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South Dakota’s Grandest Convenience Store

Editor’s Note: This is taken from the story “25 Unusual Man-Made Places,” which appeared in the March/April 2010 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.

You can call Big Bat’s in Pine Ridge a convenience store, but it’s the closest thing to a mall you’ll find in Indian Country. There’s gas, oil and junk food — all convenience store staples — but also a huge dining room where real meals are served three times a day, with art by Lakota artists like Donald Montileaux. Murals tell important Lakota stories. There’s the White Buffalo Calf Woman, ancestral twins fathered by an eagle, the acquisition of the horse and the evolution of pow wows.

Bat and Patty Pourier opened the store in 1990. Fire destroyed Bat’s in 2001, but the Pouriers invested $1 million and rebuilt the grandest convenience store in South Dakota.

When Bernie Hunhoff visited with Bat and Patty in 1994, Bat mentioned how his Lakota heritage had helped him as an entrepreneur.”It can be a road map to a new end. We come from a warrior culture and I am a warrior, but I do it in my business. I am learning the concepts of business management and the economy is my battle field.”

Bat and Patty have since retired, but their son Tye and other members of the Pourier family are keeping the Pine Ridge hot spot in operation. Big Bat’s is located in the center of Pine Ridge at the intersection of Hwys. 18 and 407, and the Pouriers have opened other stores in Hot Springs, Chadron and Scottsbluff.


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Here Comes the Goosemobile

Editor’s Note: This article is revised from the story “25 Years of Foods,” which appeared in the September/October 2010 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.

Tom Neuberger and the South Dakota Goosemobile will be crisscrossing the state again this summer.

A brown cardboard box is nearly the same color as a fine pumpkin pie, but it doesn’t taste the same. So it is with meat and poultry, according to Tom Neuberger, creator of the Goosemobile. He believes that a bird that roams free, dirt-scratching and insect-pecking on the open range, will taste better than one raised in a 12-inch-square wire pen with antibiotics, hormones and other chemicals.

That theory got a severe test in 1984 when Tom and his wife, Ruth, fattened 3,500 geese the natural way and found themselves without a market. They processed the geese and hit the road in a refrigerated bus. The Goosemobile was such a success that they’ve been traveling South Dakota ever since.

Now they offer geese along with natural organic beef, pork, lamb, chicken, duck, flax, down comforters and feather pillows.

If Goosemobile meats didn’t taste better than store-bought, the Neubergers would be home by the fireplace at night. Instead, they’re crisscrossing South Dakota, greeting customers by their first names and proving that there is more than one way to survive on a farm.

Where is the Goosemobile?

This”Mobile Meat Market” may be coming to a town near you. Watch for Tom & Ruth at the Falls Park Farmers Market in Sioux Falls on Saturdays starting May 7, and at locations in the Black Hills August 31st. They’ll also be delivering CSA shares to Mitchell and South Dakota Local Food Co-op orders to members in Brookings this summer.

The Neubergers recommend calling ahead to place your order. Email them at goosedown@unitelsd.com or call 605-296-3314. You’re also welcome to visit them at their farm near Canistota — but call first to make sure they’re home.

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The Chislic Circle

By Rich Preheim

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the July/August 2005 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.

“A lot of people don’t even ask what the specials are; they just want chislic,” said Melissa Svartoein. Svartoein worked at Papa’s Restaurant in Freeman when she was a student at the University of South Dakota.

Open a map of South Dakota, place the point of a protractor on Freeman, on U.S. Highway 81 a couple of inches north of Yankton, and draw a circle with a radius representing about 30 miles. That is the Chislic Circle, the home of a culinary curiosity.

If you live there —- maybe in Marion or Menno, Parker or Parkston —- you probably are acquainted with chislic, a simple dish of bite-sized chunks of sheep meat on wooden skewers, deep-fat fried or grilled. Other parts of the world may have their kebabs of mutton and other meats, but chislic seems distinctive to southeastern South Dakota.

For decades a mainstay at cafes, bars, fairs and celebrations, it historically has been enhanced only by salt or garlic salt and served with saltines and, if you are so inclined, washed down with a cold beer. Recent years have seen the introduction of chislic in various marinades and with various sauces.

However it’s prepared, chislic sells. Papa’s Restaurant in Freeman serves up to 3,000 chislic sticks a week. Rachel Svartoein, whose grandfather sold chislic at a corner store south of Freeman for many years, provided 1,200 sticks for her high school graduation reception. At Marion’s 125th anniversary, the Jaycees sold 4,000 sticks on the first night. The chislic stand at the Turner County Fair in Parker sold 40,000 in 2004.

Chislic is simply an unquestioned thread in certain community fabrics; yet it remains a mystery meal, its origins unsure. Even theories and myths are difficult to find.”I know there are sheep in other places, so why chislic is popular here and not there, I don’t know,” said Papa’s co-owner Susan Letcher.

Even some sheep producers outside the area know little about chislic.”Ask people in Aberdeen, they’ve never heard of it,” said Bill Aeschlimann, a Hurley farmer who is active in national and regional sheep associations.”Ask people in Rapid City, they don’t have a clue.” Attempts to sell chislic have flopped at the Sturgis bike rally because nobody knew what it was.

Scant historical accounts suggest that chislic was introduced in Freeman at least 100 years ago by Russian immigrant businessman John Hoellwarth. But that’s about all anyone knows.”All I can tell you is my dad tells the story how his father, on a day for celebration would buy a couple of young lambs for 50 cents a piece and make chislic,” said grandson Robert Hoellwarth, a retired physician in Vallejo, Calif.

The Hoellwarths arrived in Hutchinson County in the 1870s from the Crimea of southern Russia, a region where”shashlyk,” cubes of skewered beef, lamb or pork, were grilled over an open fire. Chislic probably evolved from shashlyk, according to Darra Goldstein, editor of Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture and food editor of Russian Life magazine. But she and other food experts are not familiar with the South Dakota version.

Whatever its origin, chislic is a distinguishing feature of southeastern South Dakota. Aeschlimann, who has sold it at the Turner County Fair for 20 years, had his first chislic stand at Hurley’s centennial in 1983.”We knew there would be lots of people coming back,” he said.”And what would they think of from their childhood? Chislic.”

Jake Huber ran a chislic stand in Freeman on summer Saturday nights during the 1930s and’40s, days when farm families came to town for shopping and socializing.”There was such a tremendous amount of people in town on Saturday nights, it didn’t take long to sell out,” said his daughter Nita Engbrecht of Marion.

The whole family prepared the chislic and cleaned up late Saturday night. Engbrecht’s job, which the health department might frown upon today, was collecting the used skewers, which her father fashioned from bamboo.”Those sticks had to be boiled, dried out and used again and again,” she said.

Among Huber’s patrons was Bill Gering, then a teenaged farm boy. But chislic was not new to him. Several farmers owned a threshing machine together, and when harvest was done, everybody gathered to celebrate.”The men figured out who owed who,” Gering said. Then everybody ate chislic and homemade ice cream.

