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Hyde County: Always Divided

By John Andrews

The first major story I wrote after joining South Dakota Magazine in the fall of 2007 was about the slow and steady loss of native prairie. Producers were digging into ground that had never seen a plow in order to plant corn and beans that would eventually be sold for incredible prices.

Ground Zero for native prairie loss was Hyde County. Bernie Hunhoff and I made the four-hour drive on a clear October morning. He walked around Highmore while I traveled another 30 miles north to Brady and Wendy Rinehart’s ranch. We rode cross-country in the Rineharts’ ranch truck and saw freshly turned ground, littered with huge rocks, while native prairie remained on the other side of a barbed wire fence.

The photo of that scene inspired the headline”Hyde County Divide,” but it wasn’t until long after the article was published that I learned that division has been a part of the county since its very beginning. Hyde County was first created in 1873 and named for territorial legislator James Hyde of Vermillion. Its borders were changed with passage of the Brown Bill in 1879. Lawmaker Alfred Brown of Hutchinson County sought to consolidate his county with Armstrong County and found considerable support for other consolidations throughout the territory. His bill essentially redrew the territorial map and gave many of our counties the shape we recognize today.

Division came when Governor Nehemiah Ordway, a notorious schemer, officially recognized the new Hyde County in 1883. When 150 people had established residence there, they petitioned Ordway to appoint three county commissioners to begin conducting business. Ordway, planning to benefit if the county seat was placed at Holabird, appointed L.E. Whitcher and John Falde from Holabird and A.E. Van Camp, owner of the Highmore town site. But then Ordway changed his mind and favored a town site 2 miles east of Holabird on land belonging to J.S. Harris. He expected his appointed commissioners would carry out his wishes, but he learned that Falde and Van Camp planned to vote for Highmore. Ordway responded by revoking Falde’s appointment in favor of George Dunham.

Gov. Nehemiah Ordway brought his scheming ways to Hyde County in 1883.

That led to the creation of two county commissions, each conducting business on opposite sides of Highmore. Whitcher and Dunham continued as Ordway’s puppets and were challenged by Falde and Van Camp. The Ordway group held an organizational meeting and passed a resolution calling Falde and Van Camp bogus commissioners. In the meantime, the Falde-Van Camp commission also met, organized a slate of county officers and passed their own resolution denouncing the Whitcher commission. The dueling boards eventually dissolved in September 1884. Whitcher and Van Camp then joined to form the first real Hyde County Commission.

When we visited in 2007, traces of another division were still evident. In 1882, Van Camp and rival businessman E.O. Parker each created his own business district in Highmore. Van Camp’s development was spread along Iowa Avenue, while Parker settled on Commercial. Most of Highmore’s businesses are still located on those two streets.”It is a challenge to have two main streets,” Mayor Vikki Day told us.”We’re too spread out for the number of stores and businesses we have, and it becomes a lot to keep up for a small city.”

The agricultural divide was clear. When we visited, South Dakota farmers were plowing 50,000 acres of native grassland every year. Over 7,300 acres had been lost in Hyde County alone from 2003 to 2007. Most ranchers we talked to were sorry to see the prairies disappearing, but understood the farmers’ motivations.

Hyde County was “ground zero” for native grassland loss.

To counter the loss, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has purchased easements protecting roughly 25,000 acres in Hyde County, and hundreds more East River landowners are on a waiting list. One such preserve south of Highmore is named for June Harter, a noted area conservationist. When she died in June 2002, the fate of the Harter family ranch fell to her four children. Three of them lived in California, but Richard had just returned to Highmore from Boston after a career in software. They decided to sell, but none of the siblings wanted the land plowed.”It didn’t take me long, once I got back here, to realize what they were doing to the prairies,” Richard told us.”We knew that this was grassland and we knew that it was good ranching country. To see it plowed up for nothing would have been a real offense to our family traditions.”

The Harters contacted representatives from the Fish and Wildlife Service, who soon discovered the land was a waterfowl hotbed. Instead of purchasing easements, the service bought 1,400 acres and created a waterfowl production area.

Richard Harter and his sisters turned their family ranch south of Highmore into a protected waterfowl production area.

Controversy hasn’t always reigned in Hyde County. Its citizens have a streak of light-heartedness. Before his death in 2012, Harter operated a quirky website called Richard Harter’s World, complete with editorials, jokes and witty exchanges with people all around the globe. Another enterprising publisher is Jerry Hinkle, founder of the Holabird Advocate, an online newsletter for the unorganized village west of Highmore. Hinkle launched the Advocate in 2002 and immediately tackled the controversial issue of nude dancing in Highmore. He contemplated a protest but relented. He explained why in an editorial.

“After careful consideration, I have come to the conclusion that Highmore will do what Highmore will do. … Hinkle was going to protest nude dancing by removing his own clothes at the establishment in question. Of course he said that when it was a whole lot warmer outside.”

Hinkle has moved to Mitchell, but he still posts periodically on a Facebook page.

Then there was this exchange when Bernie Hunhoff tried to track down John Zilverberg. Locals told him that Zilverberg was a national horseshoe champion. Bernie found him and his brother David, both in their 90s, playing pool at the senior center.

Jerry Hinkle: prairie publisher.

“I hear you’re a national horseshoe champion,” Bernie said to John.

“No.”

“You don’t throw horseshoes?”

“No.”

After a long, friendly silence, John admitted he had competed in the Senior Olympics.

“Did you throw horseshoes in the Senior Olympics?”

“No.”

“What did you do in the Senior Olympics?”

It turned out that he’d won 16 gold medals in a variety of events.

“But you don’t throw horseshoes?”

“No.”

Then, after another friendly silence, he tilted his head towards his brother and said,”He does.”

It took some work, but we discovered David had won the national championship several times over the previous decade. I’m sure the Zilverbergs enjoyed the chance to have a little fun with an out-of-towner. David passed away in 2010, but as of this writing John, age 102, is still competing in the Senior Games.

Hyde County also has its claim to fame. Two clever brothers from Ohio spent their summers in the 1890s with an uncle who lived just a few miles from Holabird. The uncle’s daughter, Clara, taught Sunday School, but when her cousins came to visit she turned the teaching over to them. They were more than qualified; their father was a bishop in the Church of the United Brethren in Christ.

The Wright brothers were summer visitors to Hyde County.

The brothers were intelligent and mechanically gifted. They took pleasure in tinkering and improving machines and in coming up with new inventions. Mildred France was barely a teenager when the boys started coming to South Dakota. She recalled their summertime visits in her diary, which was reprinted in the Hyde County history book.”With them, they carried their many models, which they delightfully showed and explained,” Mildred wrote, noting they had created versions of windmills, washing machines and churns.

“My young brothers would have cheerfully given their right arm to have had any one of those copper and brass models which the boys showed them,” she continued.”My brother came home so full of enthusiasm he went to work and built a windmill that would pump water from a large can sunken in the ground and flowed in a trough and back to the can from where it first started, less, what his little chickens would drink.”

The brothers had quite an influence on Holabird’s youth. It’s a sure bet, then, that the youngsters kept a close eye on the newspapers in December 1903, when Wilbur and Orville ó the Wright brothers ó made aviation history by successfully completing the first manned, powered flight at Kitty Hawk, N.C.

Imagine if that flight had been made over the grasslands of Hyde County? Surely its people would have been proud. Maybe others would have chided the new-fangled invention as a passing fad. That seems to be the way things have gone in a county with an affinity for division.

Editor’s Note: This is the 18th installment in an ongoing series featuring South Dakota’s 66 counties. Click here for previous articles.

