Labor Day gets treated like a closing bell around here. It isn’t. The three weeks that follow are some of the best the Black Hills have all year, and the calendar between now and early October is fuller than most people expect.
The first two weekends belong to Hill City and the trail
The Hill City Quilt & Fiber Arts Show runs September 12 and 13 at Hill City High School, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. both days. Admission is $7 at the door and free for anyone under 18. It is the kind of show where you walk the aisles slowly, and where somebody’s grandmother will explain a stitch to you whether you asked or not.
The following weekend the trail takes over. The 28th annual Mickelson Trail Trek runs September 18 through 20, covering the whole 109 miles of the George S. Mickelson Trail in three days: Custer to Edgemont on Friday, 44.5 miles; Custer to Rochford on Saturday, 39.5 miles; Rochford to Deadwood on Sunday, 24 miles. Riders base out of Custer for the first two nights and finish in Deadwood. If you are not riding, you will still notice it — the towns along the trail fill up with people who have been on a bicycle since breakfast and are ready to eat something.
Roundup weekend, and the hike that follows it
The Custer State Park Buffalo Roundup and Arts Festival lands September 24 through 26, with the roundup itself on Friday the 25th. Riders push roughly 1,300 head of bison across the open grassland while spectators watch from the viewing areas. Parking lots open at 6:15 a.m., which sounds unreasonable until you have sat in the dark with a cup of coffee and watched the light come up over that valley. A park entrance license is required on the 24th and the 26th, but not on roundup day itself. The arts festival runs alongside it with vendors selling work made by hand.
Then, on Sunday the 27th, Crazy Horse Memorial opens the mountain for the autumn Volksmarch. Registration starts at 7 a.m., hikers can set out anytime between 8 a.m. and 1 p.m., and the trail closes at 4 p.m. There is a 5K and a 10K, the longer one running about 6.2 miles round trip with a good deal of climbing. The American Volkssport Association charges $4, cash or check, and memorial admission is waived for hikers who bring three cans of food. Two of the biggest weekends of the Black Hills year, back to back, after the summer crowds have gone home.
The color comes down the hill
Fall in the Hills works from the top down. The high country turns first, generally somewhere in the middle of September, and the lower ground follows a week or two behind — so the color window stretches from mid-September into mid-October rather than arriving all at once. Aspen and birch do most of the work, gold against all that dark pine and spruce.
The Peter Norbeck Scenic Byway is the drive to take if you only take one. Needles Highway and Iron Mountain Road are on it, tunnels and switchbacks and the kind of pullouts that make everyone in the car go quiet. Give yourself twice the time the map suggests. You will stop more than you plan to.
One thing worth knowing before you build an evening around it: the ranger-led evening lighting program at Mount Rushmore runs nightly through the end of September. After that the sculpture is still lit each night, but the talk and the film wrap up for the season.
What changes behind our counter
The shop feels different in September, and not only because the line is shorter. Fall air is dry, and dry air changes candy. Caramel comes off the fire at a slightly different place. Fudge sets up faster on the marble than it did in July, which is a small thing that anyone who has worked a kettle in August will tell you is not a small thing. We have been making candy in these hills since 1977, in copper kettles, in batches small enough that a change in the weather is something you can taste.
The ice cream case starts sharing the room with the coffee. And the bear paws — pecans, caramel, and chocolate, made by hand the way they have always been made — go from something people grab on a hot afternoon to something people buy a box of for the drive home. That is the September rhythm. Fewer people, more time to talk to each of them.
Our Hill City shop at 205 Main Street is open year-round, which means it is there for the roundup crowd, the fall color drivers, and the quiet Tuesday in November when you just want fudge. The Keystone shop on Winter Street is seasonal, so if you are coming late in the fall, a quick phone call ahead is a good idea.
One more weekend, and it ends on Main Street
Run Crazy Horse takes place October 3 and 4, with a 5K, a half marathon, a marathon, and a relay. It starts in the shadow of the mountain carving and finishes in Hill City. Runners come down Main Street to the end of it, which puts a few thousand very hungry people on the same block we have been standing on for decades. We tend to be ready.
If you are planning any of this, plan for cold mornings and warm afternoons and a jacket you will take off by ten. And when you are in town, stop in. Turtle Town is at 117 Winter Street in Keystone and 205 Main Street in Hill City. There is usually something still warm.