In Freeman, residents bring out-of-town guests to Papa’s to introduce them to chislic.”Most people like it,” Letcher said.”If they’re here a second night, they come back and have it again.” Papa’s serves five varieties: original, barbecue, lemon pepper, garlic and even one marinated in olive oil, lemon juice and soy sauce. But the original recipe remains most popular, Letcher said. But regardless of how it’s cooked, mutton on a stick remains popular in the Chislic Circle.

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Making Yellow Magic

By Paul Higbee

No two pieces of Black Hills Gold jewelry are exactly alike, thanks to the skill of South Dakota craftsmen.

South Dakota’s iconic jewelry is instantly recognizable because of its three color shades and designs incorporating grape clusters, vines and leaves. Wear Black Hills Gold anywhere in the world, noted Landstrom’s Black Hills Gold Creations President Cheri Lemley,”and it’s an instant conversation piece. As soon as someone recognizes your Black Hills Gold, you’ve got a friend and a conversation about your connection to South Dakota.” The conversation could also center about the myths, legends, legal battles and fierce competition surrounding the coveted jewelry.

The chief legend told by all Black Hills Gold manufacturers in various versions deals with Henri LeBeau. Yes, there really was a Henri LeBeau, probably a French-born goldsmith and prospector who showed up in the Black Hills sometime during the 1870s gold rush. But did he really fall asleep, desperately hungry deep in the Hills, and dream of the vineyards of France? Did he then awaken and decide to honor the vineyards with grape, vine and leaf jewelry? Unlikely.

Still, LeBeau proved a fine goldsmith, opened a shop in Central City and specialized in a vineyard design that was probably seen earlier during the California gold rush. The design moved from there into gold country of Idaho and Montana, and like so many mining camp traditions, made its way east to the Black Hills. Once the design hit the Hills it was irrevocably part of local culture.

Amanda Jenkins models the Black Hills Gold crown worn by Miss Rodeo America since 1965.

LeBeau passed his knowledge and designs on to S.T. Butler and Butler’s son, George. A couple decades into the 20th century George’s nephew, Frank Thorpe, was producing the jewelry through his F.L Thorpe and Company. Their products fueled the nation’s imagination about the Black Hills as a land with alternative natural laws — creeks that freeze from the bottom up, caves that belch air and gold that’s mined in three colors. In truth the greenish gold found in the jewelry is formed by alloying it with silver. Adding a touch of copper turns the gold pinkish or reddish.

All of this captured the attention of Ivan Landstrom, born in Sweden in 1911, and one of the most dynamic business personalities ever to call South Dakota home. He entered the scene in 1941, setting the stage for a storied business rivalry that spanned half a century. The seeds of the rivalry were planted several years before Landstrom’s arrival, when Frank Thorpe took on Ed Lampinen as a business partner. When the partnership dissolved the two men divided designs and molds dating back to the Butlers — maybe all the way back to LeBeau. Therefore, both could claim their jewelry to be the original item. In 1944, Landstrom, who learned the jewelry business as a diamond buyer for a Minneapolis company, bought out Lampinen, built a new Rapid City production plant and moved aggressively to win retail display space nationwide.

Keystone character “Wild Horse” Harry Hardin, a symbol of Landstrom’s for many years, claimed to have ridden with Custer. This would’ve made him 130 years old.

Landstrom also obtained a patent on the term Black Hills Gold, which the F.L. Thorpe company had used for at least a quarter century, and then mailed letters warning retailers to beware of other companies using the term in violation of trademark law. Thorpe’s sales dropped sharply, perhaps as much as 65 percent, and the two companies met in federal court. The Thorpe company sued, claiming”maliciousness” in attempting to put Thorpe out of business. A Deadwood jury agreed, forcing cancellation of the patent. Landstrom’s paid F.L.Thorpe and Company $25,000 in damages.

The trial lasted a couple weeks, got lots of newspaper play and, as the old adage goes, there’s really no such thing as bad publicity. Because of the case even South Dakotans not much interested in jewelry recognized Thorpe and Landstrom as kingpins in a major local industry, battling for the attention of retailers in cities coast to coast.

Certainly the lost suit didn’t hurt Ivan Landstrom’s personal reputation. He was touted locally as a pioneer in hiring people with disabilities; he had lost a leg in a childhood accident. It’s bizarre today to read 1940s and 1950s newspaper clippings marveling that a man with a single leg could achieve such success.

In fact, most dark clouds Ivan Landstrom experienced were lined with positive public relations. An estimated $8,000 in gold he lost in late 1946 generated national publicity far exceeding that value. Powdery gold particles were regularly swept from the jewelry production room floor and collected by a filter in the ventilation system. These”sweepings” were taken to a refinery where they yielded substantial dollars in gold. But a maintenance man mistook the sweepings bag for trash and hauled it to Rapid City’s dump.

Dynamic Rapid City businessman Ivan Landstrom.

A few weeks passed before anyone realized what had happened, and then a great search ensued amid Rapid City’s discarded tin cans, spoiled food and broken household items. Landstrom offered $500 for the bag, then upped the bounty to $1,000. He stressed the bag was”absolutely worthless” to anyone else.”It has to be sent to a refinery,” he told a reporter,”and a federal license is necessary before a refinery would accept the dust.”

Rapid City’s dump was featured in newspapers everywhere. The New York Sunday News reported the lost gold”brought out a gang of ‘prospectors’ to the dump, including bearded old-timers with divining rods, eager students from the nearby South Dakota School of Mines and an Indian medicine man.” But the bag wasn’t recovered.”What a place for the end of the rainbow,” said one searcher, surveying mountains of garbage.

Ivan Landstrom, his wife Mary, daughter Shirley and six other females died in a plane crash on March 17, 1968 on the way back to Rapid City after the girls cheerleaded at the state basketball tournament. His descendants still run the family company. Five generations of the Butler-Thorpe-Waters family ran F.L.Thorpe and Company until it was sold to the West family in 1969. The company continued production in Deadwood for another quarter century, dealt with an intense labor dispute in the 1990s, and was bought out by none other than Landstrom’s in 1995.”So Black Hills Gold history has come full circle,” said Lemley,”with the original designs all back in one company.”

Editor’s Note: This article is revised from the November/December 2006 issue of South Dakota Magazine. A story on the cheerleaders who lost their lives in Landstrom’s last flight appears in our March/April 2012 issue. To order a copy or to subscribe, call us at 800-456-5117.

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Willard’s Water

By Bernie Hunhoff

Editor’s Note: Bill Willard passed away in 2009, and John Willard Jr. has retired from CAW industries. John Willard III is now president of the family business. This story is revised from the May/June 1994 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.

Dr. Willard in his classroom at the South Dakota School of Mines. Photos courtesy of CAW Industries.


The absent-minded professor who invented Willard Water has been gone for years, but perhaps the best testimonial to his most famous invention is the fact that it is still being used on plants and animals and humans all over the world.