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Between the Reservations

By John Andrews

Bennett County, sandwiched between the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Indian Reservations in southwest South Dakota, is the home of one of the country’s most noted Indian scholars. Visitors can still see his old haunts, and while they are there they can observe wildlife found in few other places in South Dakota or see our state’s version of the sandhills that Nebraska has made famous.

Vine Deloria, Jr., was born in Martin in 1933. Before his death in 2005, Time magazine had named him one of America’s greatest religious thinkers. His literary contributions included God is Red and Custer Died For Your Sins, leaving no doubt where the author stood regarding the history of Native and non-Native relations.

Martin greatly impacted Deloria’s thinking, as he wrote years later.”My earliest memories are of trips along dusty roads to Kyle, a small settlement in the heart of the reservation, to attend dances where people danced as if the intervening 50 years had been a lost weekend from which they had fully recovered,” he wrote.”The [Wounded Knee] massacre was vividly etched in the minds of the older reservation people but it was difficult to find anyone who wanted to talk about it.”

Vine Deloria, one of the most celebrated Indian scholars of the 20th century, grew up in Bennett County.

Deloria’s father was an Episcopalian preacher who served congregations in Allen, Porcupine, Vetal, Batesland, Wanblee and Tuthill. After attending reservation schools and serving in the Marine Corps, the young Deloria studied at Iowa State University. He earned a degree in theology at Lutheran Theological Seminary; but rather than follow in his footsteps as a pastor, he chose a path as an activist educator and writer. He was the executive director of the National Congress of American Indians in the 1960s, and during that period he wrote Custer Died For Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto. The book, published during the turbulent years when America was coming to grips with civil rights, challenged readers to reconsider cultural stereotypes, generalizations, patronization and even historical inclinations.

He earned a law degree from the University of Colorado and then taught at the University of Arizona in Tucson from 1978 to 1990, when he returned to Colorado to teach at Boulder until retiring in 2000. Along the way, he wrote and published 20 books and gained a reputation as a gifted orator and scholar.

The historic Inland Theater in Martin was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2013.

Fewer and fewer of Martin’s 1,000 residents remember the word warrior, but life continues here just as it did during Deloria’s childhood. Situated on Highway 18, Martin is part of the Oyate Trail, a 395-mile route through southern South Dakota that stretches from North Sioux City to Edgemont. Services are still held every Sunday at the church built by Father Deloria. The rectory where the Delorias lived is standing but vacant.

Zane and Dorene Zieman’s little bookstore on Main Street has a copy of Custer Died For Your Sins on the shelves. Down the street, the town library has four of Deloria’s books. Marsha Fyler, the library director, says they are popular.”Anything with a Native American theme is in demand here, especially his. The Native American population knows about him.”

Bennett County is young compared to its 65 counterparts. It was organized in 1909 and named for Granville Bennett, a justice of the Dakota Territory Supreme Court, delegate to Congress and probate judge in Lawrence County. The land, once belonging to the Oglala Sioux people, was ceded to the federal government and opened to settlement in 1912.

Waterfowl may not jump to mind when discussing Bennett County, but it is home to South Dakota’s only wildlife refuge west of the Missouri River. Lacreek National Wildlife Refuge was created in 1935 as a refuge and breeding ground for migratory birds and other animals. Since its establishment, the refuge has grown to encompass over 16,000 acres in the shallow Lake Creek valley 12 miles southeast of Martin. It helps sustain sandhill cranes, shorebirds and other migratory waterfowl, but its primary mission is to provide wintering habitat for trumpeter swans. The birds were hunted nearly to extinction in the 19th century because their feathers were in demand for quill pens. In 1960, 20 cygnets were released at Lacreek. They were the seed for the High Plains Flock of trumpeter swans that now includes about 600 birds. The best time to view the swans is October through March.

Trumpeter swans, once on the brink of extinction, have been successfully reintroduced at Lacreek National Wildlife Refuge.

Lacreek lies on the northern edge of the sandhills, a geologic formation that Nebraska has made famous but which begin in southern Bennett County. Just take Highway 73 south of Martin. You’ll pass by farms and fields, perhaps wondering if you’ve yet reached the beginning. You’ll know when you do. The switch from what locals call”the hardland” to the sandhills is literally a line in the sand. They can’t be missed.

Jim Buckles is a third generation rancher in the Bennett County sandhills.

“There’s nothing like it in the United States, except maybe very locally along barrier islands, a few hundred yards off the East Coast, and in southern California,” says Dr. Perry Rahn.”Certainly nothing to the extent that you find in Bennett County and on into Nebraska.”

Rahn, a retired professor from the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology in Rapid City, says the history of the sandhills dates back 2 million years to the Pleistocene, or Ice Age.”The glacier never got to Bennett County and western Nebraska, but the wind from that era might have blown away the topsoil and exposed the sand.”

Though the sandhills have been intensely studied over the past century, scientists remain uncertain of their origins. As the glaciers melted about 11,000 years ago, the dunes took shape. Some call them a”desert in disguise” because the geology is much like dunes found in hotter climates. However, thanks to an average rainfall of 15 inches a year, a thin cover of vegetation makes them look more like Ireland than Africa.

So Bennett County’s sandhills aren’t necessarily a desert, but the county does have the unusual distinction of being the farthest spot from a coastline in North America. Officially called the North American continental pole of inaccessibility, the spot is specifically 7 miles north of the town of Allen.

A group of college students share encouragement and wisdom with an instructor at Wingsprings.

Bennett County is also helping build bridges between Native and non-Native people. Ten years ago architect and anthropologist Dr. Craig Howe began building Wingsprings on his family’s land north of Martin. It is home to the Center for American Indian Research and Native Studies (CAIRNS). Rapid City native Eric Zimmer, a doctoral candidate in American History at the University of Iowa, says CAIRNS brings together a coalition of scholars, teachers and area residents to bridge the cultural and historical gaps separating Native and non-Native people in South Dakota.

“CAIRNS acknowledges the troubled history and current tensions between many Native and non-Native peoples,” says Zimmer.”It builds bridges through education and stands to improve not only the quality of life but to strengthen the common bonds that hold the diverse residents of this land together.”

If Vine Deloria could see it, he’d surely be proud of his home county.

Editor’s Note: This is the 17th installment in an ongoing series featuring South Dakota’s 66 counties. Click here for previous articles.

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A Mighty Fair County

By John Andrews

They call them”the best four days of summer.” The Turner County Fair brings tens of thousands of people to Parker every August, but there’s more to enjoy in this quaint county than prize-winning farm animals, carnival rides and meat on a stick. You can enjoy a celebration of Danish culture, see an impressive collection of fossils, watch nearly an entire town stage an elaborate theatre production or visit every one of the 158 stone bridges handcrafted during the Depression.

The fair is Turner County’s signature event. The first one was held in 1880, just nine years after the Dakota Territorial legislature created Turner County and named it for lawmaker John Turner. The annual ag expo moved from farm to farm around Parker and one year was moved to Swan Lake. The Works Progress Administration helped create the present fairgrounds during the Depression. There’s no admission to get in, but there’s all the livestock, food, music, rides and fun that you’ll find at any other fair.

Danish Days is another summertime celebration that draws huge crowds to Viborg. Originally celebrated June 5 to coincide with the Danish Independence Day, Danish Days is now held the third weekend in July. Methodist church ladies rise early to make aebleskiver for the town of 800. Legend credits Vikings with cooking the first batch of ball-shaped Danish pancakes. After a battle they noticed dents in their shields, so they filled them with batter and cooked them over a fire. In Viborg they’re eaten with powdered sugar or syrup.

