Author: Andrea Maibaum

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Living with Lions

By John Andrews

Mountain lions, found from Chile to the Yukon Territory, are the most widely distributed wild, terrestrial mammal in the Western Hemisphere. Researchers estimate that between 200 and 300 mountain lions live in the Black Hills, though their secretive nature makes sightings rare in the wild. Photo by Sam Stukel

REPORTS BEGAN COMING into Yankton police at 5:50 on a Monday morning in June of 2004. Two hours later, police and state Game, Fish and Parks Department officials had found a 115-pound mountain lion beneath a camper in a quiet neighborhood just east of the Yankton Middle School. Tranquilizing and relocating the big cat was not an option, so officers shot it in accordance with Game, Fish and Parks policy.

There was still a buzz about the mountain lion when we moved to town a year later. In fact, people talk about it today. Mountain lions live in the Black Hills, 400 miles away. One had never been seen in town. The only previous evidence of a lion nearby was a confirmed footprint found in Yankton County in 2002.

I thought about the excitement of that lion sighting when police congregated in my neighborhood in July of 2020. An officer said a mountain lion had been spotted just a few blocks away — captured on a home security camera sauntering between split-level homes — and was last seen heading east through a cornfield between the airport and my house.

Suddenly alert neighbors stood in driveways, hoping to catch a glimpse of our unusual visitor. I kept watch at the window for a flash of tan moving through the tall green cornstalks. But I think we all knew that the lion had slipped quietly into the country just as quickly as he had appeared.

Mountain lions still show up in Yankton, mostly on game cameras that are monitored by residents living along the forested river bluffs on the south edge of town. None have been shot since the 2004 incident.

Few animals in South Dakota seem to captivate us quite like the mountain lion. Fifteen years ago, Sam Stukel was hunting elk in the Black Hills when he suddenly noticed a young lion about 15 yards away. He captured a shaky video and posted it to YouTube, where the 75-second clip has amassed 232,000 views.”I still get email notifications every time someone comments on it,” says Stukel, who is also a photographer and a fisheries biologist at the Gavins Point National Fish Hatchery west of Yankton.”The variety of critiques is amusing. I’m an idiot for not being more afraid of the cat, or I’m a chicken for being so afraid of the cat. Everyone’s an expert on YouTube.”

Mountain lions are just as divisive offline. People like my Yankton neighbors are eager to someday see one in the wild, while others think one mountain lion is one too many. They are seen as both majestic creatures and vicious predators out to kill pets, livestock and maybe even humans. Reality is somewhere in the middle. Mountain lions lived in South Dakota long before people and have become an important part of our ecosystem. They are our neighbors, so we should get to know them.

*****

Jonathan Jenks and John Kanta are our state’s leading authorities on mountain lions. Jenks, a distinguished professor emeritus of wildlife science at South Dakota State University in Brookings, spent 17 years closely studying mountain lions in the Black Hills. Kanta is a terrestrial section chief for the South Dakota Department of Game, Fish and Parks based in Rapid City who has devoted nearly all of his 27 years with the agency to mountain lions.

Jenks began his research in 1998 when GF&P noticed an uptick in reports of mountain lion attacks. Livestock and horses on West River ranches and two mule deer within the Rapid City city limits were believed to have been killed by mountain lions. A year before, GF&P had estimated only 15 to 25 mountain lions lived in the Black Hills, but officials wanted to learn more. The agency partnered with SDSU and Jenks and his graduate students began capturing and radio collaring lions to establish a population estimate and learn about their lives, which date back millions of years on the continent.

The lions’ earliest ancestors likely migrated across the Bering land bridge into the Americas between 8 million and 8.5 million years ago. Mountain lions became recognizable as a distinct species about 400,000 years ago and roamed the continent alongside giant sloths, mammoths, dire wolves and saber-toothed lions.

Scientists believe the climate grew too cold for mountain lion populations to survive during the Pleistocene ice ages, but they later returned from more southern regions. They can be found from the southern tip of Chile to the Yukon Territory, making them the most widely distributed wild, terrestrial mammal in the Western Hemisphere.

As settlers populated the Upper Midwest in the 1800s, mountain lions became targeted as threats to livestock. The animals were hardly mentioned in the reconnaissance ahead of Lt. Col. George Custer’s 1874 expedition into the Black Hills. But the following year, Richard Irving Dodge, who had been with Custer’s men, accompanied geologist Walter Jenney back into the Hills. He noted mountain lion prints around their campsite.”He thought these lions were investigating the camp at night because they are nocturnal,” Jenks says.”They would approach the camp, probably mostly out of curiosity. As a result, Dodge called them cowards,” implying they wouldn’t come out when they could shoot them.

South Dakota State University professor Jonathan Jenks and Steve Griffin of the state Game, Fish and Parks Department (in the foreground) collect information on the age of a mountain lion.

In 1889 the South Dakota legislature placed a bounty on mountain lions, and by 1906 they were nearly extirpated. Sightings were scant for decades. A man named Earl Bedell killed one near the head of Stockade Creek in Wyoming in 1930. Ted Mann, who ranched near Dewey in southwestern Custer County, shot one in the early 1950s. Four were spotted in Wind Cave National Park in 1964 and 1965, and tracks were found west of Custer in 1965 and near Crow Peak in Lawrence County in 1968. No one could be sure if they lived in South Dakota or were transients. By 1978 all bounties were gone, and mountain lions were declared a state threatened species, which garnered legal protection.

That opened the door to recovery. Jenks and other researchers believe that lions from southeastern Wyoming followed northeasterly draws that effectively funneled them into the Hills.”That’s why when we first started studying them, it was easier to capture mountain lions in the southern Black Hills because there were potentially more of them there than in the northern Hills,” Jenks says.”It was right at the beginning of the recolonization of the Black Hills in the late 1990s.”

After a few years of research, Jenks and his team of graduate students estimated that 100 mountain lions lived in the Black Hills — far surpassing the GF&P estimate of 15 to 25 in the late 1990s. The animals were removed from the threatened species list and reclassified as a big game animal.

In 2005, GF&P announced the first experimental mountain lion hunting season with a limit of 12, no more than half female. It resulted in a lawsuit from the Mountain Lion Foundation of California and the Black Hills Mountain Lion Foundation, which sought an injunction to stop the harvest, arguing that there was still not enough known about the local population and that a hunting season could once again lead to regional extinction. A judge in Pierre ruled in favor of the state a week before the season was to open. A mountain lion season has continued every year beginning the day after Christmas and running through April. The season ends earlier if either 60 total mountain lions or 40 females have been harvested.