When Dr. John “Doc” Willard died in November of 1991 at age 84, friends and customers wondered what might become of the “super water” he developed in the 1930s as a cleaning agent. “Doc” Willard was not a shrewd businessman. He was too busy studying his product. He had a knack for showmanship, but plenty of scientific diplomas to keep people from calling him a snake oil salesman. His biggest public relations coup came in 1980 when Harry Reasoner of CBS’ “60 Minutes” came to Rapid City and did a feature on Willard Water. Although the cynical Reasoner poked a little fun at the water’s reputation, his report was basically positive and sales skyrocketed. Doc Willard became an overnight celebrity.

But “Doc’s” biggest asset — his scientific background — may have also been a limitation. Because he was a scientist, he hesitated to let anyone else test his product. He went about the research in his own methodical way — slowly and painstakingly and without credibility because he had an obvious vested interest.

After Willard’s death, the business known as CAW Industries was operated by the old scientist’s two sons. John Jr. handled sales and marketing and Bill oversaw production. “Dad was a brilliant scientist and one of the world’s worst businessmen,” laughed John when we spoke with him in 1994. “He caused me a lot of grief over the years.” John said his dad wanted the business to stay small so he could have total control over research, production and marketing. “He was proud to have it as a family business. This kind of enterprise attracts every kind of con man in the United States and dad hated that part of it. Dad was an inventor first, and that was all he had on his mind. He just wanted to help people in South Dakota but he never did get it off the ground. You had to know him to understand. He never did have a lot of tact.”

In fact, it wasn’t until the “60 Minutes” show was televised that John and Bill became active in the business. “When that aired, it was total chaos,” John said.”The only thing that saved us was that my wife comes from a large family and they all helped us. Dad didn’t even have an office back then. He didn’t have any employees. Then in the next year he did over $900,000 in sales.”

Dr. Willard with Harry Reasoner in 1980.

The Willard brothers moved the business into the Rushmore Industrial Park in the early 1990s. Their shiny, clean lab looks like a modern cheese plant. Large water tanks are used to blend the chemicals. It takes a day to do a batch of 300 gallons, and they have the capability of producing up to 1,000 gallons a day. Annually, CAW Industries produce up to 14,000 gallons of Willard Water.

The water is composed of sodium silicate, calcium chloride, magnesium sulfate and sulfated castor oil. The ingredients are combined in a process which makes a caloric particle. The particle has an electrical field surrounding it which polarizes the water, creating an arrangement of water molecules to each other in space that makes it more reactive.

Actually, there are two versions — Dr. Willard’s Water Clear and Dr. Willard’s Water XXX (Dark). The dark version contains activated carbon, amino acid, organic trace minerals and other ingredients from lignite coal deposits in North Dakota. In layman’s terms, said John, Willard’s Water is wetter than normal. It does the same thing water normally does, like cleaning or fertilizing, but does it quicker. They market the water in everything from gallon jugs to four-ounce bottles. Customers are instructed to mix one ounce of Dr. Willard’s Water with one gallon of regular water to form a working solution they call Catalyst Altered Water (CAW). CAW can be drank, mixed with your shampoo, poured over burns, sprayed on the body, used as a cleaner, sprayed on plants or used “in just about any way you might normally use water,” explained John.

Although the sons were more aggressive in business than their father — with the exception of the Reasoner report which he handled masterfully — they shared his belief in the product. “Dad used to refer to his water as ‘serendipity’ and I’ve tried to understand what he meant by that. To him it meant ‘something that happens out of the ordinary that’s good.'”

John overcame an occasional stutter and performed the speaking engagements his father once handled. He enjoyed telling people about the water. But he watched his words carefully, in print and in person. “We are very careful about what we claim the water will do, mainly so we don’t get afoul of the FDA or USDA or any other agency of government. Our business is mostly word of mouth.”

And that’s working pretty well. When we visited the Willards in 1994, Earl and Sara Murray of Sturgis stopped by the plant to buy a pint of Willard’s Water. They immediately began praising its benefits. If we hadn’t been an hour early for the interview, it would have looked like a set-up. But the Murrays, conservative ranch folks who skip the nonsense, didn’t look like they’d be part of any such scheme anyway. And neither do the Willards. But they would have made a good advertisement.

The packaging has changed since Dr. Willard’s days, but the product has not.

When Willard Water users made claims about the product’s benefits, John often thought back to the day when his father first had an inkling there might be something more to the water than its cleansing properties. “He was working in his home lab and burned himself. He put his hand in a bucket of the CAW water and immediately the pain was gone.” Dr. Willard originally came upon the water as an answer to removing pollutants from coal-fired smokestacks. “Dad’s dream was to do something for the environment,” John says. Nobody knows for certain, but his compulsion to help people and the environment may have been heightened due to the ill effects which resulted from some of his early scientific works, namely the deadly Manhattan Project which resulted in nuclear weaponry.

Dr. Willard was born in Iowa and grew up in Madison, where he attended Eastern State Teachers College. In 1928, he married Gwennethe Drake, a nurse, and became a research chemist for DuPont. Among other things, he invented safety glass. He organized his own chemical company before returning to school and receiving a Ph.D. from Purdue in 1940.

While teaching at the Virginia Military Institute, he consulted on the Manhattan Project. He was commissioned in the U.S. Army Chemical Warfare Division. Following the war, he returned to South Dakota and became a chemistry professor at SDSMT in Rapid City.

One of his colleagues, the late Jack Gaines, remembered Willard’s devotion to education by saying,”He was very well respected. He taught nearly all the freshmen and he was just a beloved teacher. Nothing fancy. But a good teacher and a fine gentleman. Sometimes he had 100 to 150 students in class, and fortunately he had one of the biggest offices because it was often full of students.”

Dr. Willard retired from the School of Mines in 1973 to devote all his energies to development of his “super water.” His wife died in 1969. Dr. Willard’s grandson, John Willard III, has been running the company since John Jr. retired and Bill’s death in 2009. Despite all the changes, CAW Industries will probably always be affected by the spirit of Dr. Willard. “After dad died I made a lot of changes,” admitted John Jr. “And I often wondered if he approved of the way I was doing things. I think he did because deep down, we wanted to help the people of South Dakota and the world just like he did.”

One thing that won’t change at CAW Industries is the water. Their loyal customers say it’s working just fine.


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Staging Comebacks

By Ried Holien

Citizens gathered at Yankton’s opera house in the city’s early years. Photo courtesy of the Dakota Theatre.


Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the March/April 1997 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.

The manager of the touring acting company peered out from behind the curtain. It was a cold and windy January day in Scotland, S.D., and his actors grumbled nobody would show up for their performance. The manager smiled at the sight of a full house. The happiness faded, however, when he looked out later. The crowd had taken off their heavy winter jackets and the house was, in fact, only half full.

This story notwithstanding, actors played to full houses all over South Dakota between 1880 and 1920, the golden age of opera houses. Nearly every city in South Dakota boasted one. “Opera house” was preferred to the term “theatre” because the former sounded more cultured. Opera houses showcased live theatre from either touring groups or local talent. Their multi-purpose stages also saw bands, lectures, minstrels and vaudevillian shows. Most importantly, they promoted civic pride and camaraderie in the hard times of settling a new state.