With bellies full, people line Main Street for the parade and Danish dancing, performed by Sunday school children. Dancing has been a tradition in Viborg for decades. Youth practiced dancing once a month at the Lutheran parsonage during the Depression. Children also learned dances during summer Bible school, a tradition that continues today. They wear red, white and black Danish outfits that resemble those worn by Czech Beseda dancers at Tabor. Boys wear short pants, a white shirt and a tie, while girls don skirts, aprons, vests and caps.

Viborg’s citizenry dons colorful costumes to celebrate the town’s Danish heritage.

There’s more food after the parade at the Taste of Denmark, a buffet of Danish dishes. A main course is open-faced sandwiches.”In Denmark, they always used a slice of bread, usually rye bread, with cheese or ham,” says Susan Edelman, a member of the Danish Days committee.”And then they decorated them with pickles, tomatoes and cucumbers. That’s what we do.” There are Danish puffs, sweet soup served with cream or heavy milk and Êbblekage (apple cake).

Viborg is proud of its heritage, and that can be seen at the Daneville Heritage Museum. The museum’s exhibits explore Scandinavian art, 20th century politics, pioneer agriculture and storekeeping, murals by local artist Greg Preheim and other themes. Rich Skola, the museum director, says local support for the Daneville Heritage Museum has been so exceptional that, “We joke sometimes that the museum will be here long after the town.”

One of the main supporters was Alphie “Toots” Peterson, an avid historian who donated time, money and artifacts, including glassware and much of the stained glass in a recreated country chapel. Her husband, Merle, ran as a Democratic candidate for state legislature in the 1960s when Ralph Herseth and George McGovern were leading a resurgence of the party. She died two years ago, at age 94, leaving the museum some of her assets. She’s perhaps one reason why the Daneville museum has a 1960 poster of the Democratic ticket, with photos of Merle and McGovern and all the other candidates — along with a big poster of McGovern, plus an exhibit of Hubert H. Humphrey and other Democratic memorabilia.

A display in the Daneville Heritage Museum in Viborg remembers the town’s creamery.

For more colorful history visit Centerville, where notorious gangster John Dillinger and his cronies are said to have shot up a pan of perfectly good baked beans in the spring of 1934. Fred Mart had been out repairing a radio at a friend’s farm and it was nearly midnight before he returned to Centerville. He stopped at Bert Hart’s coffee house and card room known as the Bloody Bucket.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Bert told Fred. “Can you stay for awhile? I’ve got some characters in the back and I might need some help.” Bert added that a batch of his beans was just about ready.

He led Fred toward a back room where three men sat, rolling dice, with a pile of money between them. There was also a knife and “an awful big gun” on the floor.

Fred recognized one of the men as Mike Mee, owner of a local bank. Mee’s position was quite ironic considering the identities of the other two men. Years later, Bert told him who they were — Baby Face Nelson and John Dillinger.

Both greeted Fred then went back to their game. Mee and Baby Face Nelson were drinking near beer, spiked with something from another bottle, and they offered Fred one, which he accepted. He waited for Bert’s baked beans, sizzling and popping away in the wood cook stove in the corner, to finish.

After a time, Baby Face Nelson seemed to notice the stove for the first time and asked what was cooking.

“Beans,” Fred told him.

“Then he says, ‘Well let’s flavor them up!’ and he fired his gun right into the stove. Bang! Bang! Bang!” Fred recalls. “Of course, old Bert comes running from the front saying, ‘What happened? What happened?'”

Steam and smoke billowed from the punctured stove, bean juice flowed onto the floor and Bert was furious. Since it doesn’t pay to get angry at a man with a gun, though, there wasn’t much he could do. Of more immediate concern, to Fred at least, was what was in the stove.

Sherree Schmiedt with the collection of fossils that her husband, Stan, brought to Main Street of Centerville.

“I never did get anything to eat that night,” says Fred. “I decided I didn’t want any lead-flavored beans.”

With nothing left to stick around for, Fred decided to call it a night. As Dillinger let him out the back way, he reminded Fred that he had gone straight home that night. “I don’t know anything, I didn’t see anything,” Fred told him.

You can also investigate an impressive collection of fossils that longtime city leader Stan Schmiedt brought to Centerville several years ago. The items originally belonged to Alcester native Eugene Hoard, who spent years searching the Black Hills and Badlands for geological treasures. As his collection grew he tried to find a permanent home for it, but found no interest. Eventually it ended up in a storage shed in Centerville. Schmiedt heard about the collection and transferred the items to a museum on Main Street.

There are unique places to visit in Turner County’s other towns, as well. Two miles north of Marion you’ll find Ken’s, a small fishing hole that Ken Tieszen hoped to build for years. After his death, Marlo Wieman bought the land and fulfilled Ken’s dream. The lake is a popular destination for families.

Danish stonemason Lars Mogensen and his crew built 169 stone bridges, arches and culverts around Turner County during the Depression.

In Chancellor, visit the museum attached to the fire hall where you’ll find a vintage 1905 fire engine (its original pumper still works). Davis is home to about 85 people, and in March nearly every one of them helps to stage the annual Davis Winterstock theater production. The shows began in 1983 and each year they raise thousands of dollars for local charities.

In the countryside, watch for the stone bridges, arches and culverts that Lars Mogensen built during the Depression. Mogensen was a master stonemason who learned the trade in his native Denmark. He and his crew were employed under the New Deal’s make-work program creating 169 stone structures to replace the wooden bridges that were falling into disrepair. Today 158 still exist. Armed with a plate of aebleskiver and a Thermos of Danish coffee, that might be a good way to spend a day in Turner County.

Editor’s Note: This is the 16th installment in an ongoing series featuring South Dakota’s 66 counties. Click here for previous articles.

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Faulk County’s Heroes

By John Andrews

U.S. Highway 212 probably brings more travelers into Faulk County than any other road, but we might suggest the lesser-traveled state Highway 20. It’s named after Cecil Harris, a World War II legend who grew up a stone’s throw from its pavement. He’s just one of several heroes who have called Faulk County home — despite the roguish reputation of the county’s namesake.

Faulk County was created in 1873 and named for Andrew Faulk, third governor of Dakota Territory. Faulk was a native of Pennsylvania, where he studied law, edited a newspaper and became involved with the Democratic Party. He switched allegiances because of the slave issue and supported Abraham Lincoln in the 1860 presidential election.

Andrew Faulk, Faulk County’s namesake and third governor of Dakota Territory.

The following year, Lincoln appointed Walter Burleigh to be the Indian Agent for the Yankton Sioux in Dakota Territory. Burleigh used the position to line his own pockets and made graft a family affair. He appointed Faulk, his father-in-law, chief clerk of the Yankton Agency. Burleigh’s daughter was kept on the payroll as a teacher, even though there was no school on the reservation, and paid his 13-year-old son $80 a month as a clerk.

When Gov. Newton Edmunds investigated Burleigh’s tenure as Indian Agent, Burleigh brought his own fraud charges against Edmunds and asked President Andrew Johnson to replace the governor with Faulk. Johnson complied, and Faulk became governor in August 1866.

During his three years as governor, Faulk became increasingly interested in the potential wealth hidden in the Black Hills. Although his official position remained that the Hills belonged to the Lakota, he privately advocated opening the area to settlement.

After Faulk’s time as governor, he remained in Yankton, where he served as mayor and stayed involved in territorial politics, including the push toward statehood. He died in 1898.

Cresbard native Cecil Harris become one of the Navy’s most decorated pilots during World War II.

