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Too Many Counties?

By John Andrews

South Dakota’s 66 counties have been arranged like this since 1983.

Does South Dakota have too many counties? It’s a long-discussed topic that resurfaced at Augustana College’s annual Dakota Conference in April. Bill Peterson, a former legislator from Sioux Falls, discussed the county consolidation proposal he brought to the legislature in 1998. It would have required South Dakota reorganize into no fewer than 15 counties and no more than 30 by 2005. Despite touting its cost savings — something that generally catches the attention of frugal South Dakotans — the plan got very little traction.

Neither did a joint resolution that appeared before the legislature in 2009. It would have placed a constitutional amendment on 2010 general election ballot to limit counties to 25,000 people or 5,000 square miles, whichever was less.

Peterson and his co-presenter, Joe Kirby, cited the dramatic population shift from rural to urban areas of South Dakota. It’s been happening for decades and it’s very likely to continue, meaning some form of reorganization is probably inevitable. Yet here we are in 2015 with the same patchwork of 66 counties that we’ve known since 1983, when Washabaugh County was absorbed into Jackson County and became South Dakota’s last county to be eliminated.

A few years ago, we embarked on a search to find one interesting spot in every county that we thought people might like to see. After our”66 counties tour” feature appeared in the magazine, several readers wrote to tell us that they had set out on their own South Dakota road trips, magazine in hand, to see the places we’d written about.

There are fun and interesting things to be found in each county, so while we still have all 66, let’s celebrate them. Beginning today, and continuing every two weeks, we’ll pick one South Dakota county and write about the unique facts and places that we’ve discovered in our travels there. As always, we encourage additions to our reports. Please leave a comment if you’re a resident, a South Dakota native reading from afar or anyone with an interest in the featured county.

Our first installment features Bon Homme County, officially organized in 1862. Its recorded history reaches back to the Lewis and Clark Expedition, which floated into the area in the late summer of 1804. The explorers noted in their journals passing a large island in the Missouri River called Bon Homme Island. The exact origins of the name are unclear, but some speculate that a Frenchman lived on the island and was considered a good man (“bon homme” in French) to local Indians, who bestowed that title upon the land.

The area’s earliest settlers relied on the fur trade for their livelihoods. The first trading post in the county was opened by Emanuel Disaul in 1815 at the mouth of Emanuel Creek west of Springfield. Zephyr Rencontre built a station on Bon Homme Island in 1828.

The county was effectively opened to non-Indian settlement after an 1858 treaty that required the Yankton Sioux Indians to relocate west of Chouteau Creek, just beyond the present county’s western boundary. John Shober and several families from Minnesota arrived in 1858, just before the treaty was signed. Soldiers from nearby Fort Randall, charged with keeping trespassers off Indian lands, disassembled their log homes and threw them into the river. They returned in 1859 and began a more permanent settlement.

Shober and his party are credited with establishing the first schoolhouse in what would be Dakota Territory. Ten students enrolled in the spring of 1860 under the tutelage of Emma Bradford. The original school building has disappeared, but a replica still stands a few miles east of Springfield.

A replica of the first schoolhouse in Dakota Territory stands near the Missouri River in Bon Homme County.

Bon Homme County’s land appealed to settlers from across the ocean, as well. Hutterites, long oppressed in Europe, sent scouts to Dakota Territory in the early 1870s, looking for a place to establish a colony. They liked what they saw along the banks of the Missouri River and bought 2,500 acres of land in 1874 from notorious Indian agent Walter Burleigh. Bon Homme Colony became the first Hutterite colony in North America, and has been continuously occupied ever since.

Bon Homme County is the resting place of six unknown soldiers belonging to George Custer’s Seventh Cavalry. The men were camped along Snatch Creek in May of 1873 when several soldiers contracted typhoid fever. Seven men — six unknown and one identified — were buried along the banks of the creek. Later they were moved to the Bon Homme Cemetery, where a large stone marks their burial place.

Veronica Sanders helps prepare kolaches at the Tyndall Bakery.

Every county most likely has a skeleton in its closet, and Bon Homme is no different. The first tumbleweed ever reported in North America was found near Scotland in 1877. Its origins were probably in a shipment of flax seed from Ukraine.

Today just over 7,000 people live on farms and in Bon Homme County’s five towns — Avon, Scotland, Tyndall, Springfield and Tabor. Immigrants from Czechoslovakia settled around Tabor beginning in 1869, and their culture is still evident at Czech Days, the town’s annual June festival. If you don’t make it to Czech Days, you can still buy kolaches — a traditional fruit-filled Czech dessert — at bakeries in Tabor and Tyndall.

Tyndall, the county seat, boasts a miniature replica of the Eiffel Tower on the courthouse lawn. County commissioners voted to erect the tower as a memorial to South Dakotans who fought during the Spanish-American War.

Tyndall’s miniature Eiffel Tower.

