30 Jun 2014 Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary

The Black Hills Wild Sanctuary stretches over 14,000 acres of protected land in western South Dakota. Thousands of wild horses live unhindered in the privately-owned wilderness. American, Spanish, Curly, and Choctaw mustangs are rescued from kill facilities or are relocated from the Bureau of Land Management.

The landscape is unblemished by roads, power lines, or human interference. Indeed, many horses were born on Sanctuary land. Some have never seen a human being. The inevitability of death claims lives, but bodies return to the earth without human interruption.

The hallowed piece of land is marked by history in the bones of abandoned pioneer shacks and flint mines.

A brainchild and dream accomplished by founder Dayton O. Hyde, the Sanctuary preserves not only the natural history of wild mustangs but is a snapshot of history long passed and seldom remembered in equine photos.