Now, a century after most opera houses were built, these buildings are regaining their former stature as integral parts of many S.D. towns. “Opera houses tell so much about who we were and who we are,” said Gale Ries, former chairman of Watertown’s Goss Opera House restoration committee. “We worked diligently building them long ago. Now we work hard trying to preserve them.”

Opera houses ranked with general stores and schools as important buildings in early South Dakota. Like the others, the opera house provided unique services. The entire city received entertainment and culture from these theatres. Civic boosters quickly recognized the correlation between good entertainment and attracting settlers. Jeff Logan, owner of movie theaters in Mitchell, Huron and Dell Rapids, noted that, “because South Dakota was largely settled by the railroad, people arrived with ideas of culture already implanted. They wouldn’t wait to have it, either.” If one town didn’t have a good opera house, another town down the line certainly did.

Local businessmen built most opera houses on the second and third stories of buildings with a business on the ground floor. Downtown real estate costs ran high, even then. It made sense to double the use of a large building. This way, if the theatre took a loss, the rest of the building still covered the rent.

The most popular second use for the hardwood floors of opera houses was as roller skating rinks. The sport swept the nation in the mid 1880s. Many roller skating rinks opened with the intention of switching to theatres once the fad diminished.

Most touring actors loved their craft and life on the road. Still, many balked at coming to South Dakota. It fell in an area called the Circle. One actor explained his reluctance in a poem. It went:

“I love to be an actor, and travel with a show.
But I do not crave the Circle when it’s 34 below.”

The troupes that did come learned to adapt. The most durable company, the M & M Show, built a lower tent. It sat underneath the wind, and avoided the common complaint of tents blowing away. They dubbed it their “South Dakota tent.” Another company hauled thick particle board around the state. It reinforced the tent quite nicely until a bad hail storm blasted holes through it; they never returned.

In all fairness, it must be noted South Dakota weather, then as now, cannot overshadow South Dakota people. The actors who braved the weather returned with many fond stories of appreciative, sturdy settlers who traveled miles through the worst weather to watch performances. During the bleak winter of 1888 several communities staged “Blizzard Blockades.” In northeast South Dakota, this required digging tunnels for the audience to enter the theatre.

Although weather remained the most visible aspect of South Dakota theatre, the railroad proved the most important. By 1881, a web of metal lines linked every major city east of the Missouri. West River development happened several years later. Because of the Black Hills gold rush, settlers arrived in western South Dakota long before the railroad. Almost overnight, towns sprang up from mining and supply camps.

With towns came opera houses. Before late 1890, when the first train arrived in Deadwood, actors braved unknown land and the higher cost of stagecoach travel to reach the Hills. Actors who came stayed for a while. One such actor was Jack Langrishe, the most famous name in Deadwood theatre. His acting company lasted over a decade in the town. Langrishe faced the constant challenge of varying his repertoire. In the east, troupes knew only a couple plays. The entertainment changed when the railroad carried in new actors with new plays. His company sometimes performed five different plays in one week.

The gold rush attracted a raucous crowd to the opera house. These gamblers, prospectors and outlaws did not limit their criticism to unenthusiastic applause. The most famous derogatory review came from the renowned Calamity Jane at the play “East Lynne.” Charles E. Chopin, a child actor during those years, wrote of his experiences years later.

Chopin recalled that “she and ‘Arkansaw Bill,’ a famous stage robber, occupied front seats. Calamity dolled up for the occasion in a corduroy suit and sombrero and appeared particularly vain of her green kid gloves. Soon as she was comfortably settled, she bit a chunk of tobacco and chewed as industriously as any miner throughout the evening. She and her escort clapped in noisy appreciation until Lady Isabel eloped with Sir Francis and then Calamity showed her disapproval of the erring wife’s conduct by marching down to the footlights and squirting a stream of tobacco juice over the front of Lady Isabel’s pink satin evening gown.”

A fight nearly broke out when Mr. Lord protested the insult to his wife. Only after Calamity Jane tossed a handful of gold coins onto the stage to pay for the damages did the actors continue the performance. Chopin recalled that thereafter, “she chewed her cud in courteous silence.”

Citizens of the Hills loved theater. After Deadwood burned twice, and once after being destroyed by a flood, the opera houses were rebuilt even before houses.

Part of the Spearfish Arts Center, the Matthews Opera House is home to the local community theatre.

Traveling companies in the east benefited from cheap and easy railroad transportation. Troupes employed more actors and more elaborate sets. Both commanded larger audiences, because both created larger spectacles. Acting companies often faced hardships arising from railroad inconsistency, however. In the rush to make the end of the line, engineers often bypassed several towns if they were not required to stop. This wreaked havoc with play bookings.

The actors wised up quickly. They started carrying around a single pig, but not for any theatrical purpose. Federal regulations forced railroads to pick up livestock. So, the manager placed the pig in full view on the platform. The engineer stopped, and the troupe made their next booking.

Temperance and moralistic dramas endured longer than any other performances. Plays like “Ten Nights in a Bar Room” and “Victims of the Bottle” championed the rising sentiments of prohibition.

The most popular of all was “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” In 1902, 50 years after its premiere, no fewer than 16 troupes toured with that play alone. These “Tom shows” compensated for their lack of originality by adding unrelated tricks. Minstrels sang during intermission. Actors broke character to tell recent jokes. Real blood hounds chased down slaves. Willa Cather remarked on one show she saw in her youth that, “The barking of these dogs used to make us catch our breath!”

Unfortunately, most South Dakota opera houses have been lost. The advent of “talkies” ended the age of touring live theatre. Most changed to show movies. Many more sat dormant over the years; fire claimed some. Water damage and neglect relegated others to “condemned” status. The wrecker’s ball moved in quickly in the name of progress. Still, many opera houses survived. They are seeds for a rebirth of live theatre in South Dakota. Citizens are using modern technology and old-fashioned elbow grease to restore them to their former status.

Success stories come from all over the state. Lead’s Homestake Opera House was resurrected following a fire in 1984. The Goss Opera House in Watertown sat empty for 40 years, but now hosts concerts, weddings and special events and houses Charley’s Restaurant, galleries featuring local artists, and a coffee shop. The Grand Opera House of Dell Rapids has been restored to 1888-style splendor. Community theatre troupes in Pierre, Aberdeen, Sioux Falls, Spearfish and Yankton all found homes in their local opera houses. Restoration provides a wonderful mix of historic preservation and modern utility. The building’s availability alleviates booking concerns and sometimes provides a headquarters for day-to-day operations.

Just as the opera house stage held many functions, the buildings themselves possessed several connotations. What occurred within those walls reflected people’s social values and personal needs. Attend a summer performance, and one could well watch a melodrama upon a serious political topic. During the winter, the same stage could host a farcical comedy to help settlers forget about the bitter cold. Their purpose bordered between economic and social, but ideology flowed throughout. They symbolized the childlike dreams of South Dakota and hopes for the future. A century later, people are discovering opera houses still speak for South Dakota as it looks forward from adolescence into adulthood, and takes with it the best things of a previous age.

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The Last Nurseryman

By Brenda K. Johnson

Working for the corporate nursery that bore his name became intolerable so Jay Gurney (above) and his father repeated the family tradition of starting their own operation.

