Spearfish Canyon and Bridal Veil Falls have drawn visitors for more than a century for their waterfalls, sheer rock cliffs, and colorful autumn trees, and in a September 28, 1935, letter Frank Lloyd Wright praised the canyon as one of South Dakota's unique scenic treasures, alongside the Badlands and Black Hills. Thousands of years ago Native American tribes lived, hunted, and practiced traditional ceremonies in the Black Hills, and today several tribes, including the Oceti Sakowin, still consider the Black Hills their traditional homeland and preserve oral histories about them. In 1879, the Homestake Mining Company diverted Spearfish Creek into several flumes for hydro-electric plants in the canyon, and the original power plants, clay-pipe waterlines, and pump houses are still in use. The Spearfish Line, built by the Grand Island and Wyoming Central Railroad, a subsidiary of the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad, began running in 1893, was merged into the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad in 1904, and after a massive flood in 1933 damaged it beyond repair, the remaining rails were dismantled back to Portland in 1934 and 1935, though the railroad grade remains visible below the waterfall. By 1913 automobiles were traveling through the canyon on the Black and Yellow Trail toward Yellowstone National Park, and parts of old railroad beds and the trail were eventually paved into present-day Highway 14A.