‘Chill Hill’ Takes Shape in Rapid City

Cowboy Hill, for decades a island of wilderness in the middle of Rapid City, is taking shape as a 240-acre mountain bikers’ paradise. For years, it was private property — but that didn’t stop people from climbing up its slopes for a view of the city or plying the deer trails that criss-cross the property.

But last year, a private foundation purchased much of Cowboy Hill, also known as M Hill, for creation of a wilderness park. Now, the foundation, the city of Rapid City and area mountain bike groups are turning the hill into a low-impact wildland hiking and biking park.

This week, volunteers and a professional trail designer are building a 25,000-square foot mountain bike jump park in a tree-shrouded draw along the west flank of the hill. It will have jumps, log rides and pump tracks. They hope to complete the work in time for the upcoming Fat Tire Festival, which starts May 23.

The new park connects with the city’s existing 12-mile bike path system, a paved trail that runs along the greenway created after the 1972 Rapid City flash flood, which killed 238 people and changed the complexion of Rapid City forever.

Eventually Cowboy Hill and the bike path system will connect with another wild area within the city limits of Rapid City. The 150-acre Skyline Drive Wilderness, the other hogback ridge that divides the city, was donated to the city in early 2007.

Between Skyline Drive, the bike path greenway and Cowboy Hill, Rapid City will have a fat band of wilderness running its entire length and a narrow band greenway across its breadth.

“Rapid City will be one of the few cities its size — any size, actually — that has this much space devoted to recreation in an open, wild setting,” Tim Rangitsch, owner of ACME Bicycles and an avid mountain biker, told the Rapid City Journal last year. “It’ll be great.”