: Getty Images)

Established in 1919, the park is South Dakota’s first and the largest in the state, and welcomes in excess of 1.5million visitors annually. The land provides the ideal habitat for a wealth of wildlife including elk, bighorn sheep, pronghorn antelope and prairie dogs. They can best be seen on the 18-mile Wildlife Loop Road.

Custer State Park is one of the few places left in the American West that remains truly wild. But its 71,000 acres only scratch the surface – there’s much adventure to be had in the rest of the Black Hills, too.

Sabi channels her inner cowgirl (Picture: Travel South Dakota)

default — For the Lakota Sioux, the Black Hills – Paha Sapa in their language – are the centre of their universe, where their culture began (Picture: Travel South Dakota)

Exploring the Black Hills

The range, in western South Dakota, stretches to 110 miles long and 70 miles wide, spilling into neighbouring Wyoming.

Native American tribes who have a long history in the Black Hills consider them to be sacred. For the Lakota Sioux, the Black Hills – Paha Sapa in their language – are the centre of their universe, where their culture began.

These days, outdoors enthusiasts can roam freely in the 1.2 million-acre hills, soaking up the awesome beauty of pine-topped mountain peaks interspersed with rippling streams, crystalline mountain lakes, and a myriad hiking and biking trails.

Time-poor during my trip, I can’t fit in traversing the Black Elk Peak, the tallest in the range at 7,242ft and also the highest elevation between the Rocky Mountains in the western US and the Pyrenees in France.

Navigating the Needles Highway (Picture: Travel South Dakota)

However, I do manage to climb Cathedral Spires on the Needles Highway, a 1.6-mile trail that leads to the Black Elk trail.  I muster up some ‘wild, strong and brave’ cowgirl spirit as I scramble up this moderately strenuous hike – and it’s very well worth the effort.

I find myself in awe, immersed in a group of granite towers that were formed two billion years ago. But if hiking is not your thing, you can still get close to the Needles Highway in an all-terrain vehicle (ATV).

These off-road motorised machines are designed to handle a wide range of terrain with twists and turns at every corner. With several ATV rental companies in the area, customers  can hire vehicles equipped with tablets with maps, for a thrilling off-road adventure you can tackle with confidence.

If hiking is not your thing, you can still get close to the Needles Highway in an all-terrain vehicle (Picture: Travel South Dakota)

This is something I just couldn’t resist, and I am soon on a twisting, turning joyride, roaring past rock formations, navigating narrow gaps and manoeuvring up high mountains, taking in breathtaking views of some of the most scenic and unique terrain and landscapes to be found in the whole of the Black Hills.

Heading into the Badlands

Later, back on the Great American West highway in a ‘normal’ vehicle,  still in South Dakota, I am totally unprepared for the Badlands National Park.

Paying homage to the Lakota people, who for hundreds of years called it Mako Sica, literally translating as ‘bad lands’, this area consists of 244,000 acres of jagged stone buttes, spires and pinnacles juxtaposed against the grasslands.

The rock formations in Badlands National Park are the product of two processes: deposition, 75 million years ago, and erosion, which began 500,000 years ago.

The ever-changing beauty of these sandstones, siltstones, limestones and volcanic ash can be seen on the road from a car thanks to various viewing stops, as well as short hikes for Insta-worthy snaps.

The Wild, Wild West

It was, in fact, my first rodeo (Picture: Byron Banasiak)

Deadwood was put on the map in 1876 (Picture: Travel South Dakota)

Cowboys and cowgirls are a big part of the Old West and a good place to understand their way of life is to head to Deadwood.

The town was put on the map in 1876 at the height of the gold rush when thousands of prospectors descended there in the hope of finding their fortune.

The boom saw a host of western notables arrive in the town including Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane, both of whom are buried at the Mount Moriah Cemetery in Deadwood.

While the gold rush petered out within a couple of years, Deadwood continued to attract people who didn’t mind breaking a law or two, and also became the third place in the US after Atlantic City and the state of Nevada to allow gambling.

Today, the town’s saloons and gambling halls continue to thrive as part of a historic preservation effort. And where there was gambling, there were brothels. These have been illegal since 1980, though one has been turned into a fascinating museum

You don’t have to have grown up on a Wild West ranch to embrace the cowgirl code (Picture: Byron Banasiak)

You can expect to dive headfirst into the ‘living history’ museum of Deadwood. A walk along the brick-paved streets transports me into that bygone gold rush era.

Want to get into the spirit of it all? Just get your sassy cowgirl (or cowboy) boots and Stetson on.

You don’t have to have grown up on a Wild West ranch to embrace the cowgirl code. I’d say you just need  a little confidence – and an independent streak.

Getting there

Sabi was a guest of Travel South Dakota and stayed in Rapid City.

Flights from Heathrow to Rapid City via Dallas on American Airlines start from about £864. Contact America As You Like It (americaasyoulikeit.com) or Discover North America (discovernorthamerica.co.uk)  for packages.

The next Custer State Park Roundup and accompanying arts festival is Sept 25-27, 2025.

I know that face...

The Presidents of Mount Rushmore — Mount Rushmore contains the faces of four US presidents – but can you name them? (Picture: Getty)

Alongside all the natural rock formations, the southern Black Hills are home to two world-famous man-made monuments carved from granite.

Mount Rushmore contains the faces of four US presidents – Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln, and is 250ft wide.

Also known as the Shrine of Democracy, this masterpiece took sculptor Gutzon Borglum and 400 miners 14 years to carve and was completed in 1941.

But it was the Crazy Horse Memorial, an ongoing monumental sculpture to the great Lakota warrior of that name, that really gripped me. It is intended to honour all indigenous people of North America.

The dream for the memorial began when Lakota chief Henry Standing Bear spoke to sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski in 1939. The laborious chiselling began in earnest but the monument remains under construction to this day.

I met the sculptor’s grandson, Dr Caleb Ziolkowski, for an exclusive hike up to the head – access that’s only available to the public twice yearly during spring and autumn.

Dr Ziolkowski told me how the arrival of an industrial tower crane and a robotic arm will help speed up the carving. On completion, the monument will be 641ft long and 563ft high, making it the world’s largest sculptural undertaking.