Spearfish Canyon is a National Scenic Byway traversed by the So. Dakota road designated “Alt 14”. We loaded up Woody and headed out to sightsee a 13 mile section, basically between Spearfish and the area called Savoy. There are several trails, campgrounds, picnic areas, and points of interest along the route, we chose to travel from south to north, ending in Spearfish. 

At Savoy, before starting north, we headed down Roughlock Falls Rd. to check out a couple of points of interest. First up was Roughlock Falls. The falls are on Little Spearfish Creek about 1 mile past Savoy. They have a nice parking/staging area there, with well built/developed sidewalks with hand rails and various viewing platforms along the creek. It was nice to see the water here was just as clear as the waters in Montana and Wyoming. 2 more miles past Roughlock Falls lies a film site used in the movie “Dances With Wolves”. Not a big wow-factor for me, just another narrow canyon area among many. It might not even have been recognizable as the film site, considering our current time of year and the scenes in the movie were winter scenes…

Back to Alt 14 and points north. Right in beautiful “downtown” Savoy sits The Latchstring Restaurant sitting on the junction of Little Spearfish Creek and Spearfish Creek (the latter runs adjacent to Alt 14 all the way to Spearfish). Spearfish Falls is located directly behind the restaurant, accessed by a 1.5 mile roundtrip trail. The trail is easy, with just the first short section having a mild grade to it. This trail was also well maintained with a nicely developed viewing platform area at the bottom of the falls. There is an upper viewing area simply off the parking lot of the restaurant with a skewed angled view of the top of the falls. This was the most visually intense waterfall of the 3 total to be seen today.

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Kissing Rocks (aka: The Dice) are laying in the middle of Spearfish Creek and if you are not paying attention, you can drive right by them without taking notice. There was barely enough shoulder to pull over to ogle, but we managed. Another feature known as “11th Hour Gulch” was supposedly a stone’s throw away. The gulch is a 50’ wide slot carved into the canyon, According to our “tour guide” (Spearfish Official Activity Guide), “blink and you’ll miss it.” And it claims there is a “parking lot” just downstream from the gulch. There is no “parking lot”. Yes, we blinked.

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Victoria’s Tower is a limestone face rising above the canyon floor. We found it looming over a private residence in the canyon and photo opportunities were limited, but I successfully snagged a couple.

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The Homestake #2 Hydroplant stood at the trailhead for The Devil’s Bathtub. The Homestake Mining Co. built the plant on Spearfish Creek in 1917 to generate power for use by their gold mine in nearby Lead. They have since abandoned use of this plant, but still use an older (1911) plant in Spearfish.

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Woody decided to sit the next one out, so Jeanne & I took off K9-less in search of The Devil’s Bathtub. I do have to say the trail(s) to get there are a bit lacking in trail markers (to say the least), particularly since there are a lot of private residences/properties in the area with GREAT signage advising all to stay out. This was a moderate hike based on some rock scrambling as well as crossing the creek 8 times. If I’m not totally brain dead, I believe the bathtub is actually on Squaw Creek which feeds Spearfish Creek. Once we passed the third trail marker, we were on our own for trailblazing. Trails followed the creek on both sides, at times intermittently (hence the creek crossing) and there was quite a bit of foot traffic seeing that The Devil’s Bathtub is a pretty popular point of interest not only for we the tourists but also for locals. We hiked (more accurately described as “stumbled”) upstream for about 9 tenths of a mile and “found” The Devil’s Bathtub. Well, picture picture picture and we turned around and returned to the Jeep. We thought it was a cool find on our part…until the next day when surfin’ the web regarding The Devil’s Bathtub I discovered there is a common confusion as to where the bathtub is actually located. Many people stop at the “false” Devil’s Bathtub which is a small pool area fed by a short water slide/fall. In actuality The Devil’s Bathtub is about another 2 minutes upstream. Well, after giving Jeanne another of my awesome lessons in 4-letter vocabulary (%$#@&*^”%$#@&*^!!!!!!!!) we made another trip back to “the tub” a couple of days later and retraced our hike, this time actually arriving at The Devil’s Bathtub. I was glad we returned, the sights are spectacular. Now, for anyone planning on a visit, from The Devil’s Bathtub parking area it is a 2-mile round trip hike to see “the tub”.

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The final point of interest we saw along the scenic byway was Bridal Veil Falls. There is a viewing platform right on the highway and no hiking to view the falls. It seems the name “Bridal Veil Falls” is used on numerous falls throughout our country, we have seen many. This was one of the most underwhelming I have seen.

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That about covers us for the Spearfish Canyon National Scenic Byway. Until next post…