Fortunately Faulk’s reputation hasn’t influenced the Faulk County citizenry, including its famed Naval pilot. Harris grew up in Cresbard and was a student at Northern State Teachers’ College in Aberdeen in 1941. He joined the Navy before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and embarked upon a long and distinguished military career. His most memorable mission came on Oct. 12, 1944, when he shot down four enemy aircraft and saved two of his Fighting Squadron 18 teammates at Formosa. His heroics earned him the Silver Star. On two more occasions he shot down four enemy planes without taking a bullet. By November 25 he had earned a total of 24 and a new nickname — Speedball. After the war, Harris served as a teacher and high school principal in Cresbard. He returned to active duty during the Korean War and became a career Navy officer, retiring in 1967. He died in 1981 and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C. In 2009, the state renamed Highway 20 through Faulk County the Cecil Harris Memorial Highway.

Congressman Pickler’s home is known as the Pink Castle because of its unusual color.

The county’s seat and largest city is Faulkton, home to another politician whose political views are seen as heroic. Major John Pickler was a Civil War veteran who moved to Faulkton in 1882. He became South Dakota’s first Congressman upon statehood in 1889. While in Washington, he championed causes such as women’s rights, rural free delivery and fair treatment of Native Americans. Susan B. Anthony and Theodore Roosevelt were among the many famous guests to visit Pickler’s home, known locally as the Pink Castle because of its unusual color. Visitors can still tour the home today.

Another Faulkton hero was Abbie Ann Jarvis. She grew up in Faulkton and became frustrated because there was no doctor in town. Jarvis went away to medical school in Chicago and became a physician at age 38 so she could move home and help her neighbors. She was the first woman licensed as a physician in South Dakota. Over 30 years of service, she delivered 650 babies that came to be known as”Jarvis babies.”

An Early Start, painted by Charles Greener in 1913.

Faulkton was also home to one of South Dakota’s best-kept artistic secrets. Locals know Charles Greener well because many of them have an original Greener oil painting hanging on their wall. Outside of Faulk County, few people know about the landscape painter who captured Snake Creek, the Orient Hills and other local landmarks so realistically.

Greener was a Wisconsin native who moved with his family to Dakota Territory in 1883. The family settled in Faulkton after statehood, just before Greener went east to study art. He was back in Faulkton by the early 1900s, running a photo shop, helping in his family’s grocery store and painting on the side. He did murals for the Faulk County courthouse and a special commission for President Calvin Coolidge to commemorate his summer in the Black Hills. One of Greener’s untitled works hangs in the South Dakota Magazine office.

Faulkton’s historic carousel still offers rides on certain days. Photo by Mike Gussiaas

Summertime visitors to the Pink Castle or the courthouse might take a ride on Faulkton’s historic carousel. It was built in 1925 and has 19 of its original horses. Bob Ketterling bought the carousel at auction in 1981 and brought it to Faulkton. The city offers rides on Wednesday nights and weekend afternoons.

An unheralded Faulk County hero was Rosalia Schmidt, the matriarch of Onaka. When we last wrote about the tiny town in 2004, there were about 25 souls there. Schmidt was a storehouse of information about Onaka. When anyone had a question about the town’s history, she was the person to see. People like Schmidt are important to the fabric of small towns, especially those that are slowly unraveling. In the last decade, Onaka’s population has dwindled to 15. And the matriarch is no longer there. Schmidt passed away last summer at age 100.

Curtis and Shirley Wik turned a century-old grain elevator at Norbeck into a summer home. Photo by Bruce Selyem

You could call Curtis and Shirley Wik heroes for preserving a part of South Dakota history, but they probably wouldn’t have agreed. Their unique home at Norbeck — a renovated grain elevator built in 1900 — attracted hundreds of visitors and even appeared on HGTV. The elevator held the family’s wheat harvest when Wik was a child. In 1974, when he bought the homestead and inherited the elevator, he began using a portion of it to work on old tractors. Then he built a bathroom inside, and the idea of creating a summer home blossomed. Spiral staircases connected its five stories, and the third floor housed an antique soda fountain from Jones Drug Store in Miller.”Everybody knows a grain elevator is no good without a decent soda fountain!” Wik told us in 2005.

It seems heroes come in all shapes and sizes in Faulk County.

Editor’s Note: This is the 15th installment in an ongoing series featuring South Dakota’s 66 counties. Click here for previous articles.

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Tale of Two Paths

By John Andrews

You might know Gregory County because of its high school’s notorious mascot: the Gorillas. Or as the home of Elmer Karl, whose smiling face has appeared in advertisements for home appliances for over 50 years. But this county on the Missouri River — still affectionately described as part of Rosebud Country — is rich in history, culture and natural beauty.

Drivers from East River can cross into Gregory County via two main routes, and the area’s striking landscape is immediately evident no matter which is chosen. Highway 18 spans the Missouri River and Fort Randall Dam in the southern part of the county. The dam is named for historic Fort Randall, built in 1856 just below the present dam site. Fort Randall was an important link in a chain of forts protecting a trail along the Platte River and was the first in a line of forts stretching up the Missouri River. Soldiers stationed here were mostly charged with controlling the Lakota as homesteaders steadily trickled in from the East.

The remains of Fort Randall Chapel.

Fort Randall operated until 1892 but remnants still exist, include building foundations, a chalk rock chapel built in 1875 and the cemetery, where 138 soldiers, their wives and children were originally buried. Some bodies have been moved, but about 90 graves remain inside the white picket fence. A placard provides dates and causes of death — including disease, skirmishes with Indians and a lightning strike — for many who perished at Fort Randall.

Among the many soldiers stationed at Fort Randall included John Shaw Gregory, who worked as a trader for the Frost and Todd Trading Company. He was also a member of the territorial legislature in 1862, when Gregory County was created and named in his honor.

Just across the dam lies the Karl Mundt National Wildlife Refuge, home to one of the most important bald eagle roosts in the country. Between 100 and 300 bald eagles spend the winter there, fishing in the open waters of the Missouri River and roosting in the gnarled old cottonwoods. Birders are welcome, but the refuge itself is closed to visitors. A kiosk below the dam provides excellent eagle viewing.

Frank Day’s Bar caters to hunters in the fall.

All of Gregory County’s towns are situated along Highway 18. During the fall, that’s a well-traveled section of road because pheasant hunters descend upon the area. Local businesses like Louise’s CafÈ in Fairfax, or the TeePee CafÈ in Bonesteel offer hearty breakfasts and weekend specials to satisfy their hearty appetites. Guides, taxidermists and motel operators in those towns, plus Gregory, Herrick and Dallas are kept busy, as well.

Head north of Bonesteel to Whetstone Bay and search for prehistoric sea creatures on the banks of the Missouri River. Bonesteel’s Paul Neumiller has been hunting fossils since 1957. He’s discovered prehistoric lizards, elephants, mastodons and sea turtles that weighed two tons. He also found North America’s first hainosaurus — a giant sea lizard — in 2002.

Just beyond Bonesteel is the tiny community of St. Charles, where the Lakota culture remains alive and well. Gregory County was once part of the Great Sioux Reservation, which encompassed all of present-day West River South Dakota. The land was opened for settlement in 1904, but Lakota still live and work in the area. At Milk’s Camp, Marla Bull Bear leads a summer camp that was created a decade ago to combat a rash of youth suicides on the nearby Rosebud Reservation. Attendees learn about Lakota culture, music and traditions.

Attendees at Milk’s Camp learn hoop dancing under the guidance of Kevin Locke.

