• Wind Cave National Park - Two Worlds

    Wind Cave

    National Park South Dakota

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    The Elk Mountain Campground is closed and will remain closed through the summer of 2013 due to across the board budget cuts.

Alvin McDonald Diary

Alvin McDonald

Alvin McDonald

NPS Photo

Alvin McDonald was not quite 18 when he started recording his cave explorations in a diary.

Click here to view the text of Alvin McDonald's diary, or click on the purple page descriptions to download a PDF of the pages associated with that month or topic. You can also look at individual pages by clicking on the page numbers to download a PDF of each handwritten page of his diary. Each page is a separate file (50-200 k). A good place to start is in January as earlier pages are mostly monetary accounts.

The months (in purple) contain all of the days listed to the side.

The pages are numbered consecutively as they are found in the diary; however Alvin skipped some numbers and duplicated others causing some confusion.

 
 

Did You Know?

fire on the prairie

Fire is an important factor in protecting the prairie.  Historically, fires burned across the prairie every 4 to 7 years.  Fires burn the small trees that would otherwise march across the prairie and turn the grasslands to forest.