Category: columns-history

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How Palmer’s Gulch Raised a Professor

By Bernie Hunhoff

Ruth Ziolkowski once told our writer Paul Higbee that she doesn’t feel a need to travel outside the Black Hills because “anybody you could ever want to meet will eventually come here.”

The attraction of outsiders to our mountain valleys also explains how Watson Parker, a child of Hill City, became professor emeritus of history at the University of Wisconsin. Watson is also the author of several books, including the hiker/cult classic “Black Hills Ghost Towns.” He is one of your very favorite South Dakotans, unless you don’t know him. And last but not least, he was inducted into the South Dakota Hall of Fame a few weeks ago.

A few years ago, Watson explained to me why he aspired to a career in academia. “In the 1940s my family was running Palmer Gulch Lodge near Hill City,” he said. “We generally had a lot of vacationing professors from the University of Minnesota, so after-dinner converations on the terrace were learned and lively.

“Chief among the professors was Richard M. Elliot of the psychology department. My dad had known him at Dartmouth, where they were classmates. One evening when I was about 10 years of age, Dr. Elliot and a fellow academic were discussing Roman history. One of them quoted Cato the Elder as saying, ‘delando est Carthago,’ to which another raised an objection, insisting that he’d really said, “Carthaginem esse Delendam.’

“They began a spirited discussion in Latin and I listened with my ears wide open, and my mouth, too,” Watson said, “for there, in the heart of the Black Hills, a whole new vista of knowledge, learning and wisdom was opened for me.”

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Lippman was Lemmon’s Hero

By John Andrews

South Dakota has produced some amazing veterans. Jean Mehegan, founder of Medary Acres greenhouse in Brookings, survived the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Don Smith (Belle Fourche) was a member of Doolittle’s Raiders, who launched the first retaliatory attack against Japan after the surprise Hawaiian bombing. Walter Herrig, who taught in SDSU’s Army ROTC program, was a prisoner of war for much of the conflict. He was on the island of Corregidor when the Japanese captured it in 1942. Clarence Wolf Guts was a Lakota code talker.

Recently I learned about Gordon Joseph Lippman of Lemmon. Lippman was one of 54,000 American servicemen and women who fought in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. He enlisted following his junior year at Lemmon High School, and it didn’t take long for others to realize he had incredible courage and battlefield instincts. He was credited with saving his patrol against German resistance in southern France. As a member of the 517th Parachute Infantry Regiment, he was wounded at the Battle of the Bulge.

Lippman was a battalion operations officer during the Korean War, where he was again wounded near Do Chung in April 1951. Lippman was leading his men across the Hantan River in darkness when an enemy outpost spotted them. Lippman and his troops came under fire in the middle of the water, but he rallied them and led a charge that destroyed the outpost. Then he reorganized and led his men toward their objective: a hill whose perimeter was ringed with enemy gunners. Only a single platoon made it under heavy fire. Lippman, realizing his soldiers faced annihilation against overwhelming odds, created a diversion. For 45 minutes, armed with a pistol and grenades, he darted within yards of the enemy, drawing their fire so his soldiers could gain a better position and take the hill. He earned the Distinguished Service Cross, the Army’s second highest military decoration, awarded for bravery.

A soldier might think himself lucky to emerge from one war alive. Surviving two could be considered miraculous. Sadly, Lippman didn’t survive a third. He was sent to Vietnam in September 1965, where he served as the executive officer of the Third Brigade, First Infantry Division. Four months later, Viet Cong snipers infiltrated his camp near Lai Khe. Lippman died from small arms fire while trying to personally locate them.

His sister Marlys was fortunate enough to spend a week with Gordon at his home in Washington, D.C., in May 1965. She remembered he spent evenings working on his master’s degree at Georgetown University, which he earned shortly before his deployment.”My last memory was that I had sent him for Christmas 1965 a fruitcake plus other edibles and a felt bookmark which I made for him per his request [to] ‘only send very small things that can travel with me.’ In February, two months after he was killed, the package was returned to me with DECEASED written on it — with a very spoiled fruitcake. I wept. It was so little, and he didn’t even receive it.”

South Dakotans should be proud of Gordon Lippman and veterans like him. They possess courage the rest of us only imagine we have. Days like Veterans Day or Memorial Day are fine times to honor them, but they should be remembered the other 363 days as well.

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True Heroes and Sort-of Heroes

By Paul Higbee

Black Hills people should make time this Veterans Day weekend to visit the Herbert Littleton monument in Spearfish.

