A certification and continuing-education program for tour guides working the Black Hills and Badlands. It's built on the actual geology, wildlife, history and craft of this place, and it's open to every operator in it.
Most guides in this region learned the job by riding along once and then figuring it out. There is no shared standard for what a guide here ought to know, no way to prove you know it, and no route into the work for someone who wants in.
That shows up in the product. Guests hear the wrong number of people killed in the 1972 flood. They're told workers died carving Mount Rushmore. They're told the Badlands are volcanic. They pick up fossils they are not allowed to pick up. And the hardest conversations in this region, whose land this is and what the carved mountains mean, get handled by guessing.
This program exists to level up the industry, not one company in it. Tourism is one of South Dakota's largest employers and the state depends on it. A better-trained guide workforce is worth more to every operator here than any of us keeping our knowledge to ourselves.
Knowledge is assessed in writing and out loud. Delivery is assessed in the vehicle, by a certified evaluator riding along with real guests. The two fail separately, so they're tested separately.
All eight core modules. The shared knowledge floor, because it's the language everything else is built on.
One per route. A written exam, then a shadow ride, then a scored check ride. You run only the tours you hold.
Foundation and the full Craft tier, three endorsements, logged field hours, and a public interpretive talk assessed by a panel.
Every endorsement, a contributed module or field session, and mentoring another guide through their Foundation.
Every designation expires. Staying current takes twelve field credits a year, earned through new modules, guest-expert sessions, field days, contributed content or mentoring. That requirement is the difference between a credential and a certificate you got once and put in a drawer.
You know your route cold, and you want to know why it looks the way it does. You'd also like something on paper that says so when you go looking for your next season.
Send your people. It costs you less than building training yourself, and it does not matter to us whose van they drive. A better guide working for you is still a better guide working this region.
You love this place and you've wondered whether you could do it. Start here. The Foundation is the same whether you have twenty seasons or none, and finishing it makes you worth interviewing.
Every operator in the Black Hills is short of good guides every single season. Training people who have never done it, and handing that trained workforce to the whole region rather than hoarding it, does more for tourism here than any one company's hiring page ever will.
One evening session a month and four seasonal field days a year, geologists, paleontologists, wildlife biologists, park interpreters, historians, and Lakota knowledge keepers speaking for themselves. Recorded with permission, so every session becomes part of the permanent library.
Sessions are open to anyone in the regional tourism industry, not only to people enrolled in the certification.
The first sessions are being booked. When the calendar opens you'll be able to see what's coming and reserve a seat here.
Calendar opening soon
Independent Black Hills businesses are welcome at these evenings, so bring food, or a product, or an offer, or take a few minutes to tell a room of guides what you do. The people in that room send visitors somewhere every single day.
Park alerts and closures, road conditions, the forecast and any warnings, sunrise and golden hour, moon phase and whether the Milky Way is up. It's the five things you check before every tour, gathered on one screen.
Every speaker session, kept. Miss one and you can still take it later, and it still counts toward staying current.
Printable route sheets, a species and fossil quick-reference, what is legal to collect in which park, and a map of where your phone will not work.
Rapid City Tourism is a free directory of independent Black Hills businesses, family kitchens, motels, and cabins, with no chains and no franchises. It exists because the places that most deserve a guide's recommendation are the hardest ones to find online. Use it, and send people there.