Tuesday 8th August 2023
The day began by receiving an email informing us our tour on Wednesday at Wind Cave was canceled due to the elevators not working. This was very disappointing as we had only done the short tour at Jewel Cave knowing we would have this long tour. We will have to visit it some other time.
As the weather was not great we drove to the nearby town of Hot Springs and went to the Mammoth Site.
June 1974 George Hanson was clearing some ground for housing when he saw something sticking out of the ground. It was a tusk about seven feet long. It is a very interesting story if you have some time to read about it. The short version is mammoths went to the hot spring area as there was a lot of tasty grass around its edge. They would go in for a drink but could not get out as the sides were so tall and they would drown. Awww.
We then had a walk around the town of Hot Springs. There were roadworks to widen the main town roads and paths that had been going on for years and made businesses hard to access. Looked like a lot had closed.
As the name states this is a spring town with a rich history helped by the arrival of the railroad in 1890.
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| Hot spring waterfall |
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| See note below |
We had a nice chat with a volunteer at the town tourist office. He told us that when the guys were working on the new road they discovered tunnels running from the sandstone buildings to the river. They were constructed during prohibition years for people to escape the speakeasies if they were raided.
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| The supermarket. Tiny and did not have a bakery |
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