One of the saddest days of Jay Gurney’s life came in 1977 when his father lost his job at what had been the family nursery.”I helped my father gather up his stuff,” he remembers.

By the early 1940s the Gurney family no longer owned the historic family business in Yankton. The company changed owners several times and was eventually bought by American Garden Products.”Shortly after my grandfather’s death, the company said to my father Sidney: ‘We’ll offer you $100 to continue using your name and likeness in our mail order catalog. If you don’t sign the agreement, you’re fired.'”

When Sidney was terminated, he had worked as vice president and in other positions for 45 years, except during his World War II military service. Jay was also working for the company that bore his family name when his father was told to leave.

“I was about 26 years old and ran their greenhouse. I could see there wasn’t much future there for me if they fired my father,” Jay says.

A few days later, Jay and Sidney purchased 10 acres of land at the edge of Yankton and started the Sid & Jay Gurney Greenhouse just a block away from the corporate Gurney’s.

The officials made two mistakes. The first was when they threatened Jay.”As I gathered up my things I was told I’d never work in the business again anywhere and if I started my own business with Gurney in the name, they would sue me. I said, ‘Well, we’ll see.’ That’s what spurred me on during those hard startup years.”

In fact, the corporate lawyers did eventually sue the father and son for using their own last name in the new business. It was decided out of court that the Gurneys could use their name as long as they added a tag line that they were not affiliated with Gurney Seed & Nursery Inc.

C.W. Gurney, the patriarch of the nursery family (pictured center), started his first operation in Iowa after the Civil War. He also operated in Nebraska before arriving in Yankton in 1898, where he eventually incorporated the business with seven sons and a nephew.

Jay’s great-grandfather, C.W. Gurney, faced hard times, too, when he founded Hesperian Nurseries in 1869 along a homesteading trail 60 miles southeast of Yankton. Homesteaders needed trees for proof of settlement and for shade, fruit, windbreak and as reminders of home.

Hesperian Nurseries operated differently than modern-day nurseries. The Gurneys didn’t collect payment until a year after planting, and only charged for trees that were still thriving. C.W. Gurney’s planting and tree care techniques kept his nursery business solvent with the two-season guarantee. He and his sons established a branch of his business called Yankton Nursery in 1898. Later it was known as House of Gurney and it became Gurney Seed and Nursery Company in 1941.

Jay’s grandfather, George Walter Gurney, was a nurseryman in Yankton his whole life.”Gramps knew what to do with nursery stock and when to do it. I grew up in the nursery world. By the time I was 13, I could shear a hedge, prune a tree and maintain a garden. I learned to wear gloves when working with barberry bushes.

“Gramps was forever hoeing his large garden. His lawn was dandelion-free. I learned the most from Gramps, first tending his yard, and later in the fields.”

Jay remembers his grandfather’s nursery rules.”‘When you use a shovel, you clean it right away,’ my grandfather would say.” George also wanted sharp gardening tools.”He’d say, ‘Rough cut plants don’t heal well.'”

Sidney was in poor health as he and Jay started their new venture, but the father-son duo had a lot going for them. The Missouri River bottomland nourished their plants and they had plenty of space for greenhouses, a retail store, and a home right on the property. Eventually, they moved the retail store to the farm, which sits along Ferdig Avenue on the east edge of Yankton.

“While it was a drawback to have a major nursery in the same town, we knew their company well,” Jay recalls.”They offered catalog sales and bare root plants. By the early 1980s many people wanted container plants that were available locally and were ready to plant when they wanted. We offered potted plants and grew bedding plants that the mail order company didn’t have.”

Sales were slow those first years.”You can have the right ideas, but they don’t always work out perfectly,” Jay says.”You have to commit yourself. Hail, blizzards, and summer storms knock buildings down. You can’t look back. Just fix them and keep going.”

Sidney died just three years after starting the new nursery, but Jay gained family support from his mother, Jane, his wife, Tracy, and mother-in-law Lucy Holdorf.

An 1893 Gurneys poster illustrated how homesteaders might organize an orchard.

“They transplant in the greenhouse and work in the store and fields. They are the reason we made it through the tough years,” he says.

Most full-service nurseries locate near larger population centers for obvious reasons. But the Gurneys have plenty of competition from national chains that import plants and flowers by the truckload.

“The box store signs say ‘Visit our nursery.’ But nothing is grown from a seedling or produced there,” Jay says.”We have a selection of plants and supplies on hand for the customer. We process bare root trees into container plants, grow plants in our fields, do tree spading, have a landscape service and a retail store.”

Plus the local greenhouse is staffed with people who love plants.”Gardeners usually don’t bring wilted leaves and insects to identify to the big box store like they do here,” Jay says.”And when those stores feature plants in early spring, sometimes you need to say that the ground isn’t warm enough for planting here yet. You may lose the sale because no one wants to be told ‘no.’ They don’t tell you ‘no’ in the big box store. To me it’s the right sale if it’s the right plant for the right place at the right time. Great-grandfather Gurney warned homesteaders about fly-by-night nurserymen. Earning customer trust is the best guarantee for business success.”

Today, the former corporate Gurney headquarters sit vacant on Second Street. Town leaders are hoping something positive will happen with the property, which sits between the downtown area and the Missouri River. A Gurney Seed & Nursery catalog is still published, but it comes from somewhere in Indiana. It no longer mentions Yankton or features pictures of the Gurney family members.

Jay says the company was good for the Yankton community for decades, and he’s glad that it still elicits fond memories for people. But when you’re continuing a fourth-generation occupation, it’s hard to find time for philosophizing any further than that.”After all that has happened,” he says,”we moved on.”

Editor’s Note: This story was revised from the July/August 2009 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.

Jay Gurney’s Growing Tips

Visit your local nursery several times over the season to peruse peak blooming varieties and create a colorful yard from spring until fall.

Don’t be in a hurry to plant in early spring. What blooms in the greenhouse early may not perform well in hot weather. Jay’s grandfather used to say, ‘Once the tulip leaves turn brown, it’s time to put the bedding plants in.’ This accounts for changeable weather each year.

Let purchased plants adapt to local conditions before planting so they won’t go into transfer shock and not grow well. Or consider the local nursery that does this for you.

Customers often ask Jay when to prune plants. His rule of thumb is that you can always prune when you have your clippers in hand.

Customers also want to know when it becomes too late to plant. As long as the ground isn’t frozen, you can plant. In general, bare root trees and shrubs grow better when you plant them in the spring. Container plants can be planted anytime the ground isn’t frozen.

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Wagon Master

A Mitchell area craftsman restores 19th century vehicles to their cowboy-era beauty

Story by Bill Markley
Photos by Greg Latza

Hansen (in red scarf) directs the renovation of a wagon wheel.

