Black Hills National Forest spans more than 1.25 million acres across southwestern South Dakota and northeastern Wyoming, covering most of the Black Hills and combining pine forest, higher spruce, hardwoods, and prairie. Created as the Black Hills Forest Reserve in 1897 after destructive 1893 wildfires, it was expanded in 1898, transferred to the U.S. Forest Service in 1905, and redesignated a national forest two years later. Its name comes from the Lakota pahá sápa, “hills that are black.” Long important to Indigenous peoples, the forest today includes Black Elk Peak, extensive recreation facilities, abundant wildlife, and ongoing permitted resource use.