Dances with Wolves: The South Dakota Frontier

Dunbar arrives at Fort Hays, where Major Fambrough assigns him to "the farthest outpost under his jurisdiction", Fort Sedgwick. For these scenes the production used a set, built about four miles south of Rapid City. It has since become a tourist attraction, the Fort Hays Old West Town & Dinner Show, and it also houses the South Dakota Film Museum, which highlights over 50 movies produced in the state.

Location precision: The Fort Hays scenes were shot on a purpose-built set south of Rapid City; the pin marks Fort Hayes Road near that set.

Visitor guidance: The set stands on Fort Hayes Road south of Rapid City and now operates as a tourist attraction.

Dunbar sets out with Timmons, a foul-mouthed mule-wagon provisioner, and finds the fort deserted at the end of the trail. The wagon ride was filmed in the Sage Creek Wilderness Area, south of Wall in Badlands National Park, where sharply eroded buttes and pinnacles rise beside the largest undisturbed mixed grass prairie in the United States. The park also appears in Thunderheart (1992).

Location precision: The wagon ride was shot in the Sage Creek Wilderness Area; the pin marks Badlands National Park as a whole.

Visitor guidance: Badlands National Park is at Hwy 240, Interior, SD 57750.

Fort Sedgwick is a deserted military post on the western prairie in 1863. Dunbar decides to rebuild it, recording his observations in his diary. Later he wins the Sioux's acceptance by helping them find and hunt a large herd of buffalo. The film shot both the hunt and the fort, on a custom set, at the Triple U Buffalo Ranch outside Fort Pierre, formerly Standing Butte Ranch. The ranch still runs a closed herd of about 2,000 bison.

Location precision: The hunt and the Fort Sedgwick set were filmed somewhere on the ranch; the pin marks the ranch.

Because of encroaching white settlers, Chief Ten Bears decides to move his group to its winter camp. After the Sioux free Dunbar, they take him there. The camp was filmed in Spearfish Canyon, with Native American extras recruited from the Rosebud, Pine Ridge and Eagle Butte Reservations. The canyon runs for 20 miles, and the Spearfish Canyon Scenic Byway follows it along U.S. Route 14A from Spearfish to Cheyenne Crossing.

Location precision: The sources name only Spearfish Canyon, a 20-mile gorge; the pin marks the canyon.

Visitor guidance: The Spearfish Canyon Scenic Byway follows U.S. Route 14A from Spearfish to Cheyenne Crossing.

The film closes on text rather than a scene: the last of the free Sioux would surrender at Fort Robinson, Nebraska, in 1876. Fort Robinson was a base of US military forces and played a major role in the Sioux Wars from 1876 to 1890. Today it is a feature of Fort Robinson State Park, 2 miles west of Crawford in northwest Nebraska, and the Fort Robinson Museum occupies the 1905 post headquarters building.

Visitor guidance: The fort museum is in the 1905 post headquarters building.