The next town along Highway 18 is Herrick. You can’t miss it because its bright red elevator has become a destination. Originally a working grain elevator, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places and has been renovated as a retreat center. The town also celebrates an annual Squeal Meal, which includes a pork barbecue, parade, dance and hog calling contest.

Burke is the county seat, but it’s known across South Dakota for the annual Stampede Rodeo. The event is really a community affair, with an expanded farmer’s market and a cattle drive down Main Street. The main event has all the hallmarks of a rodeo plus a singing contest and other special additions.

The largest town is Gregory, at just under 1,300 people. The citizenry loves Gorillas football games and a main street that features the flagship Karl’s store. For years the town held an Oscar Micheaux Festival to honor the African American filmmaker who originally homesteaded in Gregory County. On our most recent trip through Gregory, we stopped for a breakfast of eggs, homemade potatoes, toast and coffee at Sissy’s CafÈ and grabbed coffee at Dayspring Coffee Company.

The last town on 18 is Dallas, home to the iconic Frank Day’s Bar. When we visited 20 years ago, we found historic guns, hats, boots, saddles and photographs plastered to the walls inside the bar. Day, who has since passed away, was also a collector of stories, having recorded interviews with several old-timers. He told us the story of Tom McCrory, a rancher who had a hole in the palm of his hand”so big that you could see daylight through it,” Day said.”He claimed a bear had mauled him but another old-timer said the bear must have had a revolver.”

A cattle drive down Main Street of Burke precedes the summertime Stampede Rodeo.

If you enter Gregory County further north, you’ll cross the Missouri River on the Platte-Winner bridge. When workers built the bridge, the main stem dams had already been built on the river, so they had to build foundations in depths up to 180 feet. It was a lot of expense and work for a bridge that carries less than 1,000 vehicles a day, but few river crossings are as unspoiled and picturesque.

There are no towns in northern Gregory County, but it’s historic country nevertheless. The area around Lucas was headquarters for Jack Sully, a legendary cattle rustler who was gunned down by a posse in 1904. In the days of the open range, large cattle companies from southern states drove livestock into the Dakotas and allowed them to forage, leaving little for the cattle belonging to homesteaders. Many South Dakotans saw Sully’s antics as merely protecting their rights to their own land, but he found himself in jail on several occasions. He broke out of the Mitchell jail and evaded law enforcement until U.S. Marshals learned he had returned to his home in the Gregory County hills. They shot him as he tried to escape on horseback.

Sully’s antics are still the subject of debate, but that’s all part of the beauty and mystery of Gregory County.

Editor’s Note: This is the 14th installment in an ongoing series featuring South Dakota’s 66 counties. Click here for previous articles.

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Sacred Ground

By Katie Hunhoff

We thought we’d broached every possible topic in 30 years of publishing South Dakota Magazine, but we found an altogether new subject for our September/October issue. Where are the burial sites of the great Indian leaders of the 19th century?

Paul Higbee, a Spearfish writer, led our effort to find the graves. He also wrote about the history and tradition of Indian burials. We discovered that the graves generally lie in Christian cemeteries because many Lakota and Dakota people converted to Christianity. But elements of traditional religion were still practiced, including a”release of the soul” rite which occurs a year after death.

Indian country cemeteries don’t always have the manicured appearance that you might see in other communities. Sometimes the grass is long, the stones are leaning and the road is rutted. The difference is partly because traditional Native American culture calls for remembering the dead through ceremony, not at a physical place.

However, many of the Lakota and Dakota leaders’ graves are within sight of the Missouri River. And there is a feeling of reverence and solemnity at every site, no matter the height of the grass.

Sitting Bull’s grave, just west of Mobridge, is perhaps the most picturesque. A bust created by Crazy Horse sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski marks the site, which is high above the Missouri River.

The graves of Struck-by-the Ree, Iron Nation and Gall are also near the Missouri. Struck-by-the-Ree is buried south of Marty on the Yankton Sioux Reservation. Gall, a contemporary of Sitting Bull who fought with him at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, is also buried west of Mobridge.

Spotted Tail was a Sicangu leader famous for his wit. He complained on one occasion about the constant relocations of his community, telling authorities,”I think you had better put the Indians on wheels and then you can run them about wherever you wish.” His gravesite is near Rosebud.

Red Cloud’s grave is near the Red Cloud School, west of Pine Ridge. A Catholic church and a cultural center also share space on the beautiful campus built by Jesuit missionaries in the 1880s. Red Cloud led a deadly campaign to burn military posts, but he eventually realized that U.S. forces were too strong to overcome. After that, he accepted the reservation life while continually fighting federal efforts to reduce tribal lands.”Red Cloud lived to age 88, dying in 1909 when the Indian wars had been romanticized in American memory,” writes Higbee.”Yet his name still sent shivers down the spines of some elderly Army veterans.”

We also traveled to Manderson, home of the Lakota holy man Nicholas Black Elk. He is buried in the Catholic cemetery, across the highway from St. Agnes Church. A deeply rutted road leads to the fenced, hilltop cemetery. Waist-high prairie grasses make it difficult to find the simple black marker. Sage, a purifying herb in Lakota culture, grows atop the grave.

Higbee notes that only a few people know the story behind Crazy Horse’s burial. After he was fatally bayonetted at Camp Robinson in Nebraska, family members took the body.”Certain people are aware of his remains,” says Donovin Sprague, a descendent and author.”It’s a very guarded secret and no one would ever reveal anything.”

Check out the magazine article for more history, photos and directions to the graves. Higbee also offers tips on cemetery etiquette.

We know we missed the burial sites of some important Native American leaders. We’ll keep looking and learning. That’s the whole idea behind publishing South Dakota Magazine.

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When the Stars Align

By John Andrews

Some people are born in Grant County and stay there all their lives. For others, settling in this county in northeastern South Dakota is a matter of fate.

Such was the case with the Benedictine monks who established Blue Cloud Abbey near Marvin. St. Meinrad Abbey in Indiana wanted to establish a new monastery in the Dakotas, so they sent a team to scout for land. The men found a spot they liked along the Missouri River near Yankton, but WNAX’s tall radio towers east of town obstructed the view of the river valley. They decided to try North Dakota, but along the way they were taken with the rolling hills of the Coteau des Prairies and Whetstone River valley. The delegation stopped to inquire about available land, and the banker told them that a property had been listed for sale just 30 minutes earlier. They bought 300 acres at $22 an acre. The deal seemed too good to be true, but when they learned the banker’s name — Effner Benedict — they knew Grant County was the place for them.

Blue Cloud Abbey was a place of worship and reflection for more than 60 years.

Monks worked and prayed at Blue Cloud Abbey until its closure in the summer of 2012. The facility has since been reopened as Abbey of the Hills, an inn and retreat center that also includes an organic farm.

Who knows what other forces were at play when Clarence Justice responded to a”Help Wanted” ad in the Minneapolis Tribune. Justice, a regular reader of the paper, was working as a printer in Miller when he saw the ad seeking a printer to work at the Grant County Review in Milbank. He called and the publisher, Bill Dolan, hired him over the phone without even asking his name (a small oversight in the world of journalism).

The Grant County Review remained in the same family for a century. Phyllis and Clarence Justice published the newspaper for several of those decades.

Justice went to work at the Review in 1952 and three years later, he and the publisher’s daughter, Phyllis, were married. They ran the paper together for more than 50 years, becoming South Dakota’s First Couple of newspapering.

Grant County was officially created in 1873 and organized five years later. It’s named after President Ulysses S. Grant. Among the county’s early settlers was Henry Holland, an immigrant from England. Holland built a 44-foot-tall windmill to grind wheat for local farmers. The mill was abandoned and moved to the city park in 1912. It was moved again in 1978 and underwent a total restoration in the early 2000s. Holland’s Mill remains a landmark along Highway 12 on the west side of Milbank.