The morning was clear, bright and cool for August. A six-horse team pulling a stagecoach approached the Cheyenne River crossing. Other wagons and riders on the 2008 Fort Pierre to Deadwood Trail Ride had crossed the river and were waiting on the west side. More horse-drawn vehicles lined up behind the stagecoach waiting their turn. As the lead horses descended the steep bank, the two drivers momentarily lost sight of them. The horses shied from the swift-flowing current, turned to their left and began to climb back up the steep bank as the other four horses followed. The drivers tried to correct the situation, but it was too late. The pole snapped in two and the coach broke away from the front wheels as it was designed to do to prevent passenger injury. The horses pulled the drivers, still holding onto the reins, off the coach as it tipped over.

The horses and drivers were uninjured and the stagecoach crew fixed their vehicle with assistance from local ranchers. In less than an hour, everyone was back on the trail.

Hansen makes adjustments to a design in his shop. A high level of craftsmanship is used in every piece he and his crew creates or renovates.

“It was the real pioneer spirit,” says Doug Hansen, the stagecoach owner.”Because if your stage broke down on the trail you just didn’t crawl in a hole and die, you up-righted your stagecoach, patched it up and set it on the front wheels again.”

Due to Hansen’s efforts to revive the lost art of building heavy-duty wagons, three 19th-century vehicles traveled the Fort Pierre to Deadwood Trail on the 2008 ride. But is a lost art really lost if one man still knows how to do it? That question comes to mind at Hansen’s Wheel and Wagon Shop, a 30-year-old business near Mitchell that has become an international success by sending stagecoaches, prairie schooners and other heavy wagons to destinations as far away as Europe and Japan.

Doug Hansen specializes in restoring 19th century vehicles to their cowboy-era beauty. He learned the trade from his family; his mother runs a saddle shop and his father worked with wood and steel. His grandfather spent his boyhood in an uncle’s blacksmith shop when horses and buggies were the mode of transportation.

Hansen remembers the day when his mom brought home two dilapidated buggies from an auction sale and he felt the urge to fix them. His grandfather helped him repair the wheels and restore the wagons to their original condition.

Once he discovered his interest in making wagon wheels and other folk craft, Hansen began to read books, visit museums, hang around blacksmith shops and borrow tools from antique collectors.”I wanted to learn how to make things,” he says.”It has become my life quest.”

Wheelwright apprenticeships are next to non-existent these days. There’s not even an online tutorial.”Building heavy wagons is a lost art, and I’ve been trying to fill the gap by studying the work of the old craftsmen,” Hansen says.”As I take apart wagons for restoration, I examine marks on the metalwork and wood. It’s my passion to investigate, restore and reproduce their superior design and craftsmanship. I want to understand the joinery and the engineering. We are copying the work of the leading engineers of the 19th century transportation industry. In 1860 they were making top of the line vehicles, attuned to consumer wants and desires.”

Hansen found his niche in Old West wagons.”Any Amish community has a buggy shop, but they don’t build prairie schooners or stagecoaches. The stagecoach is an icon of the American West. It’s the most recognizable American vehicle throughout the world. Everybody wants one.”

He and 12 workers fabricate parts in a shop near the James River seven miles north of Mitchell.”Out of necessity we have become self-sufficient,” he says.”We take raw materials and turn them into a product. We are not buying stagecoach parts and assembling them.”

Doug and Holly Hansen are preserving a transportation legacy.

His wife, Holly, runs the office. The rest of the wagon-makers are in the shop.”We have our own blacksmith, wheelwright, coach-maker and upholsterer,” he says.”Each craftsman is a specialist in his trade.”

Two of the shop’s restored stagecoaches and a freight wagon built from scratch traveled with the 2008 Fort Pierre to Deadwood Trail Ride.”The freight wagon’s running gear is a restored Studebaker,” Hansen says.”I’ve built wagons 30 years and it’s taken me this long to figure out how the freight wagons worked because there is no documentation. There are no freight wagons in the museums. I studied historic photographs and bits and pieces of hardware I collected over the years.”

The variety of wagons is endless. Nineteenth century manufacturers produced hundreds of different vehicles for hundreds of different uses.”We rarely restore the same type of wagon twice,” Hansen says.

When not restoring old wagons, Hansen’s workers are busy building other vintage vehicles from scratch.”We can spend hundreds to thousands of hours on a vehicle,” says Hansen.”Sometimes we put as much time in a vehicle as a carpentry crew puts in a house — two thousand hours on some.”

Hansen and his team of craftsmen take pride in resurrecting, preserving, and passing on America’s transportation legacy for future generations to enjoy.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the March/April 2010 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117. To view more of Greg Latza’s photos go to www.greglatza.com.

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Mountain-made Furniture

By Paul Higbee

Greg and Harold Stone in their Rapid City shop where they create over 200 pieces of buffalo leather furniture yearly.


Step inside the Dakota Bison Furniture showroom and you’ll know instantly that you’re not in a generic chain store. The rich buffalo leather scent hints of the wild Black Hills. The sound of workers confirms that the furniture you see was built just a room away. That doesn’t mean the wingback chairs, sofas, love seats, and ottomans all stay in South Dakota. Greg Stone, the third generation of Stones to build furniture in Rapid City, says Black Hills aficionados from coast to coast buy the furniture.”I’d estimate we’ve shipped to 75 percent of the states,” he says.”But we don’t have our furniture in stores anywhere else. It’s like Black Hills Gold jewelry used to be. You can only buy it in the Black Hills.”

And every piece is handcrafted and one-of-a-kind.”Because of patterns in the leather, every piece is different,” notes Harold Stone, Greg’s dad.”Buffalo furniture would be hard to mass produce.”

Only a handful of furniture makers operate in the Hills. Not surprising for a region that has always nurtured individuality, most local builders are known for singular products or niche markets. While Black Hills furniture may be shipped anywhere, like Stone’s products, there’s a market close at hand: people who move to the region not so much for careers as for a Black Hills lifestyle. Furniture can be an expression of that lifestyle.

The first Stone to build furniture in Rapid City was Hans, a Norwegian immigrant who started in 1933.”Furniture building wasn’t something he brought over with him,” says his grandson, Greg.”He got started by doing upholstery work, and it was an evolution from there. When you do upholstery, it’s easy to start taking ideas from the furniture you work with and to develop ideas for building your own things.”

A bedroom set by Perdue Woodworks in Rapid City.

Greg says the basics of sofa or armchair construction are simple. There are mainly four wooden pieces: seat, back, two arms. Of course, cautions Harold, that construction had better be solid.”If you’re shipping it around the country,” Harold says,”and you’re worried the frame might not hold up, you’re in trouble.” After a frame is completed, the builder has decisions to make about springs and foam. Then the real craftsmanship comes into play in working with the surface material.

For more than 60 years the Stones took pride in high quality upholstered furniture with fabric or cow leather surfaces. Then, in the late 1990s, bison rancher Duane Lammers stopped in with some buffalo hide. Could the Stones build him a customized chair with that leather? They did, and while the chair was still in their shop, another customer wanted something similar. The little company was quickly transformed.”It was a nice thing to come along in the twilight of my career,” says Harold with a smile.”I was at the age where most people retire.” Instead he remains part of a production workforce of five, producing what’s been called”instant heirloom furniture.”

These heirlooms should survive a few generations, says Greg. He believes buffalo leather has about twice the durability of cow leather. Customers remark that they find the surfaces soft to the touch, and often they are drawn by the furniture’s oversize design — a Stone trademark.

