By John Andrews

From 1880 to the 1930s, you could find corn and grain palaces in 24 towns in eight cities across the Midwest. We know this because today we received a book by Rod Evans entitled Palaces of the Prairie. Evans, a scholar and playwright living in Aberdeen, researched and wrote about every one of them.

The most famous, and the only one left, is the Mitchell Corn Palace, but at one time you could find palaces in Plankinton, Aberdeen, Ipswich, Gregory, Timber Lake, Rapid City and St. Francis. All towns had their own reasons for building one, mostly promotional. The Gregory palace was fueled by the town's rivalry with nearby Dallas.

As Evans explains, Dallas was founded in 1896. Eight years later a group of settlers and speculators established Gregory about four miles northwest. The biggest kick for Dallas came when the railroad decided it was going to bypass town and extend its line to Gregory. Dallas business owners began moving their buildings to Gregory, but when the bank was on its way the team of 76 horses pulling it bypassed town and settled five miles farther west, so the battle for supremacy continued.

The two towns continued to fight during ensuing land lotteries, where homesteaders tried to secure a piece of the former Rosebud reservation, which was initially opened for settlement in 1904. In 1909 Gregory beat Dallas in the competition for a land office, and in 1911 city leaders decided to turn the Krotter lumber yard into a corn palace to exhibit agricultural goods while homesteaders filed for land. Future president Harry Truman, who went to Gregory hoping to win a land lottery, visited the palace but was none too impressed. He called it simply "a wooden shack."

The palace was only decorated for a few years and the building was torn down in 1952.

Photo: Mitchell's corn palace in about 1907.