So began a delicate balance between those fascinated with the presence of mountain lions and those who want to hunt them. Kanta says between 3,000 and 5,000 licenses are sold for every season.”A lot of our mountain lion hunters are very dedicated and love that opportunity,” Kanta says.”I would also offer that there are a good number of folks who feel like this is a magnificent critter and would love that one-in-a-million chance to see a mountain lion out in the wild. They are intrigued by mountain lion tracks in the snow, or just knowing that they are out there.”

As mountain lions re-established themselves in the Black Hills, Jenks’ SDSU team and GF&P researchers like Kanta learned as much as they could. Adult males can be more than 8 feet long and weigh an average of 150 pounds. Adult females are around 6 Ω feet long and weigh 90 pounds. Adult males are generally solitary, while lions seen traveling together are usually a mother and her kittens, which stay together for 12 to 14 months.

Lions are solitary hunters that stalk their prey. They take advantage of thick vegetation or attack from upslope when they need a quick sprint. Lions have low endurance in chases, so targets that can run fast and long will likely escape. Older lions have better success rates because they learn the traits of other wildlife. Their preferred meal is deer, but Jenks learned that they are opportunistic, capturing whatever might be near, including rabbits and porcupines.

A capture crew including Jenks and SDSU graduate student Brian Jansen determines the weight of a male mountain lion in Custer State Park.

Mountain lions that show up East River and beyond most likely come from the Black Hills. Young males want to leave their home range and their mothers.”We did a lot of work on dispersal, trying to figure out where these cats were going,” Jenks says.”We followed them through North Dakota, northern Minnesota, the Niobrara River in Nebraska. There was one in Howard, one in Brookings. A 3- to 4-year-old male ended up about 8 miles south of Brookings, which was unusual to have a cat that age.”

In most instances — including the animals that wandered into Yankton — the mountain lions were simply passing through. They have no interest in interacting with people.”What they want to do is get away from you,” Jenks says.”It’s exciting to see them, and they are such an amazing animal, but they really just want to get away from you. In order for them to interact with you, there’s got to be some reason. A worst-case scenario might be standing on a hillside, and you slip into a den with kittens. In all the other situations that you can envision, lions are trying to avoid you. They might be climbing up a tree to let you go by, or running away from you, or staying quiet while you pass. That is borne out by looking at the number of negative interactions between people and mountain lions in the Black Hills. They are very few to nonexistent.”

As their familiarity with lions increased, it grew challenging to deal with public perceptions, which seem to be black and white.”There are two sides of the coin with mountain lions, and that’s what makes them interesting,” Jenks says.”You’ve got people who love them to death and people who hate their guts, and you’re trying to weave between the two to make everyone happy.”

That divide has a long history. The Cougar Hunt is a 1920s silent film created by the United States Department of Agriculture in which mountain lions are nature’s scourge slayed by noble hunters.”Predators of the range,” reads the opening slide before showing a lion lounging in a tree.”Uncontrolled predators exact a heavy annual toll of livestock and game,” reads the next slide, before shots of grazing cattle and sheep. Then, a group of men walking through the woods encounter an animal carcass covered with debris,”The work of that prince of predatory cats — the American lion, or cougar.” The film ends with a hunter shooting a treed lion. As it falls, the final slide reads”a ëgood’ lion at last.”

Others have admired the big cats. A mountain lion from Arizona named Josephine became the mascot of Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders during the Spanish-American War. Roosevelt clearly respected lions.”It is itself a more skillful hunter than any human rival,” he said.”Ö It is a beast of stealth and rapine; its great velvet paws never make a sound, and it is always on watch whether for prey or for enemies, while it rarely leaves shelter even when it thinks itself safe.”

A student once asked Jenks if she could raise two cute mountain lion kittens In her home.”What happens when you’ve got a 150-pound mountain lion in your living room with your two small kids?” he asked.

During a GF&P commission meeting, after Jenks testified about the number of lions in the Black Hills, a local resident objected, saying there were many more and their numbers should be reduced. He believed he had seen the same mountain lion three different times near Hill City, and suggested lions were decimating the deer population.”It’s really tough to get by those perceptions, because mountain lions do kill deer,” Jenks says.”If you have a mountain lion, it has to be killing deer, and that’s the real simplistic vision of people with predators and prey. But there are a lot of other things going on in the Black Hills. Harvest, predators and disease make species management difficult, and mountain lions bear perhaps an unfair burden.”

Fear might even lie in the animal’s very name. Because of their wide dispersal and interactions with different subsets of American culture, they have assumed many monikers. In Florida they are panthers, in New England catamounts, for cat-of-the-mountain. Elsewhere, they are cougars or pumas. In South Dakota, they are lions, which conjures a very specific image.”When people hear lion,” Jenks says,”they think African lion.”

*****

Mountain lion numbers in the Black Hills ebb and flow. The GF&P’s current population objective is between 200 and 300, as established in the South Dakota Mountain Lion Action Plan, first written in 2010 and updated every five to 10 years. Kanta recalls one year when numbers surged, and his office fielded multiple reports of mountain lion sightings.”Anything that flashed by was a mountain lion and people would call us,” Kanta says.”Ninety percent of them were not legitimate, so you’d start to get a little complacent.”

One day he responded to a report of a mountain lion living in a garage. When he arrived, he found the garage door open about a foot. The homeowner explained that he had housecats and left food for them in the garage.”I’m standing right in front of this door, and I told him to go inside and push the button and let me take a look. As he opens it, a full-grown mountain lion comes running out and almost bumps into me. It turned out that the lion had been going inside the garage in pursuit of those cats.”

Information collected on radio-collared mountain lions has confirmed dispersal from the Black Hills to Minnesota, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Wyoming and Saskatchewan. DNA from lions captured in the Black Hills has been linked to cats that have traveled to the Chicago area and central Connecticut.

Mountain lions will take domestic animals. It’s one thing Jenks and Kanta want the public to know about living with big cats as neighbors.”If you have small children, you need to keep them close,” Jenks says.”If you have livestock or pets, you need to have them close. You need to watch if deer are spending a lot of time in your yard, because of the potential for drawing a cat in. And you need to know how to act if you encounter a cat. Act big. Don’t run. Yell at them. Show them that you’re not afraid of them and don’t act like prey, because there’s a chance that you might get attacked.

