473 
HARNEY MOUNTAIN RANGE. 
The only really mountainous part of the Black Hills is between Pringle 
and Hill City, on the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad. Espe- 
cially is the Harney Range, between Custer and the latter place, of a 
truly mountainous character. This district is a series of high, naked 
cliffs and crags, rising from 500 to 1,000 meters over the valleys, inter- 
mixed with smaller hills. The looser slates and schists of the Archean 
age have worn and washed away, leaving the harder granite rocks 
standing out as gigantic prongs of the most fantastic Shapes. In many 
cases the streams have hollowed out deep ravines and gulches. Where 
the granite rocks are less common broad valleys liave been formed, 
which are often called “ parks.” The most important are Custer Park 
around the upper part of French Creek, Dodge Park around the heads 
of Red Canyon Creek, and Elk Prairie on the Upper Spring Creek. 
The hills and the sides of the mountains are covered with woods, the 
valleys are open, rich grass lands, here and there under cultivation. 
The principal tree is the Rocky Mountain yellow pine (Pinus ponderosa 
scopulorum), the only tree that grows abundantly enough to make a 
forest. Lumbermen distinguish two varieties, in which | could see only 
individual variation. On the north side of the mountains, and even on 
the south side of the Harney Mountains at an elevation of about 900 
ineters above the level of French Creek and between 540 and 580 meters 
above the sea, there is also found spruce, but not, as one would expect, 
any of the Rocky Mountain species. It is the northern white spruce 
(Picea canadensis). But how did it come to the Hills? The pines have 
probably come from the west, from the Rockies, over the Big Horn or 
the Laramie mountains, and the hills of Wyoming. The deciduous trees 
have crept up the tributaries of the Cheyenne River. The spruce, 
which grows only in the highest part of the Iills eould not have done 
either. The nearest point in the Rockies trom whieh J have seen the 
white spruce reported is about 100 miles farther north and 400 or 500 
niles farther west, viz, in the valley of Blackfoot River in western Mon- 
tana. There are no high mountains north of the Black Hills, and the 
Spruce apparently is not found growing anywhere else in the Dakotas 
or eastern Montana. Neither does it grow in the two mountain ranges 
named above nor in the Yellowstone National Park. It must have come 
to the Black Hills in prehistoric times, when Dakota had a colder climate 
and the woods extended over the plains, or else seeds must have been 
brought there by migratory birds. The juniper, a nearly prostrate form 
_ of Juniperus communis, is common on the knolls, but the red cedar 
J. virginiana is very rare, | saw only two stunted shrubs on the Buck- 
- horn Mountains near Custer. 
Of the deciduous trees there are: 
Betula papyracea, canoe birch, Salix bebbiana, willow. 
Betula occidentalis, western black Salix discolor, willow. 
birch. Salix cordata, willow. 
Populus tremuloides, quaking aspen. 
13144—No, 8 2 , 