No place tops the Black Hills when it comes to memorializing heroes in granite or bronze: Crazy Horse, Washington, Lincoln and the rest on mountains, and every U. S. president on Rapid City street corners. We even have beautiful monuments for sort-of heroes. A couple for Wild Bill Hickock come to mind.

The Littleton monument honors a true hero, and a local one, at that. One of eight South Dakota Congressional Medal of Honor recipients, Herbert Littleton lived in Spearfish and then Sturgis as a kid. As a young man — still a teenager, in fact — he worked for a Rapid City electrical appliance firm. Littleton joined the Marines just after his 18th birthday and found himself two years later at Chungchan, Korea, in the middle of a hot war. In the dark, early morning hours of April 22, 1951, he threw himself on top a grenade tossed into his company’s shallow foxhole. That fast action cost Littleton his life, and saved the lives of many other Marines.

His heroism is described on a plaque that’s part of the Spearfish monument. When the monument was unveiled, then-governor Bill Janklow said,”People will read it and they’ll say they can’t believe he did that.”

True. Yet what intrigues us about heroism, after we mull it over, is the realization that there’s something in human makeup that makes the ultimate sacrifice possible. It’s been proven again and again on battlefields, and during natural disasters. Lots of people, some among the last anyone would expect, are capable of true heroism.

Strangely, when we use the term”hero” loosely, we’re often talking about actions beyond the capabilities of 99 percent of the population. Like slam-dunking a basketball against defenders who stand seven feet tall, or muscling a football through a wall of 300-pound monster men.

Sort-of heroes typically hit the public consciousness in a blaze of hyped expectation. By contrast, true heroes usually emerge without fanfare. I heard lots of folks sharing stories and observations about Herbert Littleton at the monument unveiling ceremony, but no one claimed to have expected heroism from him, or to have heard anyone predict it. Here was an average-sized kid who played a little high school football at Sturgis, dropped out of school before graduation, joined the Marines in hopes of getting his education back on track, and planned to marry his sweetheart from Idaho. He served as a radio operator in Korea, and minutes before his death was sternly scolded by a lieutenant for gabbing needlessly over the airwaves.

In short, Herbert Littleton was not substantially different from most 20 year olds in 1951, or from the 20 year olds who now cruise the streets he knew in Spearfish, Sturgis and Rapid City.

Knowing Littleton was a normal guy until the last moments of his life somehow enhances his heroism. It might even make us think about our own capabilities differently — and those of contemporary young men and women we know.

The Herbert Littleton monument stands in the Indian Springs section of Spearfish City Park, at the intersection of Canyon and Dakota, under the three flags of the United States, the Marine Corps, and the state of South Dakota.

Paul Higbee has written regularly for South Dakota Magazine since 1991, serving as our Black Hills correspondent. Paul and his wife Janet live in Spearfish. This column originally appeared in the November/December 2000 issue. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.

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At 99, the Bummobile Rolls On

By John Andrews

My family donned winter coats, hats, gloves, scarves, two blankets and downed a Thermos full of piping hot water (which became either tea or hot chocolate) to enjoy this year’s Hobo Day parade in Brookings Saturday morning. This year’s homecoming celebration happened noticeably late in the year, but everyone seemed adequately prepared and, in some cases, strategically located. Perhaps the smartest parade-attendees watched within a few steps of Cottonwood Coffee, a neat little shop downtown that had pots full of freshly brewed coffee placed on tables outside.

Floats change every year to reflect the Hobo Days theme. This year it was Night of the Living Hobos, and students seemed to relish the idea of dressing as zombies and unintentionally frightening children along the parade route. But it is also a parade of constants. You know the Pride of the Dakotas marching band will lead the way. Politicians will shake hands and kiss babies, resulting in gaps between floats. You’ll see former university presidents, faculty members and alumni. And you’ll always see the Bummobile.

The Bummobile is a 1912 Model T Ford that has been running ever since it first left Henry Ford’s factory. It belonged to Frank Weigel, a Flandreau farmer and SDSU supporter, who donated it to the Students’ Association in 1939 under the condition that it appear in the Hobo Day parade every year. And it has.

Sure, it has sustained its share of bumps and bruises. The Bummobile has been backed into campus buildings, caught on fire, and even lost a wheel on Medary Avenue as a Grand Pooba (SDSU’s student homecoming leader) learned to drive it. But it has performed admirably on parade day every year.

In October 1952, while campaigning for the presidency, Dwight D. Eisenhower stopped in Brookings to speak at the Coolidge Sylvan Theatre. His visit came two weeks before Hobo Day, so after his speech locals asked Eisenhower to hop in the Bummobile. He agreed, and his picture was taken with that year’s Grand Pooba in the passenger seat. The Collegian, SDSU’s student newspaper, chided the candidate when it ran the photo under a headline that read,”Ike Reaches Peak in Career.”