ìWe do need to learn to live with mountain lions, and that means people in South Dakota and the Black Hills have to take an active role in learning how to react when you see a mountain lion or if you’re going to recreate or live in mountain lion habitat.”

That may take time. Jenks is many years removed from actively working with mountain lions, but friends and neighbors in Brookings still call when they find suspicious tracks.”I never say that I don’t want to go out and look at it, because it very well could be a cat, and I’d be really interested if it was,” Jenks says.”People get excited.”

One recent winter, he was called to an area along Western Avenue on the west side of the city to examine tracks in the snow. He quickly realized it was something entirely different.”If you look at dog tracks, eventually you will find one that does not have nails and you can’t see the hind pad, so it looks like a lion print. I didn’t want to say this to the guy, but the reason he thought it was a cat print is because he was afraid of cats. And it was really just a dog that was walking along Western Avenue.”

Mountain lions are not fuzzy like bison (which can still be dangerous, as several visitors to South Dakota have discovered). They don’t have trophy antlers like elk and deer, or the uncanny ability to scale sheer rock faces like mountain goats or bighorn sheep. Yet they are mysterious, charismatic and — no matter if you’ve never seen one or have spent decades studying them — always captivating.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the January/February 2025 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Sweet and Sour in Roslyn

By Hannah Schaefer

Roslyn alumni parade through town during the annual Vinegar Festival, a tradition since 2001.

When Lawrence Diggs moved from San Francisco to Roslyn, he had already spent years researching the properties of vinegar. He’d visited France, Egypt, Mexico, South America, the Philippines and Italy, all to study the flavored concoction. It led to his first book, entitled Vinegar: The User-Friendly Standard Text Reference and Guide to Appreciating, Making and Enjoying Vinegar.

Diggs was looking for a quiet summer home where he could write when a real estate agent told him about a house in Roslyn, so he came to see it. He liked the town and people so much he never left.

Thanks in part to Diggs, this tiny town in northern Day County is now home to the International Vinegar Museum. The idea came as the community was looking for a unique way to draw visitors. A former opera house, auditorium and community hall provided the space.”We wanted to create something that people hadn’t done before. We weren’t going down without a fight to keep the town open,” Diggs says.

The museum was designed to teach visitors about vinegar and its varied uses. Diggs has turned over the role of museum curator to the community, but he remains connected and supportive. Fran Rougemont, Marnah Woken and Richard Snaza work at the museum and Josh Wagner handles the accounting. Mary Wagner volunteers doing the purchasing and mail orders.

A museum devoted to vinegar was not likely on the radars of Roslyn’s 19th century founders. The town traces back to 1882 when H.H. Russell, the first postmaster, took the name from his native city in Scotland. Roslyn began as Old Roslyn with just a post office and trading post. In 1914, the town was officially surveyed and platted by August W. Hartge after the community of settlers raised $60,000 for the Soo Railroad to be built. Soon businesses began coming into town.

Lawrence Diggs.

Today’s Roslyn looks a little different. Longtime businesses have closed and been replaced by new endeavors. The Roslyn Event Center, housed inside the school that closed in 2010, is rented for weddings, funerals and gatherings. Grade school kids from Webster, 12 miles south, still use the gym for basketball, volleyball and pole vault practices. Becky Lundquist’s city finance offices are inside. The former computer room is the Viking Fitness Center owned by Amber Huggett. Dave Strege lives in the school’s old library and has a business called Roslyn DÈcor.

The Roslyn Creamery Company was in business for 68 years. Nathan Johnson has turned the facility into a furnished rental for hunting and fishing groups. It also hosts the Roslyn Creamery Company Band for jamborees.

Roslyn Meat Market was built in 1914 next to the post office. After a 1964 fire destroyed most of Main Street, it was rebuilt in the same spot. In 1976, Robert Coyne sold the business to Shirley and Norman”Tubby” Schmidt. Their son, Craig Schmidt, bought the business in 1992, but it closed in 2004.

Another son, Paul Schmidt, had been working at Mike’s Jack and Jill in Webster as a meat cutter when he decided to open his own store. Schmidt’s Custom Meats is now part of a mini mall with a small grocery store, auto shop and furnished rentals. Paul still uses recipes handed down from his grandparents and parents.

Roslyn has another claim to fame that South Dakotans of an older generation will recognize. Myron Floren,”The Accordion Man,” attended school in Roslyn through his junior year of high school. He learned to play the accordion while growing up on a small farm outside of town. His 32-year career with the Lawrence Welk Orchestra and numerous television performances began after touring Europe with the United Service Organizations. He returned to Roslyn to play for his hometown’s Diamond Jubilee.

But these days, vinegar is the star. Roslyn’s first Vinegar Festival was held in 2001 in conjunction with the town’s alumni weekend. A parade, vendors, food trucks, vinegar tasting, kids’ activities and music lead up to the annual crowning of the Vinegar Quart, comprised of Princess Pickle, Princess Vinaigrette, Princess Sour and the Vinegar Queen. This year’s honorees are Helen Trautner (Princess Sour), Kimberly Lorensberg (Princess Vinaigrette), Marci Johnson (Vinegar Queen) and Shauna Kjos-Miotke (Princess Pickle).

Sure the vinegar makes things unique and fun in Roslyn, but it still has the small-town qualities that Diggs sought when he left the fast-paced life of northern California.”The best part of living here and to be part of the community are the relationships,” says Diggs, who’s become known as The Vinegar Man.”It feels good to know people and be a part of what is going on. People have opportunities to belong.”

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the September/October 2024 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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The Christmas Medals

By Dan Jorgensen

Dean Jorgensen was not my biological father, but he was my dad in the truest sense. That was cemented the first Christmas he shared with my younger brothers and me. We three boys were Mom’s from a first marriage; ultimately there would be seven boys in our new blended family. For Dean, all seven were”his boys.”

Our first Christmas together was in 1955. Dean and my mother Virginia had married after a courtship that seemed to include us boys as much as the two of them.

When he came to our home in Hurley to pick up Mom for dates, he would be greeted by joyous shouts of”Dean! Dean!” We were just as taken with him as was our mother. Often, while waiting for her, he would share stories with us, some about superheroes he named Starkhans and Johhny. Other stories were about his childhood, or his Army days.

After their marriage and our move to Dean’s Spring Valley farm, those Army stories included tales about medals and military insignia that he treasured from his time in service. Each medal had a story. Mom often implored us to”leave poor Dean alone,” especially after a hard day of farm chores or fieldwork. But regardless of how tired he might be, he would share them.

