Black Hills photographer Paul Horsted is worried the South Dakota Department of Transportation’s proposed renovation of U.S. Highway 85 from Cheyenne Crossing to the Wyoming border could degrade the scenery:
“It’s hard to define the character of the Black Hills, but you kind of know it when you see it,” said Paul Horsted, a renowned nature and landscape photographer from Custer who is opposed to the current plans to redo U.S. 85. “The scenery and the stream on one side of the road and the cliffs on the other side – there’s nothing that can match that.”
Horsted said he and others are worried that the DOT could take the same approach to rebuilding U.S. 85 as it has with the ongoing project to reconstruct U.S. 385, another scenic road through the Black Hills.
That three-year, $72 million project that will conclude in 2027 is bringing wider lanes, extended road shoulders and fewer curves to the north-south highway between Deadwood and Hill City. To improve safety, the DOT has made more room for the highway by clearing trees, blasting rock and scraping away ridges.
…”None of us are against safety measures, but my question is whether the only answer to make a road safer is to widen it,” Horsted told News Watch.
Horsted, whose latest project “South Dakota Yesterday & Today” contains modern photos of historic sites across the state, suggested the DOT could make U.S. 85 safer by adding a shoulder on only one side or lowering speed limits.
“I understand they need to resurface it and make it drivable, but please try to do with a sense of what the Black Hills are all about,” he said. “We’re asking the DOT to do the minimum necessary to build a reasonably safe road that maintains the scenic and ecological aspects of this beautiful Black Hills highway” [Bart Pfankuch, “Opposition Arises to Rebuild of US 85 Through the Black Hills,” South Dakota News Watch, 2026.06.29].
SDDOT recently extended the public comment period on the U.S. 85 reconstuction project to September 4. Interested parties may send their comments to road design engineering supervisor Mark Malone, SDDOT, 700 E Broadway Ave., Pierre, SD 57501, Mark.Malone@state.sd.us.
According to the DOT’s June 4 public presentation in Deadwood, the average weighted crash rate on this stretch of U.S. 85 is increasing while the statewide crash rate is decreasing. DOT notes that similar curve reconstruction up the road on U.S. 14 east of Cheyenne Crossing in 2019–2020 has reduced crashes from 2.6 per year to 0.5.
But per Horsted’s concern, do we really need to bulldoze more of the trees and hills and creek that make travelers go wow!, or might we make the road southwest of Cheyenne Crossing safer the same way we keep Spearfish Canyon safe to the north, simply by lowering the speed limit?
Honestly, this interested party is out of fux to give about my failed home state.
Suicide by violent means is epidemic especially in red states like South Dakota and Wyoming so Republicans just go pffft when bikers die during the Sturgis Rally. Yes, South Dakota’s Trump-drunk Republican governor sells the state as one of the freest in the nation and even continual sobriety checkpoints have done little to discourage inebriated drivers from operating motor vehicles at unsafe speeds in Mr. Rhoden’s state.
But, hypocrisy reigns supreme at the highest levels of power in South Dakota so residents will endure another Rally where this year nearly a half a million attendees will spend an average of a thousand dollars each so the sitting governor can crow about his leadership and self-reliance while moral hazards pay the bills. Hotels, motels and campgrounds in the Hills jack up their rates and fill to capacity so a murder of fat white Republican crows can swill alcohol, stuff their faces, buy Trump t-shirts and children for sex then kill themselves and each other with reckless abandon.
During the Rally riders loop through Aladdin to Hulett and Devils Tower then back through Sundance, Wyoming where, not coincidentally, Rapid City Regional now Monument Health has a “Sturgis Market” branch. Highways are often crowded to overfull and drunken bikers can be seen weaving over every roadway in the Black Hills. Deer are unpredictable and now join mountain goats and bighorn sheep, released by the South Dakota’s GOP wildlife ‘management’ arm, as opportunities for bikers to die.
These are “pro-life” people who rabidly embrace state-sponsored killing of persons convicted of capital crimes right out of the ALEC playbook and forces Social Security recipients to keep paying property taxes so that income isn’t taxed by a red moocher state like South Dakota.
The good news? Sure, bikers are just tools of the state but hospitals, bars and mortuaries cut a fat hog during the annual orgy and so did the law enforcement industry who seized mounds of cash through civil asset forfeiture and selective interdiction.
Trunp’s party of Law and Order likes to speed, and that law doesn’t apply to them.
The concerns of both Messrs. H are valid, however our tax dollars should at least pour a little fresh shoulder dirt. Alternatively, grudznick would be ok with allowing that road to deteriorate back to gravel.
Lower the speed limit arrest people who speed and make money for the state.
Win, win, win.
… but my question is whether the only answer to make a road safer is to widen it?” Horsted told News Watch.
CO Rockies have many beautiful canyons. With the narrow ones sometimes CDOT will build one highway above the other highway on pylons, towers, stilts, or bamboo poles. Just kidding. CO even has a piece of I70 built like that.
Now! How many negative comments can the German Americans come up with for that solution? Hmmmm? List why it won’t, can’t, and shouldn’t even be considered as workable in South Dakota.
If it was not for the vision of highway engineers decades ago, people would not have these views. Think about that for a few seconds. So how about we let these highway engineers do their work again to modernize this road.
If these tree huggers keep protesting, let’s use the money east river to improve roads.
grudznick has been told, Mr. Lansing, that a disproportionate number of South Dakota’s highway engineers are indeed Germans, some say higher than 1 in 5, but most of their bosses are Scandinavian and won’t allow the kind of civil shenannigans like in Glenwood Canyon.
In full disclosure, an unreliable source provided that information, grudznick does admit.
How about we narrow the road, not widen it. The latest traffic research suggests that wide roads encourage faster traffic, leading to more serious accidents. Narrow the road and you lessen accident severity.
Mr. Pay may be righter than right on this one.
grudznick might even add that we don’t need to have a highway between Lead and Wyoming at all. If you want to do that stuff, go through Beulah and give them some love. If you need to get to Newcastle, then just no. No. Or take the route through Custer City and the District Numbered 30.
… or be progressive and ban autos completely. Human powered devices only.
Let me just say that you haven’t lived until you’ve driven a refrigerated truck from Deadwood to Newcastle, Wyoming and back again twice a week for a year and a half on US85 sometimes over ice and snow covered roads. Today, I can see and sometimes hear US85 from my house in New Mexico, drive it nearly every day and my dreams still feature deadlines to meet.
Workin’ for The Corporate Man marred your psyche, Lar.