In 2009 the Bummobile was fully restored. Harold Hohbach, a 1943 electrical engineering graduate, hauled the car to his home in California and gave it new life. Today, when it’s not chugging down the streets of Brookings, it resides in a glass case in the Hobo Day Gallery, found in the University Student Union.

I’ve never gotten the chance to ride in the venerable vehicle, but hopefully that will change. Then I’ll have at least one thing in common with Ike.

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Did Herrick Really Have a Stone Man?

By John Andrews

I’ll admit, it sounded fishy as soon as I finished reading it. I was paging through The Saga of Sully Flats, Adeline Gnirk’s history book about Gregory County, when I found a picture of what appeared to be a cement human figure. The paragraph below the photo identified it as a petrified man that had been discovered in a sandpit south of Herrick.”With the exception of a cracked arm and leg, the stone man was well preserved,” the writer said. The book went on to say the man had been claimed by a museum in the East. And that was the end of the story.

A Google search produced nothing, but a conversation with a friend supported my initial suspicion.”I bet it was a hoax,” he told me.

Petrified humans were a popular hoax during the 1800s. Accounts of new discoveries appeared in newspapers with some regularity. Many stories were simply created by the editors, who wanted to sell more papers and carry more exciting content than their rivals.

One of the most famous examples is the Cardiff Giant, a 10-foot petrified human figure discovered near Cardiff, N.Y., in 1869. Tobacco peddler George Hull convinced a German stonecutter in Iowa to carve the likeness, telling him it was intended for a monument to Abraham Lincoln. Hull, an atheist, was upset after an argument at a Methodist revival over a Bible verse that claimed giants once roamed the Earth. He spent $2,600 on the hoax.

A group of South Dakotans fooled thousands of people with a faked petrified man at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. The idea belonged to William Sutton, a butcher at Forest City, who enlisted help from William Horn and James Sutton. The men traveled to Redfield, where James Sutton allowed a cast to be made of his body. Inside, they placed a human skeleton (makes you wonder where they got the bones) and filled it with cement. Then they buried the body along the Little Cheyenne River near Forest City. Later, while out searching for limestone, Horn”discovered” the body, which was exhumed and came to be known as the”Forest City Man.”

I called Jack Broome, the retired Burke school superintendent and local historian. If anyone would know the story behind Herrick’s stone man, it would be Broome. But I was out of luck.”In all my years around here, I’ve never heard much about it,” he told me, though he added that he wouldn’t be surprised to learn it was a hoax.”They even faked the gold rush out here,” he said.”There was a little town called St. Elmo near Herrick. Settlers claimed they discovered gold, but they hadn’t. They were just trying to get people to settle that area.”

All signs point to Herrick’s stone man being the product of a group of clever settlers who got caught up in a fad. But no one can say with certainty. Can you?

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Gregory County’s Healing Waters

By John Andrews

Healing waters? Bernie Hunhoff took this photo near the site of the Fountain Home in Gregory County.

Do the waters of Lake Sully and Whetstone Creek in Gregory County hold magical, healing powers? Doctors 100 years ago believed they did, and it led to a renowned sanitarium being built in the Missouri River valley hills.

Dr. James Buchanan, who came to Yankton from Chicago, filed a land claim when Gregory County was opened for settlement in 1904. He was attracted to South Dakota after talking with none other than local rogue Jack Sully (I almost wrote”outlaw,” but after talking with local historians in recent weeks, I’ve discovered there’s quite a bit of doubt about that characterization). Sully and Buchanan crossed paths when Sully was a stagecoach driver between Yankton and Wyoming.

Buchanan discovered his claim contained warm water springs, which he believed contained minerals that enhanced healing various ailments. He began construction on the Buchanan Sanitarium, also known as the Fountain Home, just southwest of the town of Lucas, within sight of Sully’s ranch in Sully Flats.

The Fountain Home became a destination for wealthy East Coast businessmen seeking to escape their high-pressure jobs and regain their health. Dr. Buchanan encouraged swimming in nearby Lake Sully, and pumped in water from other springs he discovered.

Buchanan’s sanitarium only operated for about 10 years. After its closure, families lived in different floors of the five-story house. The grand home’s design led to an anxious day for the Thomas Durfee family. They were living in part of the home when they discovered their son Alvin was missing. Search parties came from as far away as Winner. They searched into the night without success. Then, one of the rescuers leaned against a panel, which gave way and exposed a secret compartment where the boy lay sleeping. The Fountain Home contained 14 secret rooms that doubled as closets.

