Indian Creek

From the dizzying heights of Sheep Mountain Table to the broad Cheyenne River valley, Indian Creek includes a vast array of landforms and unique plant life and offers hikers, horseback riders, hunters, birdwatchers, and pioneer scenery lovers one of the most inspiring and diverse wilderness experiences left in the nation’s Great Plains. The proposal would protect 35,895 acres, including the largest block of scenic Cheyenne River badlands breaks in South Dakota.

Red Shirt

The proposed Red Shirt wilderness features colorful striped buttes rising to stunning plateaus, with Schumacher Canyon and its layers of color-banded clays as its scenic centerpiece. Adjacent to the Pine Ridge Reservation, this area was used by the Lakota for shelter, food, medicinal plants and burial sites. 16,713 acres are proposed for wilderness designation.

First Black Canyon

Home to mule and white-tailed deer, pronghorn antelope, sharptail grouse and large populations of raptors, this topographically diverse area varies from rolling to steep hilly grasslands, some of it fairly rugged and dissected with gullies. The proposal would preserve 10,218 acres of grassland that still looks much as it did to American Indians and early settlers a century ago.

Cheyenne River

The cedar and juniper canyons, lush grasslands, flat-topped tables and sheer cliffs of the proposed Cheyenne River wilderness area were made famous by the movie “Dances with Wolves.” The area includes Chalk Hills Ridge, with its side slopes of white shale clays, and the Cheyenne River itself, which provides scenic canoeing opportunities and excellent riparian habitat for wildlife. The proposal would protect 8555 acres.