“Rapid City Founders Camp Site”

Near a perpendicular sandstone cliff a short distance North of here and across Rapid Creek (a marker denotes the site) was the first camp of those hardy pioneers who founded Rapid City.

Here John R. Brennan, Martin Persinger, Thomas Ferguson, W.P. Martin, Albert Brown, William Marston, Samuel Scott, the surveyor, J.W. Allen, James Carney, Major Hutchinson and William Nuttaj made their camp on February 24, 1876 and the name of Brennan, where he carved it in the sandstone cliff, is still to be seen.

The following day the town site, a mile square, was laid out by these men under the direction of Samuel Scott. One of the pioneer writers of the period said: ‘As markers of the history of the West, their names will be handed down to posterity while summer clouds shall wrap old Harney’s Brow and Black Hills waters run down to the sea.'

Pennington County, Halley Park Museum (1988)