HILL CITY, SD — Shuttered in 2024, the closure of Prairie Berry, the winery beloved by locals and visitors alike shook the greater community of the Black Hills. Now, out from the ashes of the historically-inspired buildings which Prairie Berry Built, the Black Hills Institute Of Geological Research hopes to bring the location back to life.
The Institute, a 52 year old for-profit organization started in 1974, notable for their extensive collection of original and cast fossils, and for providing casts and replica displays for museums around the world announced last week that next month they would be opening an event center at the former Winery location, in anticipation of the opening of a Natural History Museum slated for June of 2027.
Peter Larson, president of the Institute, says that though the site was not initially considered for the expansion, when he toured the location “I had the worst poker face. When we got the tour of the place I said ‘This is fantastic. It’s perfect, we need to buy it’”.
The primary driver of this expansion? A need for more room. “Currently, you can’t have group tours because it’s not big enough. We do currently have some bus groups that come, but not the scale we could potentially have here, there’s not a museum like this in this area,” said CFO Adam Weaver.
Housed within 4000 sq. ft. in the former Hill City Auditorium and American Legion Hall constructed in 1938, the Institute hopes to grow by nearly eight times its current size with the opening of this new Museum. The organization hopes to convert their current location in downtown hill city into a sort of showroom for prospective collectors of replica fossils, additionally acting as a sort of free museum for curious visitors. “It’s like a Ferrari dealership for dinosaurs, right? And in that world, we are the Ferrari of dinosaur things, so that’s going to the world’s only dinosaur dealership.” said Weaver, “And there’ll certainly be very fancy minerals and all the different kinds of things, because there’s a lot of cases. So people can go in there and if you want something that’s completely amazing. It’ll be there! If not? you can just go look at it for free”.
The campus features the Eras Center, housing for guests looking to use the Center for reunions, weddings, and other events. Both will be having their grand opening next month at February 21st, at 4pm; there, the institute will give further details for their museum ambitions.
The museum as of current plans hopes to provide visitors with a look at the history of life on earth, heavily featuring local sauropod dinosaurs like Barosaurus and Camarasaurus, up to seven Tyrannosaurus Rex displays, and of course South Dakota’s state fossil, the Triceratops, as well as a number of later Pleistocene mammals, featuring mammoths and exhibiting an original Smilodon (Saber-Toothed Tiger) skeleton sourced from Peru. Additionally, visitors can expect to see work done by the Institute, as well as visiting researchers, and the production of fossil casts. At opening, the organization is additionally hopeful to have an archive of rare books and fossil specimens available for individuals to view in a dedicated library on the upper floor of the building.
Weaver says that he hopes that the museum will supplement other museums in the area, adding onto the offerings of the Journey Museum with a geological and prehistoric history of the region. Larson says that the opening of this museum represents the fruition of his childhood dream of one day opening his own museum, starting as a child from a single-room shack filled with fossils found on his childhood ranch.