Holland’s Mill is a Grant County landmark along Highway 12.

With 3,300 people, Milbank is the Grant County seat. It’s also known nationally for Legion baseball and high quality granite. American Legion baseball has its roots in Milbank. The program started there in July of 1925 when a group of World War I veterans thought American boys were losing interest in the national pastime. Tens of thousands of teenagers play Legion ball across the country today.

Milbank’s granite caught the eye of designers as they created the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, D.C., in the 1990s. More than 200 truckloads were hauled halfway across the country during construction. The granite around Milbank is thought to be 4 billion years old. It’s popular because of its high quartz content, which accounts for its hardness and light red color.

The Muskegon is dry docked in a local museum.

Several other small towns are scattered throughout Grant County. Big Stone City lies on the southern shore of Big Stone Lake, which serves as the very northeastern border of the county. The lake is a popular recreation spot, but it was also the site of South Dakota’s worst nautical tragedy.

An excursion boat called the Muskegon departed for a pleasure cruise in July of 1917 and never returned. A tornadic storm caused it to capsize, killing seven of the nine people aboard. The boat was pulled shore and eventually resurrected as The Golden Bantam, which plied the waters of Big Stone Lake for another 30 years. In 1960, the boat was placed in dry dock north of Big Stone City and was used as a lake cabin. In 1985, it was donated to the Big Stone County Historical Society and Museum just across the state line in Ortonville, Minn., where it remains today.

Just west of Milbank, Twin Brooks is known for its big annual threshing show the second weekend in August. But there’s also a unique restaurant in town called the Bird Feeder. Carol Kilde runs the cafÈ in the back of the town’s post office. It’s open May through December and there’s no menu. You choose your meal when you call for reservations.

Several years ago, while driving through Stockholm, we met Steve Misener on Main Street. Misener began tuning pianos more than 30 years ago and became an avid collector. His shop holds about 75 pianos and boxes stuffed with parts. Misener often exhibits his collection around northeastern South Dakota.

Steve Misener’s shop in Stockholm holds many piano treasures.

Misener told us he worried about the future of music because younger generations seem to be occupied with other things. But music seems to be in the blood of Delaney Johnston, who released her first country music CD before reaching middle school.

The youngster from Summit got her break when renowned South Dakota singer Sherwin Linton was performing at a benefit concert in LaBolt. Johnston requested that Linton sing Johnny Cash’s”Jackson” for her grandmother. Linton asked if Johnston would like to sing along, and she agreed. Linton recognized that she had talent and helped produce her CD. Now Johnston balances summertime performance at county fairs along with being a kid.

Who knows if young Delaney will stay, but Grant County is richer because of her and others — natives and transplants — who chose to make a home in the county on the Coteau.

Editor’s Note: This is the 13th installment in an ongoing series featuring South Dakota’s 66 counties. Click here for previous articles.

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Before the Oasis

By John Andrews

It seems that whenever East River friends plan a trip to the Black Hills, they are obliged to take a break from the I-90 monotony at Al’s Oasis in Oacoma. Al’s is a historic business that we’ll write more about when this series gets to Lyman County. But travelers could just as easily stop at Chamberlain, on the east side of the Missouri River. Or Kimball. Or Pukwana. In fact, you could spend a few hours exploring Brule County, home to lawnmower races, popcorn balls and biological and geological diversity found in few other places.

Let’s start in Kimball, the first city you reach on eastbound I-90. Most South Dakotans might know the place as home to the Original Kimball Popcorn Ball, which humbly began in a local gas station. Over the years, they got more and more requests to mail the balls out of town. After a lot of research, David Olson and his partners in popcorn, business owners Eric Pulse, Lee Pulse and Scott Handel, decided to take the risk. In August of 2009, they sold their first popcorn balls from their new factory, a small building that was once a convenience store.

Kimball’s popcorn balls began humbly, but are now sold throughout the Midwest.

Because of the company’s size, production is done on a relatively small scale, with plenty of human involvement. They pop corn daily in a 48-ounce popper, averaging 50-60 batches a day. Each batch makes 47 or 48 balls. The marshmallow slurry used to bind the balls doesn’t pour easily into a hopper, so workers load the factory’s popcorn ball machine by hand to create 4-ounce popcorn balls that are sold in stores throughout South Dakota and several other states.

The residents of Kimball also eat well at the Back Forty, a coffee house, restaurant and bar where Keke Leiferman gives traditional sandwiches a gourmet twist. You can also explore the South Dakota Tractor Museum, a campus that includes old machinery and other pioneer tools.

Keke Leiferman serves sandwiches and other treats at the Back 40.

About 10 miles further west on the north side of the interstate is Pukwana, famous for its lawnmower races held every other Saturday night during the summer. The races got their start more than 10 years ago, when locals watched a lawnmower competition on ESPN. They laid out a track next to the Puk-U Bar and Grill, added bleachers and hay bales and had their own race.

Mowers are divided into three classes: stock, modified and outlaw. Races draw dozens of drivers and hundreds of spectators to Pukwana from May to September.

Take a break from I-90 and head south out of Pukwana on Highway 50 to the Bijou Hills. Capped with quartzite and containing unique fossils and fauna, the hills have been explored by biologists, archaeologists and naturalists. The hills jut 400 feet above surrounding corn and hay fields. Cattle keep the grass low, showing some of the quartzite exposed 10,000 years ago by melting snow from the last glacier.

Every other Saturday night during summer is lawnmower racing night in Pukwana.

Tens of centuries later, the towns of Granville, Eagle and Bijou Hills were started below the hills. Now, only the latter survives. Bijou Hills had just three residents when we visited in 2007 — Wayne and Pat Surat and Wayne’s mother, Ruth.”Somebody will drive by here in 40 years and it will be a cornfield,” said Wayne.”I’m not saying it’s good or bad. It’s just the way it is.”

Two hundred years ago, the hills were on a route for migratory buffalo. Because of them, the Dakota Indians also became frequent visitors, building ceremonial pillars on the hilltops and fashioning arrows and other tools from the quartzite.

White explorers were attracted to the prairie promontories, beginning with French traders and continuing with Lewis and Clark, John Fremont and artist George Catlin, who collected stone samples and was enthralled by the area’s antelope, buffalo and prairie dogs in 1832.

Catlin called the hills by their current name, which has been traced to French fur trader Louis Bissonet, known in his native St. Louis as”Mr. Bijou.” Bissonet operated a post by the river in 1812 and traded with the Dakota Indians and white trappers.

The Bijou Hills are a geologic and social curiosity in southern Brule County.

In the 1880s, homesteaders moved in. Their farmsteads soon circled the base of the hills, but even so, all the towns but Bijou Hills quickly declined.

Natural disasters included the usual grasshopper plagues, fires and tornadoes. A gravestone in the nearby Union Cemetery memorializes the destruction of May 27, 1899, when a twister struck the Peterson farmstead, killing the father and six of his eight children. Neighbors rushed to the scene and found Mrs. Peterson in a muddy field, dazed and badly injured. At first sight, they thought she was an animal of some sort. Eleven-year-old Earl was found a half-mile away, also alive but pinned in mud by a stick that had driven through his clothing. Another son, Alvah, had ducked in the storm cellar and survived the storm while crouched in the dark hole with a big bull snake.

Another search had a sad ending. Harvey Burr disappeared from his farm near town in November of 1951. His bloodied body was found days later in a haystack. Burr’s murderer, a young man from Mitchell, was a distant relative who had kidnapped and raped a country schoolteacher, and then abducted and killed Burr and wrote checks on his bank account. Though it happened over 60 years ago, old timers in the hills remember every detail.

