Wildcat Boulevard moved to Spearfish, S.D., for three days in late August. Kay and I were there for Friends of the Fish Hatcheries meetings. Dave Hendrix, manager of the Neosho National Fish Hatchery, was also there. He asked if I was going for a walk each morning, he wanted to walk along.
As I seldom walk with anyone, having a partner on the trail was interesting. The biggest difference was having someone to talk with as we strode along. Still we noticed a variety of things each morning.
The streets of Spearfish are wide, open, and very clean with broad, well-kept sidewalks. Each morning we walked to the D. C. Booth National Fish Hatchery and Archives and back. D. C. Booth was where the meetings were held, approximately a mile from our motel.
Looking any direction is a different scene of the Black Hills with their dark green, scattered evergreen cover. In some places, rocks jut out of the hillsides. In other places, a hill will come to a point with a bare rock top. In the early morning sun they are sensational to see.
There was little traffic as we walked along. We met one man (the same one) each day. By the third day we greeted him with an “Another nice day, isn’t it?”
The route first ran four blocks downhill, where we headed east along a wide side street. The streets were lined with businesses down the hill, with mostly homes on the side street. About two blocks from the hatchery is a large city park with an enormous parking lot. In the park were springs, caverns, and an old log “meat house,” where butchering had taken place 100 years ago or so. Now the meat house is historically preserved for everyone to enjoy this building from the past.
At the end of the park is a wonderful bubbling stream, a trout stream with its water tumbling and babbling along its rocky bottom. A wooden walking bridge leads to the D. C. Booth National Fish Hatchery grounds.
The first days we toured D. C. Booth on our walk, looking at the old ice house, the reconstructed railroad “fish car,” the museum, the well-preserved superintendent’s home, and the fish ponds.
D. C. Booth today is the repository of old fish hatchery artifacts, but it also raises some trout that are stocked in Black Hills streams like the one running next to the hatchery itself.
