Songfacts®:

• "The Black Hills of Dakota" is a mushy, sentimental love song from the 1953 film Calamity Jane; the real Calamity Jane was anything but mushy and sentimental; Martha Jane Cannary (1852-1903) was a hardy frontierswoman, adept with a six shooter and a weakness for the demon drink, the latter of which contributed to her death if not causing it outright. In the musical, she is played by the always overtly feminine Doris Day.
• "The Black Hills of Dakota" is sung by a foursome - i.e. two couples - including Day, and Howard Keel as Wild Bill Hickock, for whom Calamity also sings the award winning "Secret Love". The song includes a choir, who like the principal singers are riding in a wagon, or at least they appear to be, but the back projection is a bit too obvious.
  
  Unfortunately, in life, Calamity Jane's love although not secret was totally unrequited. Hickock, who was some fifteen years her senior, was murdered in 1876. When Jane died nearly three decades later, she was buried next to him as a black joke by some of Hickock's friends who said that he had "absolutely no use" for her in life, so now she could lay beside him for all eternity.
• Like the rest of the score, "The Black Hills of Dakota" was composed by Sammy Fain with lyrics by Paul Francis Webster. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Alexander Baron - London, England, for all above