Black hills are not hills but mountains. They are smaller than the Rockies but higher than the Appalachians. From a distance they look black, this is from the spruce and pine covered slopes. Why are they called black when it is thickly covered in evergreens? Very simply from a distance these pine covered slopes look black from a distance. The Black hills is in a vast sea of prairie grasses. The Black Hills area is approximately 120 miles long and 50 miles wide. There are eighteen peaks that rise to an elevation greater than 7,000 feet.
How were the Black Hills formed?
The Flood of Noah’s day (2348 B.C.) laid down sedimentary layers. Towards the end of the Flood, the mountains rose up and the valleys went low. With the Black Hills, magma below the earth pushed up like a fist. This exposed the granite basement rocks in the center of the black hills. A 7,000 foot dome of granite rock rose, forming the Black Hills. The layers of limestone, sandstone, and other sediments were tilted as a result. The green in the picture is limestone. The purple is the granite basement rocks now exposed.
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