On our most recent trip through Scotland, we met Victor Settje, who is carefully dismantling St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, built in 1886. He’s hoping to find new uses for every board, including the old wooden cross.

The town’s VFW Hall boasts a new 5-by-10-foot painting by Menno airbrush artist Mickey Harris that honors a local World War II veteran. Leon Woehl was aboard a B-17 that crashed in Germany in 1944. Harris’ painting depicts the crash and the Nazi soldiers looking for Woehl and the eight other crewmembers who hid in the woods until their capture.

Springfield sits right on the Missouri River, so it makes sense that Greg Stockholm is in the midst of crafting a 68-foot boat. You can see the work in progress outside his shop at 811 College St.

Avon is the hometown of Sen. George McGovern, whose father served the Methodist church in town before moving his family to Mitchell. The museum includes memorabilia from the McGoverns.

The history, the river and the ethnic traditions all make Bon Homme County fun to explore, especially if you enjoy the kolaches and ignore the tumbleweeds.

Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of articles featuring South Dakota’s 66 counties. Click here to read other installments.

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Autumn Mysteries

By Katie Hunhoff

South Dakotans are no-nonsense folks, so we always struggle to find supernatural tales for our October issues. But we have heard a few through the years. One of my favorite spooky stories, published in our September/October 2014 issue, is about a mysterious bright, white light in Miner County that appears out of nowhere. Locals call it the spooklight. It can be seen along a particular stretch of dirt road between Carthage and Fedora. The story’s author, Donna Palmlund, talked to family and neighbors to get their spooklight accounts.

Palmlund’s father grew up on a farm west of Spooklight Road. His grandfather would say that sometimes the spooklight was so bright they could sit inside and read by it. After the Hass family moved off the farm a man named Joe Spader lived there. “After I moved to that farm it wasn’t long before I was aware of this light that was very peculiar,” Spader said. He described the light as looking like a bright spotlight cresting a hill and then going down the hill, but a car would never materialize. Before he heard about the spooklight, he was worried someone was trying to steal something.

Another mysterious light has been seen in southeast South Dakota, looking over Nebraska’s Crazy Peak, which rises above the chalkstone bluffs on the Nebraska side of the Missouri. Sometimes the view gives South Dakotans an unexplainable light show. “I’ve seen all sorts of UFOs there in the past,” said Carvel Cooley, a longtime local historian. “It’s just lights. They don’t make any noise and they can stop, start, zap out of sight, disappear and reappear.” Although a lot of locals have seen the lights, most don’t talk about it. Some give credit for the lights to swamp gas. Others bring up the Santee Sioux legends of seeing “little people” in the neighborhood of Crazy Peak.

Another well-known eerie South Dakota spot is Sica Hollow in Roberts County. Reports of strange voices, lights flashing in creek bottoms and bubbling red bogs along the “Trail of Spirits” make Sica Hollow a spooky place to visit any time of year. Its first Indian inhabitants dubbed the forested area”sica,” meaning bad or evil.

We visited with Chris Hull a couple of years ago. Six generations of Hull’s family have lived near Sica Hollow. He has spent countless hours hunting or camping in the forest and has seen the glowing lights. Once he also had a more mysterious experience while camping with friends. They realized they had forgotten supplies, so one friend drove home to get them. “We were hiking and heard him yell from down in the hollow,” Hull told us. “He must have yelled five or six times. We wondered if his truck had gotten stuck and he had started walking. So we walked for a mile and got down to the bottom, but there was nothing there. We climbed a hill to search for lights and found nothing. Finally we went back to the campsite and he pulled in at the same time. He said he was at home and he had all the sleeping bags and things he’d gone to get. But all five of us heard him yelling that night.”

When the leaves fall and Halloween is close at hand, we all like a good South Dakota ghost story. If you have one to share, email me at editor@southdakotamagazine.com.

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In the Red

By Roger Holtzmann

Farm equipment comes in every color of the rainbow, but in Huron, from June 26-28, the color of the day will be red — as in International Harvester red.

International Harvester Collectors Chapter 21 of South Dakota will serve as the host club for the 25th Annual National Red Power Round Up on the state fairgrounds. Collectors, exhibitors, vendors and fans of Big Red from across the country will descend on Huron to talk and gawk at every type of farm equipment the company made, from the steel wheel era to the 1980s.

Many of Chapter 21’s members will be showing one or more of their prized possessions. Jay Graber of Parker can choose from around 100 machines, though not all of them are restored. Jason Sweeter of Lennox will be there with several from the extensive collection started by his father. Nick Osterman, of Groton, has assembled a fleet of nearly all the Hi Boy tractors that IH built to work the cane fields. He plans on bringing 20 down to Huron.

A wide range of activities is planned around the exhibits, including musical performances and a Thursday night chicken feed put on by the Spink and Clark County 4-H clubs. Billy Steers, author of the”Tractor Mac” children’s book series, will be giving presentations all three days. (Click here for a complete event schedule).