As our first”family” Christmas approached, we also were excited that Mom was having a baby. Our new brother or sister might even be born on Christmas!

Mom went into labor on December 23, and we all raced to the hospital 50 miles away in Yankton where our brother was born. We spent that night and Christmas Eve morning with Mom until our grandparents offered to drive us back to the farm.”We’ll take you home and then come back to get you tomorrow,” Grandma said.”We can all share Christmas with Virgie and the baby at the hospital.” Dean, who was very tired, readily agreed. We piled into Grandpa and Grandma’s car and headed to the farm.

We didn’t have a telephone, so Dean told our grandparents we would see them on Christmas morning and off they went. We boys bounded inside, not at all tired.”Yay!” we shouted.”We’ve got a new brother! And tonight Santa Claus is coming!”

Many years later, Dean told us that he then realized he had forgotten about Santa and that the Christmas gifts planned for our stockings were in the trunk of the car, 50 miles away. So, after dinner and checking the livestock, he quietly tucked us into bed and smiled at our excitement over Santa’s pending arrival. He had a plan.

When we raced from our beds Christmas morning, our stockings were bulging. But before we could look into them, Dean lifted a letter off the table.”Look! A letter from Santa,” he said. He opened it and read:”Hello boys! I know how much your Mom and new brother want to see what you’re getting from me for Christmas, so I’ve taken your presents to the hospital so you can open them there after you go back with your Grandpa and Grandma.”

“Ain’t that nice of him boys?” Dean said.”Your Mom will be so happy.” We all looked a bit skeptical at that but could still see that our stockings seemed pretty full of something.

“What’s in our stockings?” I asked.

“Well, let’s take a look.” Dean stepped aside and we reached in to pull out apples, oranges, nuts, toothbrushes and a shiny piece of cardboard. Affixed to that cardboard in each of our stockings were Army medals and insignia.

“Well, would you look at that,” Dean said.”Just like mine. Santa must’ve heard me telling you about them and knew how much you liked them.”

They were Christmas gifts beyond our wildest dreams, a memory created by our new dad to last a lifetime.

About the Author: Dan Jorgensen began his writing career with the Sioux Falls Argus Leader at age 19. He is also the author of several books, including Killer Blizzard, And the Wind Whispered and Rainbow Rock, all set in South Dakota. He and his wife Susan live in Milliken, Colorado.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the November/December 2024 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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The Good, the Bad and the Beautiful

By Christian Begeman

Life on the Northern Plains is ever changing. One of my favorite times of the year is thunderstorm season. Generally speaking, it runs from late April through September, but I’ve seen lighting in February and experienced thunder snow in March. The best time, however, to watch a storm build across our Dakota skies is in June and early July.

Our neighbor on the farm lived all his life as a shepherd, rancher and sometimes farmer in both Dewey and Ziebach counties. He swore by what he called the”solstice storm.” Every year on or around the summer solstice we’d get a big thunder boomer. I remember one year it was late and we wondered if he was just pulling our leg about this phenomenon. Then on July 3, as we were in the front yard lighting off firecrackers, a low, menacing cloud raced in from the west. It brought wicked wind, rain and hail. After it had rolled through, the sides of our white house had mud high up on the walls. The storm’s fury had literally stirred up the elements.

Even so, that wasn’t even close to the worst our neighbor had witnessed during storm season. He told me he watched the virgin prairie transform into what looked like a plowed field when a behemoth storm produced large hail that was driven into the ground.

We didn’t get many tornadoes in that part of the country though. I had never seen a twister in real life until May 28, 2025. Not only did I watch my first tornado form and drop in rural Deuel County, but I saw a second one from the same system about an hour later head east toward Gary. That afternoon I was out looking for wildflowers as I slowly made my way north out of Sioux Falls. It was a little after 6 p.m. when I found myself looking up at a massive thunderhead building quickly west of 7-mile Fen Preserve. Not wanting to get hailed on, I checked the storm tracker on my phone and planned to flank the system to the south.

Avoiding the rain and hail shaft found me a few miles west-northwest of Clear Lake, but I had driven into a problem. Directly in front of me I saw a new cell developing with little rain but a lot of rotation in the clouds. It was unnerving and coming right at me. I quickly drove under it and beyond a few miles then turned around and watched the twister form. I don’t consider myself a storm chaser and am happy to watch bad weather from a distance. Therefore, my photos are not real close but feature the immense cloud formations. I do like getting the rainbows after a storm, and ironically enough, a shaft of sunlight hit the forming tornado cell prior to its touching the ground. I witnessed and photographed that unique convergence of wild weather.

Thankfully no lives were lost that day, even though there was some property damage. This column shows you the photos I took from that storm and then subsequent wildflowers and storm scenes into July. It is a beautiful irony that the prime wildflower beauty and delicateness on the prairie exist at the same time when such power and dread can descend from the skies.

Christian Begeman grew up in Isabel and now lives in Sioux Falls. When he’s not working at Midco he is often on the road photographing South Dakota’s prettiest spots. Follow Begeman on his blog.

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Joyful Noise

By Chad Coppess

Mike Pedersen treasures opportunities to entertain visitors at his vintage general store in tiny Nora. His annual Christmas season sing-alongs have become a tradition in southeastern South Dakota.

For 34 years, Mike Pedersen has opened the doors of the historic Nora Store and beautiful music has flowed out onto the cold and wintry prairie. His Christmas season singalongs have become a tradition for people of all ages who enjoy the melodies, fellowship and the sense of stepping into the past.

With a current population of two at the intersection of Union County Roads 25 and 15, Nora never was much of a town, but it did have a creamery and blacksmith shop at one time, along with the store. Pedersen describes it as”the Walmart of its era. It had a lot of things, but only one of each.” The store opened in 1907 and included gas pumps for a while but closed in 1962. Pedersen moved into the store in 1973 and lived there for 15 years before building a home next door.

Walking into the store is a bit like stepping into The Waltons or Little House on the Prairie; the store’s shelves and walls hold antiques, many with Christmas flair, and carolers gather around a vintage wood stove on chilly winter evenings. The centerpiece is the large, 1907 pipe organ, originally housed inside the Lake Preston Lutheran Church. Pedersen first saw the organ after it had been donated to the National Music Museum in Vermillion, but it was in pieces scattered in a storage room.