More than 200 furniture pieces are made annually.”We’re small enough that we often get to know our buyers,” says Greg.”Some of them will come with photos of furniture they like, and ask us to make something like it using buffalo. We’re happy that very few come back to us with complaints. I guess you could say we like meeting our customers, and then not meeting our customers.”

John English makes his own furniture and also teaches others the trade at the Black HIlls School of Woodworking.

There’s not much exposed wood in a Dakota Bison Furniture piece. But an hour north of Rapid City John English creates — and helps others create — furniture that’s all about wood. He is one of South Dakota’s best-known woodworkers, building pieces and explaining exactly how he did so with readers around the world, usually in American Woodworker magazine. He’s authored or contributed to several books. Born and raised in Ireland, English realized his dream of living in the American West with his family. He isn’t fazed by the fact that most quality hardwoods for furniture grow in the eastern United States. English’s friend, Rod Schaeffer, trucks in walnut, cherry, maple, oak, and other varieties from Pennsylvania and English stores them in Spearfish.

“The Black Hills is mostly a softwood region, and that wood is used primarily for building construction,” English says.

To be sure, there are Black Hills woodworkers who build much-loved furniture entirely from Black Hills woods. That includes builders who like a knotty pine look and those who manufacture rustic log pieces. A South Dakota material English thinks deserves more respect than it gets is cottonwood.”Cottonwood has to be dried for five or six years,” English says.”I think it’s gotten a bad reputation because of people who cut it one year and try to build something the next.” Other local woods English likes for accent components in furniture are juniper, diamond willow, and Russian olive.”But you don’t want those woods for the main component, because they aren’t cut straight and won’t stay straight,” he warns.

Some of English’s furniture creations are sold at Gallery 97 in Belle Fourche, located on the ground floor of the old city hall building. Upstairs English runs the Black Hills School of Woodworking, where people make their own high-quality furniture (along with other wood creations).

“Someone walks in with a picture from a magazine, or something they drew on a napkin, and we show them how to use all the tools,” says English.”We put a strong emphasis on hand tools.”

About 40 percent of his visitors are women. End products have included dining room tables, cabinets, tall boys, toy chests, and much more.”Most people do three to five projects, and then they’re weaned, ready to work on their own,” English observes. The very best products may be juried and deemed suitable for display downstairs at Gallery 97.

Eric Shell displays an oak table he designed and created at English’s Belle Fourche school.

That’s what happened to a stunning oak table created by Eric Shell, who lives at Upton in Wyoming’s strip of the Black Hills. The local oak Shell used is spalted. That means the wood began to decay when the tree died, and the slow process of decay resulted in random color streaks.”I like to take structured designs and blend them with natural materials to give my work a contemporary Western flavor,” Shell wrote in a placard displayed with the table.

Natural yet contemporary — if there’s a credo for the Black Hills’ most creative furniture makers, that may be it.†

The bulk of mass-produced furniture Americans buy has traditionally come from the East Coast, where the hardwoods grow. In recent years Chinese products have claimed a big share of the market. A Rapid City company keeping 115 South Dakotans employed in these competitive times is Perdue Woodworks, producing particleboard and medium density fiberboard furniture.”We make competitively-priced bedroom furniture — chests of drawers, night stands, bookcases,” says Richard Perdue. His father, Don, started the operation in Montana in 1970 and moved it to Rapid City in 1987. Last year about 220,000 pieces of furniture were trucked to 3,000 retail outlets.

Dakota Textiles of Sturgis established an unusual market niche and is betting that its high industry standards will keep demand steady. The products: small upholstered sofas, easy chairs and ottomans that accommodate young children. The furniture pieces aren’t toys. They conform to the same construction expectations as their counterparts for adults. Workers with disabilities from Black Hills Special Services Cooperative work alongside non-disabled staff to build, pack, and load three-piece sets for shipping. That production arrangement began in 1987, and since then the furniture has gone to all 50 states and a handful of nations overseas. Much of it goes to day care centers, preschools and pediatric waiting rooms.

Marlene Lawton and Thomas Vaughn put finishing touches on a piece of children’s furniture at Dakota Textiles in Sturgis.

“Right now we have seven fabric colors available,” says production coordinator Taylor Carlson,”and we’re willing to customize colors if someone wants to buy their own fabric.”

While people often call the miniature furniture cute, make no mistake. It’s also Black Hills tough with solid frames of locally harvested pine.”I saw one of our sofas fall off a moving pickup once,” recalls Bob Markve, who set up the production shop in 1987.”It bounced down the highway. We picked it up and the only damage was a little scabbing of the fabric.”

Recently a day care center brought back two Dakota Textile furniture sets for new upholstery after 16 years of daily use. In other words, the toddlers who originally climbed all over these sofas and chairs were off to college or into careers by the time the furniture started looking worn.”We rehabbed it for free,” says Carlson.

Good for another generation.†

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the March/April 2010 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.

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Spinoffs from Sturgis

By Paul Higbee

The rumble of motorcyclists attracted by the Sturgis Rally fades with the pages of the calendar. But listen carefully and you may hear another motorcycling sound across South Dakota: the year-around hum of manufacturing, engineering research, and bike adaptations.

No one says the motorcycle industry is recession proof. A motorcycle is a luxury purchase for most buyers, but good bikes generally hold their value over time and are smart investments. Also there are high-end bike collectors, both in the United States and abroad, for whom the current recession is mostly rumor, and whose latest two-wheel purchase exceeded what most of us spent for our homes. Some South Dakota manufacturers have grown about as fast as companies could ever hope in recent years, and if sales slowed during the economic downturn of 2008 and 2009, it felt like a mere bump in the track.

Company leaders say there’s an advantage in basing a motorcycle company in South Dakota. It’s a place bikers warmly associate with spectacular rides, freedom, annual reunions, and residents who are anything but buttoned-down. Plenty of industry leaders are transplants that seem to understand South Dakota’s mystique better than its natives do. Something else — base your company in South Dakota and lots of customers will stop every August for face-to-face hellos and consultations.

So get your motor running, head out on the highway, and meet some people who make biking a 12-month enterprise in South Dakota.

Brian Klock spent 15 years building a Mitchell bike business called Klock Werks. His bikes began to set records at Bonneville after he designed a new windshield during a Discovery Channel Build-Off contest.

Mitchell

How do you set a world’s speed record on Utah’s Bonneville salt flats? You need the right engine, the right rider, and as Brian Klock learned to his great benefit, you need the right windshield.

Over the past 17 years, Klock built up Klock Werks, a company that earned a great reputation producing parts for customizing bikes. Fenders, handlebars, gauges, exhaust systems — about 350 parts in all — are shipped everywhere, mostly with pre-drilled holes so buyers can build or rebuild their bikes themselves. Klock Werks won a loyal customer base, especially among Harley-Davidson owners who ride baggers. Baggers are long distance bikes with compartments, or bags, for stowing travel gear. Klock Werks products told the biker world that baggers could be stylish.

But could a bagger go fast?

