The most popular forms of outdoor recreation are the community barbecues, frontier days and pow-wows. Only those who live this free, healthy life in the heart of nature have appetites worthy of a barbecue. At noon the delicious beef, roasted all night over a deep trough of coals, and basted with real butter, is a social meal that many of us envy. There are frontier field days with sports belonging to ranch life, such as horse racing and broncho busting. The day usually ends with a big dance. Even the "dude" ranches in Sheridan hold Frontier days, and great events they are, too, with many spectators. In sections of Sheridan and Union Counties, but especially in Beaverhead, there is the beauty of the country which furnishes recreation in itself. Nature has lavished upon them every gift of line and color. The mountains and the streams, the woods and the canyons, hold a hundred delightful possibilities that are within the reach of almost every one. It is a playground as varied as it is perfect. On Saturdays and Sundays in the summer, car after car, packed with camp equipment and home-made delicacies, head for the health-giving hills and mountains.
The Barbecue is an institution typical of the Range Country and is attended by settlers from far and near.]
[Illustration: CHURCH AND COMMUNITY MAP OF HUGHES COUNTY, SOUTH DAKOTA]
What country landscape is complete without the church spires? In this spacious western region, in the heart of awe-inspiring natural scenery, the church spires are guideposts to almost 50,000 people. This land is new. It has been the changing frontier. Tremendous developments have been in process. The country is in a transition stage between the stock-raising past and the agricultural future. Population has increased rapidly; population has been shifting. The whole background has been kaleidoscopic. The Church has faced bewildering changes and growth. The burden of increasing its service and equipment has been heavy; it has not been able to "keep up" with the pace of civilization.
The story of early church growth in the cowboy country is one inspiring loyalty since it eloquently traces the faithfulness of a few in a country where God was easily forgotten. One of the first things to be read of rough-and-ready Bannock, among the earliest mining towns on the Range, is that church services were held there. The Church migrated with its congregations. Missionaries from the East came through with the fur trappers and preached the word of God. When the land began to be taken up by settlers, impromptu meetings were held, and Sunday schools were started in many places which had no ministers. Some of these points of worship gradually developed into organized religious bodies so that at present there are churches which have grown up with the country.