Seven years later the museum decided it didn’t need the organ and offered it to Pedersen if he would reassemble it and play it. Friends helped him complete the installation in the Nora Store; the first song played on it was a tearful version of”Jesus Loves Me.”

Guests at the Nora Store sing-alongs are greeted at the door as friends and thanked as they leave.

From there Pedersen’s childhood love of Christmas songs took over and he ran an ad in a local newspaper asking people to join him for singalongs. Around 3,000 people attend each year over several weekends between Thanksgiving and Christmas. He invites school and nursing home groups in mid-week. Guests are welcome to play the organ or piano, or ring sleigh bells passed throughout the crowd.

Pedersen has never missed an open house.”There’s never been a person that’s come that I haven’t greeted,” he said proudly. One 2023 evening saw visitors from South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa and Ohio. He has hinted for several years that the singalongs might be nearing an end, but he hasn’t stopped yet.”I don’t take any day for granted,” he says.”For the future, I don’t know. I live in the moment. The building is kind of like me. It’s starting to wear out.”

For now the event seems in good hands, with several longtime friends taking turns on the organ and piano. Free will offerings are accepted, but there isn’t much of a budget. Friends and neighbors bring cookies and other treats to hand out along with hot cider and coffee. In the last few years friends have organized fundraisers to help purchase new siding and roofing.

“Where else in America will you find an event like this?” Pedersen asks.”There’s no real good way to describe it other than something you don’t forget. It’s been called a living Norman Rockwell painting. If I can bring a smile to a face, it makes my day. I think an hour or two here cures a lot of lonely.”

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the November/December 2024 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Dakota Kaleidoscope

By Christian Begeman

I remember watching a PBS”American Masters” special on photographer Dorothea Lange and being struck by how she prepared for a retrospective at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Lange’s most famous photo, entitled Migrant Mother, is one of the most recognized and poignant photos of the 20th century. As she looked through her life’s work, she didn’t choose to show just single images but grouped photos into sets of three. She described it as equating sets of three to a visual sentence. It was an idea that stuck with me, and I wondered if I’d ever be able to produce such a thing.

Earlier this year, John Andrews asked for two photos that would be considered for printing in South Dakota Magazine. The first was a winter scene in Moody County with frosted trees under a winter blue sky and the second was harvest haze at sunset in Yankton County. The dust and low light gave the image a very orange overtone. The two images gave me an idea. What if I could find other photos with strong green, red, yellow and purple tones and match them up in a six-photo set? It would be a celebration of Dakota color. It took me a couple of hours, but after a cursory review of photos from the last couple of years, I put together an edit I was happy with.

I posted the new image on my Facebook page and called it a South Dakota kaleidoscope of color. Folks seemed to like it and then John suggested it could be a new column. I agreed and started the process of searching my archives for images that emphasized a strong single color. I reviewed a decade of work from across the state. When the search was over, I had well over a hundred photos separated into blue, green, orange, purple, red and yellow folders. From there I tried to find themes. Since I photograph country churches, that became a set. The last handful of years I’ve been interested in botany (wildflowers) and macro (close-up) photography, so there were two more sets. We Dakotans know that weather and seasonality are huge parts of our lives, so there was another set.

All in all, I came up with eight more sets. The most difficult was the bird set, as there are not many purple birds. Thankfully I had photographed a purple finch at the Dells of the Big Sioux a few winters ago. I also had to choose from a lot of yellow birds. I ended up going with the yellow warbler over the meadowlark, but it was tough decision as I’m a huge fan of both species.

Thanks to John and Dorothea for the inspiration of this look back over a decade of photos. My images are vastly different than the black and white real-life photos of Lange’s, but I do wonder what she’d make of these Dakota kaleidoscope sets. I’ll never know, but it was fun to put together and show here. And really, isn’t that the best part of being a photographer? I bet she’d agree with that.

Christian Begeman grew up in Isabel and now lives in Sioux Falls. When he’s not working at Midco he is often on the road photographing South Dakota’s prettiest spots. Follow Begeman on his blog.

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Mulled Wine, South Dakota Style

By Katie Hunhoff

The warmth and spiciness of mulled wine makes it a favorite winter drink.

Our South Dakota Magazine crew started a coffee house called Muddy Mo’s in downtown Yankton a few years ago. On a frigid Saturday last winter, we decided to make mulled wine, both to warm our customers as they came in from the cold and also to try something new, which was the very inspiration for the shop.

Mulled wine is warmed wine with spices added, but a quick Google search shows recipes from across the world using varied ingredients and techniques. Not one to overthink, I quickly decided to mix an affordable red wine with some mulling spices from my local supermarket. Soon after pouring the simple concoction into a crockpot, a delicious cinnamon and orange aroma wafted through Muddy Mo’s — and it quickly drew customers who were happy to weigh in on my makeshift recipe.

“This is strong, too strong for mulled wine,” observed one kindly woman, who nevertheless drank several $2 glasses. Another visitor suggested that we add honey and offered to share his recipe. Someone asked if we could mix in a little apple cider next time. I don’t remember when something on our menu inspired so much conversation and interaction among customers.

Humans have been warming wine and adding spices since the dawn of the Roman Empire. The spice worked wonders to hide the taste of inferior wine, but it was also believed to strengthen immune systems during winter. Early recipes included saffron, pepper, laurel, dates, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, marjoram and cardamom.

Part of the fun of mulled wine is taking the ingredients and creating your own recipe. But, to ensure better success at the coffee shop this winter, I spoke to wine experts from across South Dakota. They were happy to share their recipes, along with ideas on what makes mulled wine the perfect winter drink.

SchadÈ Vineyard & Winery

VOLGA

Similar to our experience at Muddy Mo’s, Nancy Schade enjoys the community that mulled wine creates.”When you make it, it just brings people together. And there are opportunities to share recipes, because everyone has a different recipe,” she laughs. Jim and Nancy Schade founded the winery in 2000, and recently passed it on to new owners Dillon and Shelby Ringling.

Nancy recommends using SchadÈ’s Raspberry Apple Wine for mulling. The raspberries and apples are grown in South Dakota, giving a local taste to an internationally enjoyed drink. Nancy’s recipe is simple. She uses a 1:1 ratio of the Raspberry Apple wine and apple cider.”The cider gives the finished product a fuller flavor,” she says. Next, add mulling spice packets and warm the wine and cider in a crockpot (not to a boil). The winery sells its own mulling packets, but in a pinch, you can also find them at many supermarkets.

