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Explore the City of Presidents With a New Braille Guide

Downtown Rapid City’s City of Presidents is now easier to experience for visitors who are blind or visually impaired, thanks to a new braille booklet and tactile map available at the Rapid City Visitor Center.

Created by local Girl Scout Riley Thomasson as part of her Girl Scout Gold Award project, the new guide helps users navigate the City of Presidents, learn about each presidential statue, and explore downtown Rapid City with more confidence.

The project was completed in time for the America 250 celebration, adding a meaningful new layer of accessibility to one of Rapid City’s most iconic downtown experiences.

A woman holds up the Rapid City Presidents Tour braille booklet in front of a bronze president statue

A More Accessible Way To Experience Downtown Rapid City

The City of Presidents is one of Rapid City’s signature attractions, with life-size bronze statues of U.S. presidents placed throughout the downtown corridor. While maps, plaques, and digital tools help many visitors explore the collection, those resources were not fully accessible to individuals who are blind or visually impaired.

This new braille guide helps change that.

Four braille booklets are now available to check out at the Rapid City Visitor Center. Each booklet includes directions, statue locations, presidential details, and local Rapid City information. A separate tactile map allows users to feel the layout of downtown streets and buildings, creating a hands-on way to understand the area before heading out to explore.

What’s Included

Each braille guide is designed to help users experience the City of Presidents and downtown Rapid City at their own pace.

The guide includes:

  • Accessible directions through downtown Rapid City
  • Information about the City of Presidents
  • Details about each presidential statue
  • Local Rapid City information
  • A separate tactile map featuring downtown streets and buildings

How To Check Out a Braille Guide

Braille booklets can be checked out at the Rapid City Visitor Center in downtown Rapid City.

Rapid City Visitor Center
613 Main St.
Rapid City, SD 57701

Hours: 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. through early October

Stop in, ask a Visitor Center team member for a braille City of Presidents guide, and they will help you get started.

Rapid City Visitor Center

 

A Girl Scout Gold Award Project With Lasting Impact

This accessibility project was created by Riley Thomasson as part of her work toward the Girl Scout Gold Award, the highest award in Girl Scouts.

To earn the award, Girl Scouts must complete a project that addresses a community need, creates long-term impact, and requires a minimum of 80 hours of work. Thomasson spent nearly triple that amount of time researching, planning, testing, and developing the braille guide to make sure it was useful, thoughtful, and accessible.

Her goal was simple and powerful: make sure more people have the same opportunity to experience a defining part of Rapid City.

Built Through Community Collaboration

While Thomasson led the project, she worked with accessibility groups, state organizations, schools, and Visit Rapid City to help shape the guide and ensure the right information was included.

The result is a resource that helps make downtown Rapid City more welcoming, more inclusive, and easier to explore.

“Accessibility has been at the forefront of our minds at Visit Rapid City, and the timing of this braille book could not be better,” said Ally Formanek, CEO of Visit Rapid City. “This project is amazing and we’re glad to play a small role in bringing it to life and making the City of Presidents accessible for more travelers.”

 

 

History at Your Fingertips

Rapid City’s City of Presidents tells a uniquely American story, one bronze statue at a time. With this new braille guide and tactile map, that story is now within reach for more visitors and locals.

Check out a guide at the Rapid City Visitor Center and experience downtown Rapid City in a more accessible way.

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