Red Lake was designated a National Natural Landmark because of its waterfowl habitat.

The Bijou Hills have the distinction of being one of 13 sites in South Dakota that have been designated National Natural Landmarks. The federal program highlights places that feature unique biological and geological diversity. Another landmark — Red Lake — can be found in Brule County just south of Pukwana. The shallow pond was added to the list because of its waterfowl nesting and breeding areas.

Head back to the interstate and drive west into Chamberlain, a city that has embraced its proximity to the Missouri River with summertime speedboat races. You’ll also find the South Dakota Hall of Fame not far from the river. The Hall was established in 1974 and for years was housed in an old log cabin in Fort Pierre. The grand museum in Chamberlain was finished in 2000. More than 500 South Dakotans have been enshrined.

The Akta Lakota Museum houses art and artifacts celebrating Lakota culture.

Another unique repository of culture is the Akta Lakota Museum, and arm of the nearby St. Joseph’s Indian School. The museum’s collection features art, artifacts and educational displays that depict the heritage of the Lakota people. Though Brule County contains no reservation land, the Crow Creek Reservation lies just across the border to the north and the Lower Brule Reservation is across the river to the northwest. Upon its creation in 1875, the county was named for the Brule, or Burned Thigh, band of Teton Sioux.

Now that your exploration of Brule County is over, you can cross the river on the historic Chamberlain Bridge, originally finished in 1925 to carry traffic on old Highway 16. When the new Fort Randall Dam created Lake Francis Case in 1953, the old Wheeler Bridge was floated upriver and the two were joined to span the wide, new lake. A more modern bridge a mile to the south follows the main path of Interstate 90.

You can still stop at Al’s Oasis, just across the river. No trip across South Dakota would be complete without it. Maybe you can talk about the things you found in Brule County over a cup of coffee. I hear it’s good and cheap.

Editor’s Note: This is the 12th installment in an ongoing series featuring South Dakota’s 66 counties. Click here for previous articles.

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Land of the Burnt Thigh

By John Andrews

In late August we drove from Yankton to Pine Ridge on Highway 18 to collect stories for an upcoming issue. As we passed through the pine forested hills and ravines of the Little White River valley, I was reminded that this area is one of South Dakota’s hidden gems. The region is known locally as the Little Black Hills, and was our Todd County selection in our July/August 2011 feature on places to visit in every county. It’s beautiful from the highway, but even better views are found by kayaking the Little White River, particularly the 25-mile stretch between 18 and the Spring Creek Day School, or by driving BIA Route 5.

Todd County is rich in Lakota culture because the Rosebud Indian Reservation, home to the Sicangu (Burnt Thigh Nation) people, lies completely within its borders. The Rosebud was created in 1889, when the Great Sioux Reservation — which encompassed all of present day South Dakota west of the Missouri River — was parceled into the reservations we know today.

Architecture true to Lakota culture accentuates Sinte Gleska University’s campus.

The county’s largest town is Mission, where Sinte Gleska University provides an education rooted in both the Western and Lakota worlds. Lionel Bordeaux, who grew up not far from the campus, leads the college. He attended high school at the St. Francis Indian Mission, then enrolled at Black Hills Teachers College in Spearfish. He had a job with the Bureau of Indian Affairs and was enrolled in a Ph.D. program at the University of Minnesota when he got a phone call from Stanley Red Bird, Sr., considered the founder of Sinte Gleska College.

He said they were searching for a president to lead the newly formed school and that Bordeaux’s name had come through from the Spirit World. Red Bird told Bordeaux to resign his position with the BIA and that he was not to continue at Minnesota. Bordeaux talked with his wife and they returned to Mission, where he was inaugurated President of the college in 1973, just before his 33rd birthday. He’s one of the country’s longest-serving college presidents.

Sinte Gleska is named for Spotted Tail, one of the most revered Sicangu leaders. He proved himself an able warrior in his younger days, though eventually he grew to believe that resisting the advance of white settlers was futile, and sought ways to benefit his people who had been relegated to reservation life. He was killed by a rival, Crow Dog, in 1881. His gravesite, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is in the Episcopal Cemetery at Rosebud.

A vision brought Lionel Bordeaux back to Mission, where he’s led Sinte Gleska University for more than 40 years..

Lakota Studies is an important part of SGU’s curriculum, and for years Albert White Hat, one of the country’s leading preservers of the Lakota language, led it. He was raised at Spring Creek, a small community of five or six families on the Rosebud. Children learned Lakota ways, and spent winter evenings listening to storytellers explain Lakota history, culture and spirituality using the Lakota language. But in the early 1950s the tribe adopted the state’s education standards, which said nothing about Lakota studies. When his children started school in the Todd County district in the late 1960s, White Hat lobbied for a Lakota language and history program.”They really gave me a bad time,” he told us in 2009.”None of them would accept it. They laughed at me. Finally in 1970, they said, ‘You can have a half an hour during noon hour to play your tape and dance.'”

Albert White Hat (left) and Duane Hollow Horn Bear helped preserve Lakota language and culture at SGU.

Soon White Hat was teaching Lakota studies part time at St. Francis and Sinte Gleska University, even though he knew little about teaching. He had no books and learned how to formulate lesson plans from colleagues. The university hired him full time in 1983.

White Hat worked on standardizing Lakota, but he encountered problems in the 1990s as he worked on his textbook, Reading and Writing the Lakota Language. White Hat and Jael Kampfe, a Montana native studying at Yale University, began the project in 1992. Kampfe recorded White Hat’s classes. Then they transcribed and edited them into a 226-page book. He sent the manuscript to three linguists and a host of schools and publishers who offered mixed reviews.

“The language has developed what they call a subculture,” he said.”Historians and anthropologists use the modern translations, and my work contradicts that. They didn’t want that printed.” One major university press told White Hat that,”folk etymology and oral history are fine, but they’re not recorded so this shouldn’t be printed.” The University of Utah Press finally published his book in 1999 and it remains widely used, a fitting tribute to White Hat, who died in 2013.

Girls at Mission’s North Elementary (from left) Shanelle Eagle Star, Bailey Horse Looking, Hapun McCluskey and Olivia Leading Cloud made dancing shawls.

Todd County was created in 1909 and named for John B.S. Todd, a native of Kentucky and cousin to First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln. Todd had a long military career that included service in the Mexican War before he resigned in 1856. He moved to Fort Randall and became a trader engaging with Indian tribes west of the Missouri River. Todd started a law practice in Yankton in 1861, but with the outbreak of the Civil War he was commissioned as a brigadier general. He led North Missouri district until the end of 1861. He again resigned from the military in 1862 and moved back to Dakota. He represented Dakota Territory in Congress in the 1860s and also served in the territorial House of Representatives. Todd died in 1872.

Jesuit missionaries played an important role in the evolution of the area. They established the St. Francis Mission in the 1880s, and today it’s an important destination for those wanting to study Lakota culture. The Buechel Memorial Lakota Museum in St. Francis contains over 2,000 items in its ethnographic collection and more than 42,000 photos. The museum is named after Father Eugene Buechel, S.J., a noted missionary, linguist and ethnologist who came to St. Francis in 1902.

Respected Sicangu leader Spotted Tail’s gravesite can be found in the Episcopal Cemetery near Rosebud.

Another place to visit in St. Francis is St. Charles Borromeo Parish, painted bright lavender by children attending a camp there in 2005. The church has 24 stained glass windows that depict the life of Christ.