Prairie Berry

HILL CITY

Laura Schluckebier

Laura Schluckebier, the sales and hospitality manager at Prairie Berry, grew to love mulled wine during her time at the Hill City winery.”It’s made to share with other people,” she says.”As soon as the leaves change, people come in to have mulled wine next to our fireplace. The guests expect it.”

Mulling wine has also evolved into a family tradition for Schluckebier.”We go skiing at Terry Peak, then go home to drink mulled wine. Or we will split wood and then make mulled wine. It’s a tradition to do things outside in winter, then to share the drink. When you make it, it smells wonderful and it’s warming all around.”

Sandi Vojta, owner of Prairie Berry, became a fifth-generation winemaker at the age of 4 when she experimented with yeast and fermentation, she told us in a 2011 story for South Dakota Magazine. Her dad would take her out to pick chokecherries for wine, tying a piece of twine with a pail attached to her waist so she could pick berries with both hands.

Schluckebier recommends using Prairie Berry’s Pumpkin Bog for mulling. Made with South Dakota grown pumpkins, it’s slightly sweet with”undertones of cranberry and lemon zest.” Pour one bottle of Pumpkin Bog into a slow cooker on low heat. Add two tablespoons of light brown sugar, two tablespoons of mulling spice and orange slices. Leave on low for 45 minutes, making sure it does not boil.

After 25 years of producing internationally-award-winning wines, Prairie Berry will be closing soon. Sandi and her husband, Matt Keck, will continue selling as long as they have inventory. Pumpkin Bog was still available for purchase as this magazine went to print.

With the Wind Vineyard & Winery

ROSHOLT

Lisa Klein

Lisa Klein, who owns With The Wind along with her husband, Jeremiah, uses their Sacred Solitude wine for mulling. Made with locally grown Frontenac grapes, this dry red is complemented by Lisa’s recipe that includes orange juice and brown sugar.

Klein says mulled wine helps her embrace winter and everything that comes with it.”I’ve spent evenings wrapping presents while having mulled wine simmering on the stove,” Klein says.”We drink it while gathering with friends. During a frigid winter, it’s such a warm thing to serve your guests. You can’t get away from winter, so you have to embrace it.”

The Kleins have operated With the Wind for over 10 years. They hold wine tastings and events at their vineyard, where they tend to over 5,000 vines.

Sacred Solitude Mulled Wine

2 bottles of With the Wind Sacred Solitude wine

2 cups orange juice

3/4 cup (or to taste) brown sugar (or substitute maple syrup or agave)

2 oranges, sliced

1/2 cup fresh cranberries (optional)

10 whole cloves

6 cinnamon sticks

  1. Place a medium saucepan over medium-high heat on the stove.
  2. Add the orange juice and granulated sugar and stir until the sugar is dissolved.
  3. Add the red wine and all of the spices and fruits. The spices will be whole, not ground in a container, so their flavors will infuse into the liquid.
  4. Reduce the heat to low and simmer the mulled wine for 30 minutes. At this point, taste and adjust the flavor as necessary. You can simmer for up to a couple hours. Garnish with cinnamon sticks, orange peel or cranberries.

Mulled Wine can be paired with many foods. In Europe, it is often served at festivals with roasted chestnuts, and it’s also common to serve with roasted meats during the holidays. We asked Prairie Berry and SchadÈ wineries to share their favorite recipes to make with mulled wine.

Nancy Schade’s Never Fail Apple Dessert

Mix and put in a 9×9 inch pan:

4 cups sliced apples

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 tablespoon flour

pinch of nutmeg

3/4 cup sugar

Mix together and spread over apples:

3/4 cup oatmeal

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 cup flour

1/2 cup melted butter

3/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

Bake at 350 degrees for 30 to 40 minutes. Cool and serve with ice cream or whipped cream.

Prairie Berry Kitchen’s Classic Cheese Fondue

1/2 pound imported Swiss cheese, shredded

1/2 pound Gruyere cheese, shredded

2 tablespoons cornstarch

1 garlic clove peeled

1 cup dry white wine

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 tablespoon cherry brandy

1/2 teaspoon dry mustard

Pinch of nutmeg

Coat cheese in cornstarch. Rub fondue pot with garlic, then discard. Over medium heat, add wine and lemon juice. Bring to a simmer. Gradually stir in cheese, melting slowly to encourage a smooth texture. Stir in brandy, mustard and nutmeg. Serve with French bread, Granny Smith apples or blanched veggies.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the January/February 2025 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Art-Warming

By Paul Higbee

The grandchildren of Fred Mohling, pictured painting in his Aurora County farmhouse in 1957, are rediscovering his artwork and are exploring ways to share it with South Dakotans.

In 1959 Aurora County farmer Fred Mohling traveled to California for the Rose Bowl. Naturally, when he returned to South Dakota, friends and family asked about the game.

Mohling couldn’t tell them much. He hadn’t gone to watch football, he explained, but to see the roses in the famous parade. At home, in addition to selling grain and cattle, Mohling created paintings, including still lifes with flowers. Today, 40 years after his death, his descendants are sorting through his works: Midwestern and Western landscapes, people, waterfowl, horses, hunting dogs and still lifes. The family doesn’t necessarily want to sell the art but would like to exhibit some of it, maybe at libraries as a starting point. The learning curve is steep, exploring exhibition protocol, likely venues, copyright and even framing (when Mohling framed his art he sometimes purchased cheap and rather gaudy hardware store frames).

There’s another holiday season story about Mohling. Seventy years ago this December he skillfully painted a life-sized Christmas Nativity scene and other holiday images on plywood and illuminated them with 100 white and colored lights for his grandchildren. He set it up on his farm, just south of the Aurora-Jerauld County line, where it delighted more than his grandkids. As word spread, hundreds of South Dakotans drove 75 miles or more, on two-lane roads in winter, to see the scene. Memories of the Nativity art are mostly all that remain. The painted figures largely disappeared. Mohling’s farmhouse and ag buildings were razed for corporate farming, and the farmer-artist himself died in 1984.

Harmony Friends Church

His painting of a mountain scene is part of the Center for Western Studies collection at Augustana University in Sioux Falls, and another found a home in the Wessington Springs museum. But most were divided among family.”There are more than we remembered seeing around his house years ago,” says grandson John Swanson of Rapid City. He believes his grandfather completed more than 150 paintings, usually ranging from 8-by-10 inches to 16-by-20 inches in size. Another grandson, Greg Miller, notes that Mohling mostly used oils on board surfaces, and also drew with charcoal as well as colored pencils late in life.”There was something about winter scenes,” Miller says.”He looked at snow much of the year and liked it.” Miller has taken a lead role in documenting Mohling’s life through newspaper clippings and public records.

