Through the Black Hills and Bad Lands of South Dakota

Peterson, P. D. (Purl Dewey), 1900-1967Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.7
Word count
163K words
Chapters
17

Tags

English Originals Travel Human GeographyNature ObservationAdventure JourneyGeography ScienceTravel Guide

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Through the Black Hills and Bad Lands of South Dakota by P. D. PetersonAuthor: Peterson, P. D. (Purl Dewey), 1900-1967,Language: English, Class: F590.3: United States local history: The West. Trans-Mississippi Region. Great Plains, Release Date: Jan 18, 2017

Editor's review

This is a regional travel and geographical-humanities reader about the Black Hills and Bad Lands of South Dakota, by P. D. Peterson, released by Project Gutenberg as a public-domain eBook. Its value lies in recording the region's landforms, routes, and roadside observations through an early traveler's eyes; the forested hills of the Black Hills and the eroded wonders of the Bad Lands form a sharp contrast in the text, giving readers a sense of early twentieth-century American West travel writing. It does not aim at guidebook-style practical information but uses narrative to build geographical awareness, making it a light read for regional history and travel literature. Read it as a paper journey: notice how the author describes landscape scale, road conditions, and settlement appearances, and watch for travel details hard to find today. For readers seeking an introduction to the geography and culture of the American West, or interested in public-domain travel documents, this book offers a plain and concrete slice of its era; for current road conditions, lodging, and safety information, consult a contemporary guide.

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Reading tips

  1. Start with the table of contents to locate the Black Hills and Bad Lands sections, and read in geographical blocks.
  2. Use a map or online map to match place names and routes in the book, enhancing spatial sense.
  3. Read it slowly as travel literature, one or two chapters a day, noting the wording of landscape descriptions.
  4. For pre-trip background reading, read the humanistic chapters first and look up practical information in a contemporary guide.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17

FAQ

Can this book be used as a self-driving guide? No. It is an early travel and geographical-humanities reader lacking contemporary road conditions, lodging, ticket prices, and safety tips. It suits pre-trip background and historical atmosphere; for actual travel, still refer to the latest official tourism information and maps.
What do the Black Hills and the Bad Lands refer to? The Black Hills are a forest-covered mountain area in western South Dakota, while the Bad Lands are strongly eroded, gully-ridden wasteland terrain. The book links the two along travel routes, letting readers learn about the strong contrast in natural landscapes and human traces in the region.
Is the old English text hard to read? This is an English public-domain eBook with a strong narrative style and not overly difficult vocabulary, but old place names and period expressions may cause obstacles. Use maps and a dictionary as aids, skim by chapter, and focus on landscape and travel-account descriptions.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Peterson, P. D. (Purl Dewey), 1900-1967 Author

P. D. Peterson (full name Purl Dewey Peterson, 1900–1967) was an American writer about whom little biographical information survives; public sources are limited, and his nationality, education, and professional career cannot be reliably confirmed. Only one work by him can be documented, Through the Black Hills and Bad Lands of South Dakota. Judging by its title, the book is a regional work on the Black Hills and Badlands of South Dakota, part travel guide and part account of local scenery, introducing readers to the distinctive natural landscape and human setting of the area. Works of this kind usually emphasize first-hand observation and route descriptions in plain language, serving readers visiting the region. Because relevant material is scarce, Peterson's other writing, his social standing, and the publication details and later influence of this book remain unknown, and his name is known to present-day readers mainly through this one regional title.