Fall River County Herald-Star

06/04/2025

UPDATED:

Results of the Hot Springs Ward 1 city election:

Craig Romey: 43 votes
Randy Graham: 42 votes
Hal Glanville: 24 votes

Hot Springs School Board election results (top 2 each earn seat):

Shannon McClure: 162 votes
Kelly Bilbrey: 119 votes
Sharon Romey: 114 votes

05/23/2025

There's "So Much To Soak In" this weekend in Hot Springs for the Salute to Valor Memorial Day weekend, beginning with the Wine Walk & Play today, starting at 4:30pm, followed by a parade tomorrow afternoon and many more activities...

Check out all of these events throughout the weekend!

05/22/2025

Be sure to pick up a copy of this week’s paper, complete with our 24-page graduation section!

Also inside this week is a complete schedule of all the Salute to Valor events in Hot Springs this weekend, as well as coverage of the school’s plan to add 11 more days of classroom time, featuring a comparison of days to many other schools in the Black Hills area. We also profile the three new candidates running for school board.

05/03/2025

During last night’s Fine Arts event at Case Auditorium, the Hot Springs middle and high school bands and choirs joined forces to perform a combined rendition of “When You Believe” from the Disney movie The Prince of Egypt, led by choir director Hayes Chohon.

05/01/2025

Prescribed Burn at Angostura State Park set for Friday, May 2

HOT SPRINGS – South Dakota Wildland Fire is planning a prescribed burn on the north end of Angostura Reservoir in coordination with Angostura State Park on Friday, May 2, 2025. The burn will be in the vicinity of the park’s Visitor Center, Cheyenne Campground, and Summer Sun Trailer Park.

Portions of North Angostura Road may be intermittently closed due to smoke. Mop-up and monitoring will continue in the following days. If weather conditions are not favorable for any reason, the prescribed burn will be rescheduled.

Firefighters are planning to burn approximately 130 acres. Objectives include reducing the amount of invasive grass, increasing the quantity of native grasses, and decreasing the risk of potential future wildfires by reducing fire fuels including thatch and other dead vegetation.

Smoke may be visible in the surrounding areas and can linger for several days after ignition. Fire crews will secure, patrol, and monitor fire lines as appropriate for public and firefighter safety.

Angostura State Park will be open as usual, but visitors may experience delays near the prescribed burn area. For more information about park accessibility contact Andrew Kathman, 605.745.6996, Angostura Recreation Area, District Park Supervisor.

South Dakota Wildland Fire is an agency of the South Dakota Department of Public Safety.

04/10/2025

UPDATE: Wind Cave National Park postpones prescribed fire

The fire management staff at Wind Cave National Park has postponed the planned Lookout Flats Prescribed Fire Thursday, April 10, due to weather conditions being outside of prescription. Depending on weather and fuel conditions, another attempt might be made next week.
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ORIGINAL POST:

Wind Cave National Park is planning a prescribed fire for tomorrow, Thursday, April 10

Depending on weather and fuel conditions, the fire management staff at Wind Cave National Park plan to ignite a 1,094-acre prescribed fire east of the park’s headquarters Thursday morning, April 10.

The primary objectives of the Lookout Flats Prescribed Fire are to reduce fuel loading, decrease encroachment of young ponderosa pine onto the prairie, and increase cover of native forbs. Prescribed fires help decrease the intensities of future wildfires and mimic the natural fire regimes of a mixed-grass prairie ecosystem.

During the day of the burn, smoke may be heavy at times along Highways 385 and 87 and visible from the surrounding region. Highway 385 between the north and south access roads into park headquarters will be closed with traffic routed through the visitor center parking lot.

The park's backcountry will be closed to camping and day hiking Thursday and Friday, April 10 and Apil 11. Other impacts to Park operations are expected but efforts will be made to minimize visitor impacts.

03/11/2025

Watch for more information on this incident in next week's newspaper, but the potential threat was discovered by the FBI when they were alerted to certain key words being used by a local student when having a social media conversation with friends at a former school.

