Welcome to Christ Church Episcopal, Lead South Dakota in the middle of  the Northern Black Hills.

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The Twin Cities of Lead/Deadwood are located in the heart of the northern Black Hills of South Dakota.  The rectory and church in Lead are exactly one mile above sea level.  The surrounding hills are covered with pine trees and in proximity to Deadwood/Lead there is a beautiful well maintained hiking trail which runs the entire length of the Black Hills.  There are mountain streams for fishing and cross country ski trails as well as some of the best snowmobile trails in the United States.

Rapid City, a municipality of some 60,000 persons, is a 45 minute drive from Lead/Deadwood mostly on interstate highway 90.  All of the road is excellent as well as scenic.  In Rapid City there is community theater; at the Civic Center there are excellent Broadway shows featured each fall and winter.  There is a symphony and there is shopping of every kind.  Rapid City also features an excellent airport where frequent flights connect to Minneapolis, Sioux Falls, Denver and Salt Lake City. Denver can also be reached on good roads (about half of which are on interstate 25) in about six and one half to seven hours of driving.  Yellowstone Park is within a day's drive.

Mount Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Mountain carvings are an hour from Lead/Deadwood.  Sioux Falls, headquarters to the Diocese of South Dakota is 350 miles to the east (almost all on interstate 90).  There are three Episcopal parishes in Rapid City, one in Sturgis (home of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally which attracts literally hundreds of thousands of persons), one in the college town of Spearfish, and there are small congregations in Belle Fourche and Hot Springs.

There are four golf courses within twenty miles of Lead/Deadwood, and a top rated nine hole course in Hot Springs as well as others in Rapid City.  Winter down hill skiing is available at both Deer Mountain and Terry Peak during the winter season.

There are several excellent colleges in this area.  Black Hills State University is in Spearfish, a thirty minute drive from the rectory.  This is a school which offers a wide selection of courses, and education degrees.  In Rapid City the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology offers an excellent math and engineering program.  National American University in Rapid City is a private school with technology and business curriculum. A Vocational Technical School in Rapid City offers a wide variety of courses in areas of employment opportunity.

Deadwood has a hospital and medical clinic with an emergency room.  Rapid City features a large hospital and medical treatment is available in modern settings for almost any circumstance.

This area contains a large population of Native Americans, most of whom are from the Lakota Nation.  The Pine Ridge, Rosebud, Brule, Cheyenne Eagle Butte and Yankton reservations are scattered throughout the state.  The Episcopal Church ministers to a large number of Native Congregations, and the Lakota language is much used in liturgy and hymns.