Great-grandson Ryan Aalbu of Spearfish was young when Mohling died and only vaguely remembers the man, but he treasures his paintings.”Mine are outdoor scenery and animals,” Aalbu says.”I didn’t know until fairly recently that he was a good portrait artist, too, painting people from American presidents to his own family.”

Fredrick Henry Mohling, born in 1894, grew up as the eldest of eight children on a Nebraska farm. At home he spoke German but made the mental switch to English for school. A capable student, Mohling hurried through his in-school lessons so he could draw at the end of classes, and at age 12 he won first prize for a painting he took to an Old Settlers picnic.

He married Tillie Maschman, and they had seven children, which left little time for art. The Mohlings moved to South Dakota to farm in 1920 and weathered bad ag prices that decade and the Dust Bowl and Depression of the 1930s.

The hard times led to President Franklin Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration. Gov. Tom Berry insisted that art be part of the WPA and Mohling renewed his interest in painting by taking three classes in Mitchell. He was also inspired by a landscape artist he saw at the State Fair.

Blue Jay Wonder

Sadly, his family thinks that Mohling’s main motivation to paint was his deep grief after Tillie died suddenly from an appendix ailment in 1940. Art became his therapy, perhaps, or at least a way to occupy his mind.”When you do something requiring great attention to detail, you can’t think about other things,” Swanson says. A family member recalled coming home from a dance to find Mohling working at his easel in the middle of the night.

Still, Mohling didn’t hit his stride with art, in terms of quality and output, for a few years. There was always work on the farm. He also landscaped his big yard, created a lily pond and outdoor fireplace, and he built swings for his kids and grandkids. When Tillie died, two of his children were young adults who helped to raise the younger five. Mohling enjoyed traveling by car with his family and drove them to the Black Hills to see Josef Meier’s Passion Play, a religious drama performed in Spearfish on what was billed as the world’s”longest outdoor stage,” all of it skillfully lighted. Maybe the biblical production was the inspiration for Mohling’s own outdoor Christmas presentation.

“That could be,” Swanson says.”He liked visuals, obviously, and things built big. He drove to Texas once to see the new Houston Astrodome, which was called the eighth wonder of the world.” The family has no record as to whether Mohling saw a ballgame during that trip or simply admired the big domed stadium.

Swanson describes his grandfather as a type of man most South Dakotans might know. He was accomplished in agriculture, could build anything, and — far from the stereotype some Americans held of rural Midwesterners in that time — wasn’t cocooned in his own locality but interested in the wider world.

Mohling took enough interest in his 20 grandchildren to buy or make each a meaningful gift every Christmas, granddaughter Jane Aalbu remembers. His gifts would only get better: one of his original paintings for high school graduation and another as a wedding present if a grandchild got married.

“He was mild-mannered and soft-spoken, and fairly easy to talk to,” says Swanson, who was in his 20s when Mohling died. The farmer-artist didn’t drink except for perhaps a glass of Mogen David wine on holidays. Knowing his distaste for alcohol, his descendants have had light-hearted discussions about whether it would be appropriate to serve higher quality wines at exhibits of his art.

Through years of raising children, bonding with grandchildren, and adapting to post-World War II ag technologies, Mohling kept improving his art techniques. Swanson recalls seeing the classic Blue Boy (a portrait by 18th century English artist Thomas Gainsborough) among his grandfather’s possessions and assumed Mohling admired it and bought a print. As it turned out, Mohling copied it stroke by stroke — a time-honored method that artists have used to fine-tune their skills.

Buckeye Brown

Mohling didn’t seem interested in selling his works but in 1955 Wessington Springs hosted a horse show. Mohling loaned horse paintings to Rukstadt Hardware Store for a window display during the event. An Indiana man admired a threshing scene and Mohling agreed to sell it to him. In 1956 he won two blue ribbons at the State Fair; he’d previously taken home art ribbons from Huron but never before a first-place honor, let alone two. Those blue-ribbon paintings almost certainly remain in the family’s possession, and they hope to determine which they are.

In the late 1950s and beyond, Mohling took his art to appreciative rural audiences in Clark, Faulkton, Wessington Springs, Mitchell and Fairbury, Nebraska, near his birthplace. Plankinton journalist Adeline VanGenderen reported on a show where a woman rhetorically asked how anyone could choose a Mohling favorite given the wide variety of scenes and subjects.”We got to thinking this over, and how could you?” VanGenderen wrote.”First your eye would be drawn to a moose beside the lake; deer drinking from the stream; an Indian pony and its rider; you could almost smell the dust of the covered wagon as it groaned westward.”

If art scholars had read VanGenderen’s description, they might have concluded that Mohling was part of the Regionalism art movement, especially popular in the rural Midwest in the mid-20th century and best epitomized by Iowa painter Grant Wood. The style became popular nationally as Americans first feared that the Midwest was being blown off the map by Dust Bowl winds, and then again as they celebrated that it wasn’t.

But there’s no evidence Mohling saw his art as part of any movement or school of thought. South Dakotans tend to be skeptical of those who categorize local visual art as Fine, Folk, Regionalism or any other grouping. Most would agree with the late University of South Dakota professor and author Graham Thatcher, who warned against associating with any”sophisticated art nerd who asks you what you think in order to get an opening for his or her well-rehearsed sermonette.” Thatcher stressed, in his book I Know What I Like! Everyone’s Guide to the Arts,“There are no rules in Art Ö there is only taste.”

Mohling met the tastes of South Dakotans half a century ago. In 1974, friends and family turned out in force for his 80th birthday celebration in a Wessington Springs ag building, its interior walls decorated for the day with 80 pieces of his art.

Today, Mohling’s descendants are working to determine whether 21st century South Dakotans find significance in the art, as well. In August the family put digitized images on a video loop and played it at Mitchell’s Corn Palace Festival. They may do the same at the State Fair next year. A professor has suggested the paintings may hold value for students learning about both the techniques Mohling used and the times in which his art took form.

Relatives don’t anticipate a posthumous discovery of Mohling’s talent beyond the borders of South Dakota. They’ll be happy if small groups of observers see something in his art that warms their hearts.