Brian and Laura Klock

When the Discovery Channel invited Klock to participate in a biker build-off a few years ago, he decided to create the WFB (Way Fast Bagger). Part of his design was a new windshield. The standard issue windshield on this Harley bike, he discovered, moved air so that the bike’s front end actually rose a bit at high speeds. The lift slowed the bike and resulted in less stability and even a wobble. Klock’s new windshield, now sold as the Flare, directed the wind downward — a plus for rider comfort, safety, and speed. Klock won the build-off and took the bike to Bonneville in 2006.

He recruited a highly trusted rider, Laura Ellifson, for the salt flats time trials. A year later she and Klock were married.

Laura hit 147 miles per hour, a record for her type of machine, in land speed racing at Bonneville in 2006. The WFB name stuck, only now the initials stood for World’s Fastest Bagger. Laura broke her own record at Bonneville in 2007 and again in 2008 when she was clocked at 153.593 mph. She believes that unofficially she has reached 160 mph.

What’s it like to fly like that across the salt on two wheels?

“You learn to challenge yourself and your machine, and you learn to handle your fears,” Laura says.”You look straight ahead, pick a spot and keep focused on it, and you don’t look down at the track because that can be intimidating. In this kind of racing you hold your speed over the course of a measured mile, so it’s different than drag racing where you hit your speed and then back off.”

She attracted lots of admirers, some of whom have her posters tacked to their garage walls, and she’s in demand as a speaker. But Laura is not the hard-driven competitor some of her fans might guess. What she loves about salt flats racing is the comradery and the chance to showcase Klock Werks innovations (however, Laura does take great pride in the fact that she and her bike racing teenage daughters, Erika and Karlee, were the first mother and daughters trio to simultaneously hold records at Bonneville).

Brian and Laura Klock first met at Bonneville, where Laura’s daughters Erika and Karlee also hold records.

Showcasing the Flare windshield’s attributes at Bonneville was a big step for Klock Werks. The windshield was perfected at the A2 Wind Tunnel in North Carolina and is now the company’s best selling product. It deserves much of the credit for the way Klock Werks grew in recent years from five employees to 20.

“It costs under $200, takes just a few minutes to install, and it really improves a ride,” says Makel Juarez on the sales floor in Mitchell.

Sturgis

If you own a pre-1930 Harley Davidson, there are two things you should know. First your source for parts is Competition Distributing of Sturgis, because no one else in the world builds such an extensive line of Harley components for 1905 through 1929 models. There are 1,620 parts available, most for Harleys, and some for other vintage bikes as well.

Second you should know there are more people like you than you might guess. Competition Distributing has a customer base of 14,000. Seventy-five percent of those buyers are European. Some days 150 parts shipments leave the shop on Lazelle Street in Sturgis. That’s where”seven workers do the work of 14,” says Lonnie Isam, company owner.

Isam notes a key difference between motorcycle collectors and people who collect cars.”Motorcyclists love their engines, just the opposite of lots of car collectors who tend to love the car’s body,” he says.”So with these bikes we start out with lots of motors and not so many chassis.”

If there’s a look that distinguishes pioneer bikes, it’s the box-shaped flat gas tanks. The very first, not surprisingly, resembled bicycles with motors attached, because that’s exactly what they were. But the machines soon acquired identities completely separate from bicycles.

“The engineering is so obvious on these early bikes, and I’ve learned to respect the way the engineering evolved quickly, especially from 1905 to 1920,” Isam says.”We rebuild complete bikes here a few times each year, and we go through the exact process that the first bike builders did.”

He never forgets the historical significance of his work.”These motorcycles,” he says,”are our thoroughbreds, our roots.”

Isam grew up riding motorcycles in and around Seattle, then owned a Harley-Davidson dealership in Houston. In the 1970s, he says,”Harley-Davidson wasn’t cool, was having some labor problems, and you could pick up a dealership for just about nothing.” Isam and his wife, Marianne, ran the Houston shop for 34 years and at the same time were buying up struggling tool and dye companies there.”So I had equipment to make bike parts,” Isam recalls. If he made one part, he discovered, it made sense to make additional pieces as well. Sooner or later someone would need them.

Like so many others in the bike industry, Isam came to know the Black Hills through the rally and eventually bought property there. After the Isams sold their Houston dealership in 1999, they began thinking of a life in South Dakota. It was the right move.”In Sturgis,” Isam says,”I’ve forgotten what stress is.” He’s a new South Dakotan loyal to his adopted state–when he subcontracts work, he looks to Black Hills manufacturers and estimates that 80 percent of his company’s revenue remains in South Dakota.

It’s somehow appropriate that Carl Herman Lang’s 1905 Harley Davidson sits in this shop that’s dedicated to the integrity of vintage Harleys. Lang was an early Harley-Davidson investor, patent holder, and the very first dealer. It’s believed the company turned out five bikes in 1905–this one and only four others. If there’s a Rosetta Stone in the Harley world, this is it.

Spearfish

Ken Hines relocated from South Carolina to Spearfish to become president and CEO of Lehman Trikes, which bills itself as”leader of the three world.” A former Blue Angels pilot, Hines now enjoys more leisurely motorcycle rides.

“I only rode 900 miles this past weekend,” he laughs.”If you’re in the motorcycle industry and you find yourself in the northern Black Hills, what could be better?”

His company originated in Canada in 1985 and named Spearfish its United States assembly and distribution center in 2004. Initially there were four Spearfish employees, but seven years later more than 130 workers are spread throughout four buildings.

“We take a partially assembled two-wheel motorcycle, add a wider differential that will accept two rear wheels, and then we add those wheels,” explains Paul Pankonin, operations manager.”And the framework gets a new body and paint.”

Ken Hines moved to Spearfish to become President and CEO of Lehman Trikes, but soon fell in love with the Northern Hills and the great biking routes. Lehman Trikes were designed for safety in the 1980s.

The Lehman story began in the early 1980s. Linda Lehman told her husband, John, that she wasn’t comfortable with their child riding on the back of a two-wheel bike. So for safety John created a three-wheel motorcycle. The customized machine won Linda’s appreciation and lots of attention wherever the family traveled. The Lehmans had struck gold and decided to mass-produce trikes, originally at Westlock, Alberta.

Today in Spearfish there are two assembly lines in a thoroughly modern, beautifully lit, and well-ventilated plant. Product demand keeps day and night shifts busy. One line culminates in a trike built for Harley-Davidson as a Harley product, and the other line turns out Lehman’s own products. About 130 dealers handle Lehman Trikes, across North America and Europe, and in Japan. Dealers who want Lehman kits for assembly in their own shops are invited to Spearfish for a four-day training session. Dealers are also invited to Spearfish for the rally each year, and can use the Lehman parking lot adjacent to Interstate 90 for demo rides and sales.”We open the factory for tours during rally week, too, but we never sell directly to the public,” Hines says.”Only through our dealers.”

It’s not only rally traffic and great Black Hills rides that have Hines singing South Dakota’s praises.”We love our workforce here,” he says,”and this is a state where the governor will come and visit for half an hour, and he knows your name and all about your business.”

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the November/December 2009 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.