American Grit in the Badlands | History Traveler Episode 78

[Music] we've been making our way through south dakota and all through the state it's a lot of rolling prairie and grassland and generally kind of flat up until you get to the western part of the state whenever you get here it looks like god just took a hatchet and started hacking out pieces of the earth in what we now call the badlands this has been home to many different groups of people throughout the history there were nomadic buffalo hunters that were here they were pushed out by the lakota who hunted buffalo from horseback here for about a hundred years then you had french fur trappers homesteaders the us military you've had all kinds of different groups that have occupied this area throughout history and even though they've come into conflict with one another throughout history there's one thing that they all had in common if you lived in this area you had to be [Music] tough [Music] like i said this is the badlands we're going to be seeing a lot today we're going to kind of make our way through this area hit a few stops along the way and then there's one spot at the very end that i want to show that really exemplifies just how tough the people that lived here had to be [Music] and we just made another quick stop off the side of the road and i just wanted to come down here to show good grief look at just how rugged and treacherous this stretch of country is absolutely stunning quite literally in cheap country we've been seeing bighorn sheep uh along the road here man oh man this is something [Music] [Music] all right so we're up here on this point and you can see how treacherous all of this ground is but something i really wanted to show if you look way off in the distance here you can see this butte with a flat green top that is called hay butte the story is that the homesteaders that lived in this area couldn't get their livestock up on the top to feed on the grass so they got together and literally took apart their mowers hauled them up there one piece at a time cut the hay and then rigged cables from the top to the bottom to get the hay bales down to where they could get it to their livestock tell me that these guys weren't hard workers man all right we're getting ready to head out on this trail real quick word just uh something that's a good idea that i do is i'm carrying a med kit with me fully loaded no matter where i go and it's middle of summer it's going to be hot so i also want to make sure that you are properly hydrated so uh i'm gonna be the pack mule today carrying all the drinks for uh me and my family all right we're ready to go all right well that's good to know i guess over here on one of these trails and uh it's one thing to go and view the badlands from your car but to get here like down on the ground and walk amongst these formations and it really gives you a sense of how rugged and inhospitable this country is and also gives you really kind of a greater appreciation for the men and women that hacked out a living here in this area pretty amazing country though [Music] okay i don't know how long we've been hiking now but apparently this hike also involves a wooden ladder so we've got a little bit of an elevation climb i'm going to go ahead and probably put my camera gear away that way i don't like accidentally drop it and damage it or do something stupid okay i changed my mind and decided to try and film myself going up this thing which might be dumb holy cow careful all right we made it without breaking any of my gear or any major bones and right up there is where we are headed [Music] holy smokes that's where we just came from man oh man cool country here huh somebody lost a hat i hope they didn't lose it as they were careening down this cliff [Music] [Music] oh man this is starting to feel like i'm on another planet [Music] just some crazy crazy formations here no lie i feel like some tuscan raider is about ready to jump out at me and if you have no idea what i'm talking about well then you need to watch the original star wars all right well we made it up here to the top and dang look at the view [Music] [Applause] [Music] we've been making our way through the badlands but the place that i'm at right now is really what i wanted to show more than anything else now you may think that you've had some hard days of work but i guarantee you that you probably never had a day that was harder than for the people that built this place right here this is an original sod dugout that was built as a part of the homestead act in 1909. we're going to go in and take a look at this place now before i go in i do want to show some of the exterior so this sod home uh is literally just dug into kind of the the side of the hill as a matter of fact you can see where a prairie dog has set up and has been living here as well uh but there's very few trees out here in this part of the country so people would have to just kind of make do with what they had and we're kind of digging to the side of the hill like a coyote if i go up here i can't go onto the roof because uh you know they're trying to preserve this but you can see how this home is uh just kind of dug into the side of the earth this is on the other side of the home and if you see this hole right here it's probably hard to see because it's too dark in there but that's a window all right so we're going to go ahead and go inside and take a look at how these people lived all right so coming into the sod home this is the front room and and right off the bat the thing that stands out that really defines what a sod home is are these blocks of prairie turf they're about three inches thick 18 to 24 inches long and yeah they would cut these things out of the ground and you can see right through here you know they've got this really entangled root system that holds it all together and uh yeah they would stack them up like bricks and make the walls of their home some of you might be wondering what that is uh those are dried cow patties or buffalo chips i'm not sure which one but uh not a lot of wood out here in this part of the country as i've already mentioned so they would have to burn those in order to heat and cook oh my goodness i'm guessing that these eggs have probably gone bad oh wait never mind they're plastic okay now as i go into this back room here uh what we're looking at obviously is a bedroom there's the window that i was pointing out whenever i was outside but yeah kind of a dark and dingy existence here in the old sod home baby should say that i no longer need the way i miss our clothes we used to be i'm skeptical by you and me when i hear your face behind like a whisper in my mind another thing that i want to point out before i leave this structure is all of these uh beams are made of cottonwood and are original to the home so they've done an excellent job of of preserving this place for us to to see and to learn from now if you're out here in this inhospitable region where it gets super hot in the summer and super cold in the winter what do you do to preserve your food so you can survive well you build yourself a cave this is a root cellar right here on the brown homestead we'll go ahead and dodge down in here real quick all right well this is inside of the root cellar and it's about 95 degrees outside today pretty darn hot but down here noticeably cooler so he could have stored your canned foods down here all kinds of different things and also keeps it from freezing in the winter as well [Music] something else that's going to keep you alive out here in this harsh environment are chickens you can get eggs you can get the occasional fried chicken well they need to be protected from the weather and from predators so they have a little dugout for the chickens here as well oh my gosh i think that i may have found an albino prairie dog [Music] man that sucker is seriously white [Music] i just took a peek in the barn here and found this old ford that i guess must have belonged to the the brown family and here's what's kind of cool about it is look at the wheels that have these wooden spokes on them pretty cool i think the treads are a little worn though all right well that was the old brown homestead built in 1909 very very cool place uh like i said earlier you know different people have occupied this ground at different points in history uh the the lakota french fur trappers homesteaders veterans from the civil war and while all of those groups have come into conflict at one time or another one thing you can't deny is that they were tough so i'm glad we stopped here today pretty historically significant place and uh yeah learned a lot but for now we're off to the next place so while everybody around the world has been complaining about the coronavirus i've been out here dealing with the dead gum plague so come get you some of that you

Channel: The History Underground

Views: 60,595

Keywords: history, history travel, travel, traveler, history traveler, south dakota, the west, native american, american indian, settlers, badlands, badlands national park, soddy, sod house, homestead, homestead act, lakota

Id: X5rgQrBBbr0

Length: 17min 10sec (1030 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 17 2020