Falls Park, the Arc of Dreams, and the Great Plains City That Keeps Surprising
Falls Park is Sioux Falls in concentrated form — the Big Sioux River, compressed by ancient Sioux quartzite bedrock, drops 30 metres in a series of cascades that gave the city its name and now anchor 128 acres of park trails, a Victorian-era mill ruin, and an observation tower that lights the falls after dark. The SculptureWalk rotates 50+ works through downtown each year, free summer concerts run at Levitt at the Falls, and the Badlands and Black Hills are within easy striking distance.
Sioux Falls sits on the edge of the Great Sioux Nation's traditional territory and was briefly settled by Europeans in 1857 before Lakota resistance forced abandonment — the town was not permanently established until 1873, after the US Army built Fort Dakota nearby. The pink Sioux quartzite that colours the falls and dozens of public buildings throughout the city came from local quarries operating from the 1880s; the Queen Bee Mill ruins in Falls Park were the largest flour mill west of the Mississippi when the complex opened in 1881.