The sanitarium was finally razed in the 1930s. Its foundations are still visible, and local historian Jack Broome, retired superintendent of schools in Burke, happily chauffeurs visitors across the prairie to show them. “One time I took three sisters out there,” Broome says. “One was from Chicago and I’ll be darned if she didn’t fall in the creek. I thought she’d be mad, but she got up and said, ‘Oh, I feel so good now.'”

If you go, dip an achy ankle or sore knee into the creek. You might be surprised at the results.

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Yankton Paid a Price

By Bernie Hunhoff

Would Yankton be the capital city of South Dakota today if our forefathers would have behaved themselves?

Of course, that’s water under the bridge. But this year marks the 150th observance of Yankton’s founding and the creation of our territorial government is a proper occasion to learn from the past. The truth is that we could have been a better capital city, and we paid a price.

First of all, we should have done the obvious things like investing in the construction of a governor’s mansion and a capitol building, and sharing the spoils with our potential opponents from the north and west.

We did the exact opposite. As I recall, the capitol building that we did build was eventually moved east of town and rehabbed into a chicken coop. Every governor had to build his own home, and most of them came from the South where they didn’t suffer our frost-freeze cycle, so all but one of their”mansions” were soon torn down. (The only one still standing, The Pennington House, now provides offices for our South Dakota Magazine at 3rd & Pearl.)

And as for spoils for the opponents? Gov. Pennington was a good man and probably one of the top territorial governors, but even he had his peccadilloes. For example, he created Pennington County, modestly had it named it for himself, and then proceeded to appoint his friends, rather than Black Hills leaders, to the county posts. Many of them didn’t even go West to serve — they handled the duties from Yankton.

Patronage was almost the order of the day, but there were far worse transgressions. Some of our Yankton streets (Burleigh and Picotte) now honor the names of early leaders who were the subject of numerous complaints about election irregularities, bribery and other forms of corruption.

Even the Yankton gang quarreled among themselves. There were rivalries and jealousies between businessmen on Broadway and Capitol streets, according to historian Herbert Schell’s fine book, The History of South Dakota.

Indian issues, railroad rights-of-way, the formation of counties and numerous other challenges faced the territorial legislature and the Yankton leaders. They muddled their way along, as governments usually do, but not many citizens in the sprawling Dakota Territory were impressed with their Yankton leadership.

The local gang knew of the growing dissension, but they felt they had an advantage because any re-organization of the territory had to occur within the city limits of Yankton.”Undaunted by such legal obstacles,” wrote Schell,”the nine members (of the capitol commission) secretly proceeded to Sioux City where in the early hours of April 3, 1883, they boarded a special train consisting of an engine and a single coach, and set out for the capital. As they reached the city limits at about six o’clock that morning, they halted the train briefly while they organized themselves. Then followed a junketing through the Territory by the ‘The Capital on Wheels,’ as the commission was nicknamed ….”

That midnight trip doomed Yankton as the state capital. We had it and we let it slip from our grasp — because of greed, self-interest and a frugal disinclination to make smart investments at the right moment.

I’m not suggesting that there are any lessons to be learned in this sad story. But you know what they say about history ….

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Adams House Stories

By Rebecca Johnson

I hope some visiting Deadwood for last weekend’s Festival of Books took time to stop at the Historic Adams House. My husband and I toured last summer and the stories the tour guide shared were the real highlight.

First owners Harris and Anna Franklin were rich and they wanted a house that showed it. The arrival of the railroad in Deadwood made if feasible for them to build the extravagant Queen Anne-style home in 1892. A Chicago architect designed the home with central heating, hot and cold running water and electric lights. Servants could be summoned by electric bells and the family could even communicate by telephone within the house.

After Anna died in 1901, Harris sold the house to his son for $1. It was sold again in 1920 to W.E. and Alice Adams. W.E. was a wealthy retailer, wholesale grocer, and six-time mayor of Deadwood. The couple raised two daughters who later married successful husbands and moved out of state. Everything seemed grand until their daughter Lucile contracted typhoid fever in Detroit and died in 1912.

More misfortune befell the family in 1925. Alice, who had been ill with cancer, chose to travel to California for the birth of their first grandchild. She died suddenly in her daughter Helen’s home, causing Helen to go into labor. Helen died the following day and the baby died soon after.

W.E.’s family had been entirely wiped out, but he met his second wife in 1926 on a passenger train traveling from Denver to Deadwood. The widowed Mary Mastrovich Vicich was only 28 when the 72-year-old businessman courted her. Their relationship was considered scandalous by some, but the couple married a year later. They enjoyed seven years of travel and charity work together until W.E. died of a stroke in 1934. Mary inherited the home and in 1936 she closed up its contents and moved to California. Everything was left intact for over 50 years, even a jar full of cookies. You can see the cookie jar on display, although I believe the cookies have been changed.

