Dan Ray shared recent photos of the former St. Mary’s convent and school just south of the tiny town of Zell. The convent was built in 1883 and is the mother site of the Benedictine Sisters in South Dakota, invited to the area by Bishop Martin Marty OSB, the Vicar Apostolic of Dakota Territory. Bishop Marty asked the sisters to open a school for parish children in 1886. An addition was built in 1912 and the sisters began farming the surrounding land in 1915 to support the school. The school eventually closed in 1963 and the 7-acre campus, which includes a church, two rectories and a small cemetery, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. The site is now privately owned.