Home›Places›Hot Springs, SD›Hot Springs Historic District
Historic place

Hot Springs Historic District

River Street Historic District, Hot Springs, SD

Boomtown Hot Springs rebuilt its downtown almost entirely out of locally quarried pink sandstone in the 1890s, and that same rose-colored skyline still lines River Street today.

📅 1890–present🏛️ Historic DistrictStill hereBuilt 1890
Open on the mapSlide back to 1890

The story

As Hot Springs grew into a nationally promoted mineral-water health resort in the 1890s, builders turned to the pink-toned Minnekahta sandstone quarried nearby, producing an unusually cohesive, fire-resistant commercial district rather than the wood-frame storefronts typical of Dakota boomtowns. The Hot Springs Historic District along River Street was listed on the National Register on June 25, 1974. Over 35 sandstone buildings from the era still stand, and the National Trust named the town a "Distinctive Destination" in 2009.

Everything that was here

Did you know?

The downtown was built almost entirely from local pink sandstone, unlike most Black Hills towns.
More than 35 sandstone buildings from the 1890s boom still stand in the city center.
The town's original Lakota-derived name was rendered "Minnekahta" before it became "Hot Springs."

Connected places

Mineola Hotel

Fox Lake, IL
National Register of Historic Places

Ambler's Texaco Gas Station

Dwight, IL
National Register of Historic Places

Wagon Wheel Motel

Cuba, MO
National Register of Historic Places

Red Cedar Inn Museum

Pacific, MO
National Register of Historic Places

The Old Pink

Buffalo, NY
National Trust for Historic Preservation

Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice

Durham, NC
National Trust for Historic Preservation

Explore the full web of connections on the map.

Nearby history

Evans Plunge

1145 North River Street · 57 m away
Businessman Fred "Big Fred" Evans built a wood, iron, and glass pool house over a cluster of warm mineral springs in 189

Battle Mountain Sanitarium

500 North 5th Street · 640 m away
Congress built a soldiers' home in Hot Springs specifically so disabled Civil War and Spanish-American War veterans coul

Pioneer Museum

300 North Chicago Street · 959 m away
A sandstone schoolhouse built in 1893 to educate all twelve grades of Hot Springs students now holds the town's pioneer-

The Mammoth Site

1800 US Highway 18 Bypass · 1.9 km away
A bulldozer clearing land for a housing subdivision in 1974 broke into a 26,000-year-old sinkhole packed with the bones

Wind Cave National Park

26611 US Highway 385 · 12.8 km away
A hole in the prairie that blew a man's hat off in 1881 turned out to be the entrance to the world's first cave ever des

Cascade Springs Resort

SD Highway 71 (Cascade Springs) · 13.2 km away
Developers platted a 36-block resort city around a spring gushing 2,000 gallons of warm water a minute and planned a fou

Know something about Hot Springs Historic District? An old photo, a date, a memory of what stood here before?

Add it on the map
Sourceshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_Springs,_South_Dakota