When we were first in Sioux Falls, I got a hint there were actually some falls here.  Well, we came back for an appointment to fix our RV, and since we didn’t have a house for a day, we took care of some errands and decided to investigate the falls. 

Here the Big Sioux River charges over beautiful red rock that is native only to this area.  The rock was uncovered 14,000 years ago when the last glacial ice sheet redirected the river and exposed the hard Red Sioux Quartzite bedrock which was formed from sediments which formed on an ancient sea floor.

The name came from a journal entry by Louis & Clark describing the falls and calling it the “Sous River”.  Settlers soon followed and spent the first winter here at the falls but encountered problems with local Indians and the deaths of two prominent townspeople occurred.  Settlers abandoned the town until the establishment of Fort Dakota in 1865, and the town grew from there around mills powered by the river.  The town boomed with the arrival of the railroad and the only thing that paused its growth was the depression and a plague of grasshoppers. :-/

The Red Sioux Quartzite is found to be very resistant to weathering and is used as building stone.  It’s color ranges from pink to dark red to burgundy to purple and you see it all over Sioux Falls and surrounding areas.  I had the chance to grind and polish some of this pretty stone.  It reminds me of Raspberry Aventurine, and takes a polish nicely. 

Repairs have been made and our South Dakota plates are on our home on wheels and truck.  Today we head out to western South Dakota, to the Buffalo National Grasslands and the agates there waiting for us to discover them.