We heard more stories on the tour including passageways that were possibly installed to allow trysts with a maid — but I can’t remember which man was supposed to have used them and I don’t want to start any rumors. I believe there was also talk of a ghost or two.

Unfortunately I don’t have pictures of the intricate interior architecture or extravagant furniture. Non-flash photography was once allowed but a couple of charlatans ruined it for the average tourist. Adams Museum staff found that visitors had photographed the home’s relics and were offering them for sale on Ebay. You are still welcome to photograph the garden and have your picture taken on the porch.

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From Mud to Bronze

By John Andrews

As a student at South Dakota State University in Brookings, I found myself in Lincoln Music Hall quite often. I can’t count how many times I passed the bronze bust of Abraham Lincoln, which serves as the centerpiece of the building’s marvelous marble foyer. Never once did I wonder who made it. Turns out, it was a quiet Norwegian who learned to sculpt using Minnehaha County mud and became one of the most well known artists of his generation.

Gilbert Risvold grew up on a farm near Baltic. He went to country school, where teachers noticed the boy’s talent for crafting images from mud. He attended South Dakota State College and studied under Ada Caldwell (who also taught Harvey Dunn). Caldwell saw Risvold’s potential and recommended he apply to the prestigious Art Institute of Chicago.

As is the case with many artists, Risvold struggled to find his place. Nearing the end of his patience with sculpture, he entered a contest that challenged artists to create a statue of renowned Illinois politician Stephen Douglas. Out of 75 entries, Risvold won. The state bought his sculpture and placed it at the state capitol in Springfield, where you can find it today.

Risvold’s success with the Douglas statue propelled his art career. He did a statue of Idaho governor Frank Steunenberg, created a war memorial for Oak Park, Illinois and crafted the Mormon Battalion Memorial (perhaps his most well known piece), which stands in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Riswolds (many have substituted the “v” for a “w” in the surname) still live in Minnehaha County. In fact, they gather every summer for a large family reunion at East Side Lutheran Church. A distant relative sent me a note about the event, which is how I discovered the art of Gilbert Risvold. In addition to his bust of Lincoln in Brookings, his statue of Mother Sherrard, founder of South Dakota’s first children’s home, stands in the state capitol.

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Upstaging Mitchell’s Sculptor

By John Andrews

Coin aficionados know the name James Earle Fraser. South Dakotans should, too. He spent part of his childhood in Mitchell, where he molded pieces of soft chalkstone from a quarry east of town into people and animals. As an adult he designed the buffalo nickel that remained in circulation for 25 years.

I ran across his name in a book I’m reading called Double Eagle: The Story of the World’s Most Valuable Coin. It’s about the 1933 Double Eagle gold pieces produced at the Philadelphia Mint in the weeks before President Franklin Roosevelt, attempting to avoid a nationwide banking collapse, banned the public from owning gold. Apparently only one has survived, and its tale is exciting enough to tell in book form. At least that’s what I’m hoping. I’m on page 60.

The Double Eagles were designed by Augustus Saint-Gaudens at the urging of President Theodore Roosevelt, who wanted to beautify American coinage. Fraser was at one time a student of Saint-Gaudens’ at a French art school. He was chosen to revamp the nation’s nickels, which until 1913 featured a Liberty head. But as it happened, Fraser’s debut was somewhat spoiled by rogues at the Mint.

All nickels minted in 1913 were supposed to carry Fraser’s design of an Indian head on one side and a striking buffalo on the other. But in 1919 a coin collector named Samuel Brown placed an ad in a magazine seeking 1913 Liberty nickels. Brown said he would pay $600 a piece for them. Later that year, he appeared at a coin show with five such nickels bearing the date 1913.

No one ever discovered with certainty how the coins originated. But Brown was a clerk at the Philadelphia Mint in 1913. One theory suggests that he and a cadre of cronies intentionally coined a handful of 1913 Liberty nickels, knowing they would become rare and valuable coins. Apparently it was fairly common in the Mint’s early years for employees to engage in such trickery.

The coins have gained value ever since. In May 2004, a single 1913 Liberty nickel sold for $3 million.

Buffalo nickels were minted until 1938, when the design was replaced by Thomas Jefferson and his home, Monticello. Fraser’s creations occasionally turn up, but you can see a sample of his artwork at the Dakota Discovery Museum in Mitchell. The museum houses his larger-than-life plaster sculptures of Lewis and Clark that he created in 1923.