That’s what art did for Fred Mohling, and it was quite enough.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the November/December 2024 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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What the Bones Say

By Lance Nixon

Centuries-old bison kill sites on Candice and Dean Lockner’s ranch near Ree Heights may help us learn more about the Indigenous people who lived and hunted here.

The bison are just where the scouts have said they would be, grazing the warm-season grasses near a natural spring at the west edge of the broken country.

This hunt has been planned for weeks. Once everyone is in place, people wave branches and robes, moving toward the animals, hazing them toward the bluff. The slope is steep enough that one or two animals injure themselves, but others scramble safely into a deep ravine with no outlet. The lower opening of the canyon is blocked with fallen timber.

The animals are confused. They plunge against each other wildly, with no place to go. Hunters move into place at the edge of the ravine above them.

Archaeologists believe a scene like this occurred almost 1,000 years ago in Dean and Candice Lockner’s pasture near Ree Heights in central South Dakota. Dean found a layer of bones covered by about a foot of native sod in 2011 while checking cattle. The Lockners suspected they had found a bison kill site, with good reason. Archaeologists carried out a dig in 1960 at a bison kill site along the ridge 2 1/2 miles east of the Lockners’ discovery, and there is a later find of bison bones and artifacts, though never professionally excavated, just a few hundred yards east.

The Ree Hills — a mesa that gives the town of Ree Heights its name — rises 391 feet and covers about 180 square miles in Hand County.”It’s kind of like an island in the prairie, raised up above everything,” says Augustana University archaeologist Aaron Mayer.”And it’s a vantage point. You could see the bison herds from dozens of miles away. They were definitely using that area for different kill events.”

Dean Lockner found bison bones, estimated to be nearly 1,000 years old, protruding from a ridge of soil in 2011. Each season of erosion and excavation reveals more at the site.

At that first Ree Heights excavation in 1960, archaeologists William Hurt and Robert Gant found a”kitchen” area for processing meat and stone piles on the bluff. Very likely it was a bison jump in the classic sense, where Native hunters drove the animals off a cliff or rim steep enough to kill or injure many of the animals.

When archaeologist Mike Fosha, then of the South Dakota State Historical Society’s Archaeological Research Center, visited the Lockners’ site at their request, he suggested the hunters probably used a different method there: an arroyo trap.

That’s possible because Ree Hills geology consists of shale capped by Ogallala sandstone and covered by glacial material. Because shale near the edges of the landform has slumped over time, there are irregular benches along the steep edge of the ridge where animals could be trapped — either by driving them down from the bluff above or up the slope.

At his initial visit in 2015, Fosha removed a mandible of a young bison for lab work. Zooarchaeologist Danny Walker, a specialist in Wyoming, estimated the age of the young animal at 1.1 years. That indicates that the hunters probably killed it in the month of June or July. Radiocarbon testing on a molar from the animal dated the collagen in the tooth to a time between A.D. 1180 and A.D. 1270.

After exploratory work in 2017 and another excavation in 2022, archaeologists have now found four stone projectile points — either from arrows or perhaps from shafts hurled with an atlatl — as well as a scraper that may have been used for processing hides. They have also found chips of stone that may indicate hunters were sharpening tools on site.

The age of the new site makes it too early to associate it with any of the Native American tribes known to history.”We cannot make any direct connections from Ree Heights to Mandan, Hidatsa, or Arikara, but it does not mean that those people could not have been their ancestors,” Mayer says.”It may be likely the Arikara and Mandan hunted there at some points in time.”

Gardner Deegan of the MHA Interpretive Center in New Town, North Dakota, — an organization that showcases the cultures of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara peoples, or the Three Affiliated Tribes, on the nearby Fort Berthold Reservation — believes the tribes lived in other regions during their history. And elders say the tribes definitely knew how to use landforms in hunting.”I do know that in the culture, they used to do buffalo jumps,” Deegan says.”They would lead the buffalo off a cliff and the buffalo would fall.”

Doyle Crume and Del Compaan, volunteers from Webster, help excavate a bed of bison bones near Ree Heights in 2022.

Candice Lockner said she’s heard other Native Americans talk about their traditional technique for leading bison into a trap, perhaps by having someone pretend to be a bison calf while others push the herd from behind. It’s the same”pushing and pulling” principle that some ranchers instinctively use to move grazing animals today. Lockner says the technique could have worked well in central South Dakota.”Located above the three Ree Hills kill sites are very large boulders, behind which the fake ‘calf’ could hide,” she says.

Whatever the method, there are clues that people living in earth lodges on the James River near present-day Mitchell, about 100 miles east, may have been involved. An arrowhead found at the Lockners’ site is similar to an arrowhead found at the James River villages, which were active between about A.D. 1050 and A.D. 1200.

Interestingly, archaeologists have unearthed a large clay-lined basin at the Mitchell site that they believe was used as a bone grease processing station. Bone grease was obtained by applying heat to crushed bone. The grease may have been used not only in feeding the village, but also as an ingredient in a dried meat product such as pemmican.

Now, with the newly discovered bison kill site at Ree Heights from the same time period, archaeologists are considering the possibility that hunters from the river villages were traveling to the Ree Hills to harvest bison. It’s known from historical records that the area remained a reliable source of bison well into the fur trade era.

Ranchers are confident there are other bison kill sites yet to be discovered in the area. In August 2022, when archaeologists were working on the Lockners’ ranch, Dean and Candice walked along that tumble of hills in their rangeland and found yet another bone bed exposed by weather. Mayer, the Augustana University archaeologist, said Dr. Kristen Carlson, a faunal and bison bone expert, was on location and confirmed the site contains bison bones. Archaeologist Alexander Anton, now in Rapid City at the Archaeological Research Center, found a stone flake that indicates hunters with stone tools were on site at that new location, as well. It’s far enough from the first site on the Lockners’ ranch to be considered a new, separate kill site. That makes four confirmed bison kill sites in the Ree Hills.

As of 2018, there are more than 30 possible bison kill sites recorded in the database of the South Dakota State Historical Society’s Archaeological Research Center, but Fosha notes that many of those have not been confirmed.

In September 2023, the Lockners learned that the bison kill site on their ranch has been approved for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. Though the site won’t be open to the public, the couple says the recognition is an important step toward preserving what is hidden on their ranch and learning more about how early Native Americans hunted bison in the Ree Hills centuries ago.

ìYou may temporarily own land,” Candice Lockner says,”but you do not own the history.”

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the September/October 2024 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.