Are the Black Hills Really "Hills"?

For a long time, I've wondered what really distinguishes a hill from a mountain. Both are small areas of land with slopes on every side, but how tall does it have to be before it is a mountain?

Naming inconsistencies don't help. One such inconsistency is this. Mount Rushmore is a feature that most people immediately think of when they think of the Black Hills. However, if they were really hills, wouldn't that mean we should call it "Rushmore Hill"? Alternatively, if Mount Rushmore counts as a mountain, shouldn't the whole Black Hills be called the "Black Mountains"?

I say that climate differences make a good criterion for defining a mountain. Hills are not tall enough to be snowy on top while it rains at the bottom, but mountains are. So again, how tall does a mountain have to be in order to make that work?

As I mentioned in last week's post, the Black Hills are tall enough that a lot of snow falls there in contrast to the surrounding area. Indeed, snow might be unheard of in June through August in the flat areas of South Dakota, but not in the Black Hills, especially in the northern parts. The trees that grow from the moisture from snow and rain is enough to make the Black Hills almost synonymous with the extensive conifer forest that grows there, while the rest of the northern Great Plains has grassland (with the exception of some random forests here and there). That should make the Black Hills really a mountain range, except I don't think it's proper to call them a range of mountains. They're really one big mountain, I would say.

It seems that it takes at least a few hundred feet of elevation difference, if not a thousand, for climate differences to be very noticeable, along with the vegetation differences that go with them. For simplicity's sake, I say that it takes a thousand feet of elevation difference for a hill to be a mountain. For those who use the wonderful metric system, 300 meters would work too. I also say that a mountain should cover a small enough area that you can see most of its base from the summit.

From experience, I know you can see the base of the Black Hills from its summit, which rises about 4000 feet from the grasslands at the base. Rapid City is called the "Gateway to the Black Hills" for good reason, since the pine forest is found on the west side of the city and the grasslands are found on the east side. Geologically, it appears that the Lakota Formation, forming the outermost ridge where pine trees are found, is the ridge marking the boundary of the Black Hills. So again, the Black Hills should really be considered as one large mountain, though perhaps the Black "Hills" can refer to the many peaks of that mountain, few of which individually are over a thousand feet tall.

From the summit of the Black Hills, you can see way out to the Great Plains.

If we consider the Black Hills as many peaks of one mountain, that means South Dakota and Wyoming can boast of a 4000-foot-tall mountain. (Of course, Wyoming can boast of even higher mountains). South Dakota has another mountain besides that, though: Bear Butte. Even though it is described as a butte, it looks like any picturesque mountain, and its top is over a thousand feet above its base. It is often considered a part of the Black Hills, but I don't think so because there is flat grassland in between it and the pine forests of the Black Hills, even though the two are within sight of each other. I have hiked Bear Butte as well, and I'll end this blog post with my picture of it.

Bear Butte, rising about 1000 feet above the Great Plains close to the Black Hills, with more snow than the surrounding plains.