RE: School Threat

03/07/2025

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HOT SPRINGS – When rural Hot Springs residents Mike and Ann Re*****on found out there was a wildfire burning next to their property along Cascade Road this past weekend, they were across the state at their family’s farm near Willow Lake.

03/02/2025

Update 7:23 PM: All evacuation have been lifted. Fire crews will still be working through the night to monitor the fire. Please be considerate and stay out of their way. We thank you for your help in this matter.

Update 5:55 PM: Cascade Road (SD Highway 71) has reopened for local traffic. The roads in the evacuation area (Country View Road and East Cascade Mountain Road) remain closed.

Update 5:40PM: As of now the Green Acres Fire being held at 150 acres. No structures have been lost.

Update 3:28PM: Evacuation area has been expanded to all properties between Country View Road and East Cascade Mountain Road.

Update 3:07PM: Cascade Rd (SD Highway 71) is being closed from the hospital to East Cascade Mountain Road for all unnecessary travel. This is not due to the spread of the fire but to traffic congestion, please avoid this area.

Update: Evacuations are starting south of Country view & Green acres - please avoid the area. Fire is heading Northeast at this time. If you live northeast of the current evacuation area please begin preparing to leave.

Original Post: In regards to the fire on highway 71/Cascade road
At this time, officials are not issuing any evacuation orders. We will be keeping an eye on the situation, and we will continue to post updates. In the event an evacuated is deemed necessary for those in the green acres area, please have a go bag ready.

02/26/2025

Best of luck to the Hot Springs Bison boys and girls wrestlers as they head up to Rapid City to compete in the South Dakota State Championships at The Monument, Thursday, Feb. 27 through Saturday, March 1.

Click the link below for more information, including brackets and how to watch the matches online.

https://www.sdhsaa.com/activity/wrestling-championships/

02/21/2025

We've been asked to help find respondents to take the South Dakota Roots Migration Survey by clicking this link:
https://qualtrics.uvm.edu/jfe/form/SV_eWIa16MF6Wj4CkS

The survey will help determine why people have chosen to stay in, leave, or return to live/work in South Dakota. The findings from the survey will be presented at the 56th annual South Dakota State Geography Convention in April 2025.

Keep scrolling down to read more about the survey and who is conducting it...

"My name is Andrew Husa and I am a geography lecturer at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln who is researching place attachment and residential decision-making on the Great Plains.

With the help of faculty and students across South Dakota, I am sharing a survey to better understand the factors that influence South Dakotans to stay, leave, or move back.

This survey is for anyone over the age of 19 who was a resident of South Dakota when they attended high school. (This includes residents who lived in South Dakota but attended schools in neighboring states).
This survey was initially designed by a team of Vermont researchers and conducted as the “Vermont Roots Migration Survey” in 2014.

I have worked closely with Dr. Cheryl Morse of the University of Vermont, who was the lead on the original survey, to structure these questions for South Dakota. I have previously conducted this survey in Nebraska (2019) and Missouri (2021).
The ultimate goal of the study is to learn more about the migration histories and factors determining residential choice of people from South Dakota and the Great Plains, and to draw comparisons to other states and regions of the country. I plan to present the findings of the South Dakota survey at the 56th annual South Dakota State Geography Convention in April 2025.
Participation in this study will require approximately 8-12 minutes. You will be asked to answer 35~ survey questions.

Participation will take place online (just simply click on the link below).
This is a confidential survey, with no identifiable information being recorded. There are a handful of demographic questions at the end of the survey, but you are able to skip any question you don’t feel comfortable answering.

If you have questions about your rights or complaints about the research, contact the UNL Institutional Review Board (IRB) at (402)472-6965 or [email protected].

Please consider taking a few minutes to complete the survey and to share it with as many South Dakotans as you can!"

Survey link: https://qualtrics.uvm.edu/jfe/form/SV_eWIa16MF6Wj4CkS