Todd County also has a few famous sons. Ben Reifel was born at Parmelee in 1906, attended South Dakota State College and Harvard University and became the first Lakota to serve in Congress when he was elected in South Dakota’s First District in 1960. He served in Washington, D.C., for 10 years.

Jim Abourezk, who served in the U.S. House and Senate during the 1970s, was born just across the county line in Wood, but his uncles Tom and Chick ran a general store in Mission for 30 years. It’s still referred to locally as”Abourooski’s.”

And longtime television game show host Bob Barker spent his childhood on the Rosebud, where his mother Tillie taught school. In his memoir, Barker has fond memories of swimming in Antelope Crick (not Creek). He didn’t write anything about the Little Black Hills, but maybe some places are better kept secret.

Editor’s Note: This is the 11th installment in an ongoing series featuring South Dakota’s 66 counties. Click here for previous articles.

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Of Birds and Baseball

By John Andrews

What comes to mind when you’re asked to think about South Dakota? Two images rise to the top of my list: the iconic ring-necked pheasant and amateur baseball on a summer night, and it seems that no where in South Dakota are these more ingrained in the local culture than in Spink County.

Many other cities in South Dakota call themselves”The Pheasant Capitol of the World,” but Redfield has claimed the title since June of 1908. That’s when a group of city leaders acquired three pairs of pheasants from Grants Pass, Oregon, and released them in Hagmann’s Grove, just north of Redfield. The newcomers seemed to do well in Spink County, and in 1919 the first one-day open season on roosters was held. Pheasants have since become the state bird and have transformed the state’s outdoor tourism industry. Thousands of resident and non-resident hunters will roam the fields when pheasant season opens on the third Saturday of October.

The national pastime has also been an important part of life in Spink County, and affects those who are only tangentially connected to the area. ESPN.com writer David Schoenfield wrote a tribute to baseball in Redfield that appeared in our May/June issue. Schoenfield’s father grew up in Redfield, and later brought his wife and children back to his hometown. Among the memories that still stand out for Schoenfield are baseball games on Redfield’s emerald green diamond.

Pheasants were introduced near Redfield in 1908. Now they come in fiberglass.

His article prompted a reader to share the memories he has of watching Redfield win the state amateur baseball championship on its home turf in 1954. Redfield had amassed an early 10-0 lead, but Aberdeen slowly chipped away until it was 10-9 in the ninth inning. Aberdeen had the bases loaded with their most feared hitter, Blackie Engelhart, coming to bat. With one out, Engelhart crushed a ball that seemed destined to be a grand slam, but Redfield’s center fielder leaped and caught it before it sailed over the fence. Then he wheeled around and fired the ball to the second baseman for a double play (the runners had been certain Engelhart would at least have a base hit, and took off running as the ball soared into the outfield).

Redfield is the hub of activity in Spink County.

Spink County was also the site of a unique baseball battle in 1920. Redfield had secured a professional team, but because the Congregational church owned the field and grandstand, no games were allowed on Sundays. Ten miles south in Tulare, Mike Anderson, editor of the town newspaper and manager of the Tulare baseball team, invited the Redfield squad to play its games there, provided Redfield would finance the cost of a new grandstand.

Both towns agreed, the grandstand was constructed in record time and games began. That’s when the Methodists of Tulare began to suspect something might be amiss. They thought the charging of admission on Sunday might violate one of South Dakota’s”blue laws.”

Six Methodist church members agreed to attend a Sunday game. Once they had purchased tickets, they filed a statement at the courthouse in Redfield. The judge ultimately ruled that Sunday baseball could continue, and admission could be charged, provided a separate area was maintained for those who wished to watch the games for free.

Chief Drifting Goose was a thorn in the side to Spink County’s early settlers.

Spink County has even produced a Major League Baseball player. Deacon Phillippe grew up learning to play baseball in the small town of Athol. As a member of the Pittsburgh Pirates, Phillippe defeated Cy Young in the first World Series game ever played in 1903. He won 189 games in a 13-year career that began when he was 27.

Long before the days of pheasants and baseball, the settlers who trickled into Spink County as early as the 1850s had to contend with the notorious Chief Drifting Goose. His Hunkpati band of Yanktonai was headquartered at Armadale, an island in the James River four miles northeast of Mellette. He’s remembered as a peace-loving leader who preferred pranking homesteaders to violence. Legend says he once stole the clothes from a settler and then made him run back to his sod shanty naked. When railroad surveyors marked a line through his encampment, he moved the stakes. Eventually the rail was routed through Northville, a more respectful 10 miles west of Drifting Goose’s camp.

Locals tell Drifting Goose stories with a chuckle, but they also respect the leader who never signed a treaty and, in his mind, never ceded any land. Historians have named a bridge that spans the James River on Highway 20 after Drifting Goose.

Redfield’s Carnegie Library is the oldest of its kind in South Dakota that has been continually used as a library.

Of course, the colorful leader’s tricks couldn’t stop the eventual settlement and organization of Spink County, created by the territorial legislature in 1873. The area was named for Solomon Lewis Spink, a New York native who worked in law and journalism before President Abraham Lincoln appointed him secretary of Dakota Territory in 1864. He also served in Congress and practiced law in Yankton until his death in 1881.

Several towns emerged along rail lines that passed through Spink County. The largest is Redfield (pop. 2,385), where the state legislature placed the Northern Hospital for the Insane in 1902. Called the South Dakota Developmental Center, the facility still cares for roughly 145 people with disabilities. Redfield is also home to the state’s oldest continually used Carnegie Library. Built in 1902, the red brick building with a sandstone foundation and domed cupola stands at 5 E. Fifth Ave.

Hubert Humphrey as a boy in Doland.

Fisher Grove State Park, east of Redfield near Frankfort, straddles the James River. It’s where the old Watertown-Pierre stage line crossed for the first time using a traditional rock crossing used by Native Americans. Further east on Highway 212 you’ll find Doland, the hometown of Hubert Humphrey, vice president of the United States under Lyndon Johnson from 1965 to 1969.

Follow Highway 37 north of Doland to Turton, (pop. 49) home of the Frogs. The tiny town still holds a Frogtown Festival every June, even though the Jim River is 15 miles away and the closest stream is called Dry Run. The pillar of Turton is the St. Joseph Catholic Church, where St. John the Baptist’s birthday is celebrated in June. The tradition dates to 1899, making it one of the nation’s oldest birthday parties for a saint (besides St. Patrick and St. Nick).

Five generations of Glenn Overby’s family have grown wheat in Spink County.

Spink County covers 1,500 square miles, and much of it is ideal wheat growing country. Farms are plentiful and elevators dot the horizon, especially along Highway 20 through Conde, Brentford, Mellette and Northville in the northern third of the county. The South Dakota Wheatgrowers’ Co-op at Mellette can store 5.5 million bushels, but chances are good you’ll see the overflow of this year’s harvest piled outdoors.

Several years ago we visited the Glenn Overby farm near Mellette. Glenn’s father, John, was a self-taught agronomist who developed his own varieties of wheat: Marvel Wheat and Spinkcota. You can see an exhibit about John Overby and his other inventions at the South Dakota Agricultural Heritage Museum in Brookings.

Wheat farming requires long hours, but we noticed this summer while attending the state amateur baseball tournament in Mitchell that the Northville team’s roster included A.J. Overby, the fifth generation of Overbys to work the Spink County land. That means there’s still time for baseball, and probably pheasants in October, too.

Editor’s Note: This is the 10th installment in an ongoing series featuring South Dakota’s 66 counties. Click here for previous articles.