"The South Dakota State Historical Society is excited to make available to the residents of South Dakota and in fact, the world, these images from the Deadwood/Black Hills region of our state," commented Chelle Somsen, state archivist and project manager. "Through this collaboration with the CDP, we learned about all the aspects of digitization. Now we are taking the final step of making these unique resources available to South Dakotans. This partnership of the South Dakota Heritage Fund and CDP has been a wonderful experience."

The Historical Society plans on continuing their digitization efforts, making additional content available through Heritage West. The following is taken from the new collection.

Rapid City, SD — After the Pennington County Bank Fire Photographed by Carl H. Rise (1888-1839) Courtesy of SD State Historical Society

Additional cultural heritage organizations will be contributing digital content to Heritage West through ongoing projects over the next few months, including Lake County (CO), Utah State University, the Tamarind Institute of New Mexico, Silver City Museum (NM) and Palace of the Governors (NM).

The Heritage West database brings together tens of thousands of metadata records that link to digital objects from the collections of archives, historical societies, libraries and museums throughout the Western United States. Through Heritage West people have access to digital versions of photos, documents, artifacts, costumes, diaries, oral histories and manuscripts representing the cultural, scientific and historic heritage of the American West.

BCR's CDP enables access to cultural, historical and scientific heritage collections of the West by building collaboration between archives, historical societies, libraries and museums.