Chapter 21 holds a state roundup every year, often in conjunction with other farm events such as the Menno Pioneer Power Show. This is the second time it has hosted a national event.

“We held a national roundup at Prairie Village in Madison in 1997 and we had about 385 exhibitors,” said Wilbur Goehring, chairman of the event’s organizing committee.”This year we’re expecting around 1,200, and many of those will be bringing multiple items to show.”

International Harvester was formed in 1902 by the merger of McCormick Harvesting Machine Company and Deering Harvester Company, along with several smaller agricultural manufacturers. As the company grew its offerings expanded to include cotton pickers, pickups and combines, to name only a few, but the company’s signature product on small farms in this part of the world was its fire engine red Farmall tractors.

In its time the company manufactured everything from M-1 rifles to toys and commemorative items, and a little bit of everything will be on display in Huron. An exhibitor from Missouri will even be bringing an entire Irma Harding kitchen — complete with a kitchen sink, of course — to the fairgrounds. Irma was a marketing creation, like Betty Crocker or Aunt Jemima, who promoted the IH line of refrigerators and freezers during the 1950s.

“IH was the king of the hill [among farm equipment manufacturers] for many years,” said Goehring, but stiff competition and poor management combined to put pressure on the company’s bottom line. After many years of slim profits, the agricultural manufacturing sector of the business was sold in 1984 to Tenneco Inc. Since then they have been marketed under the Case IH nameplate.

Case IH will be bringing the earliest and last tractors built by International Harvester to the Round Up: a gas-powered 1924 Farmall Regular, and a 5488 from 1985, which was the last one to roll off its assembly line in Rock Island, Illinois. A brand new tanker/pumper fire truck, fabricated on an International 4400 Workstar 4X2 truck chassis, will also be on display.

People who need a golf cart or side-by-side to get around the fairgrounds are welcome to bring them along.”We’ve had people call and ask if it’s okay to use their John Deere Gator,” said Goehring.”We tell them yeah, that’s OK. If you’re not too embarrassed to drive it that’s fine with us.”

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Too Much of a Good Thing

By Paul Higbee

“You’re sure? Four hundred across … what’s this state?”

“South Dakota.”

“Four hundred miles across South Dakota? I didn’t think I was even near the place. It never occurred to me I’d ever set foot in South Dakota.” By this time the original information has sunk in. “Anyway, I thought it was a little state.”

Living near the South Dakota-Wyoming border, I’ve had several such conversations. Call these folks South Dakota’s accidental tourists, motorists using the nation’s interstate highways to get from the Pacific Northwest to jobs in Chicago, basic training in Texas, funerals in Ohio. Nobody told them they’d spend the better part of a day in the great unknown between Spearfish and Brandon. Or Spearfish and North Sioux City, if they hang a right on I-29.

They wonder, in perfectly serious tones, will there be gas? Food? AAA? ATMs? Fellow travelers?

“All those things,” I assure them. Sometimes they believe me.

For Americans who label themselves “bicoastal,” the region between the Cascades and Appalachians might be quaint. We’ve got all the necessary ingredients — scenery and a generous supply of out-of-the-ordinary people, places and things — it just needs to be condensed somewhat.

Montana is trendy these days, so west-to-east travelers on I-90 can relax and enjoy the scenery. Which is a good thing since there’s so much of it, nearly 600 miles worth. Next up is a few hundred miles of Wyoming. Then comes South Dakota.

It’s right there in Rand McNally, but South Dakota still comes as a whopper of a surprise for some drivers. Between our western border and Spearfish the country looks a whole lot like … well, Montana and Wyoming. The state seems a tad redundant.

So these accidental tourists pull into the first gas or food joint they spot, as long as they’re still within sight of the I-90 lifeline, seeking not gas or food as much as human contact. Black Hills folk have learned to recognize them by their awkward opening lines.

“Wind always blow like this?”

“Get a lot of snow here?”

“Think people will ever outnumber cows in these parts?”

To which locals offer well-rehearsed replies.

“It stopped blowing after you crossed into the shelter of the Hills.”

“Not enough to keep the fire danger low through summer.”

“Hope not, because cattle are more profitable than people most years.”

Accidental tourists are completely a breed apart from traditional ones, who South Dakotans know are eager to hear of Indian lore, shortcuts to Wind Cave and lurid details of Wild Bill Hickok’s assassination.

So it comes as a shock to be describing, say, how the bullet passed through Wild Bill’s skull and into his poker pal’s arm only to have an accidental tourist interrupt you.

“Yeah, yeah,” they say impatiently, “but if I drop down to I-80 and cross Nebraska instead of South Dakota, does that put me into St. Louis any sooner?”

Joan Bockwoldt, who ran the I-90 information and rest area on the South Dakota-Wyoming border for 20 years, told me accidental tourists may be a vanishing species. “There were a lot more 10 or 20 years ago,” she says, crediting better information systems for motorists, including on-board computer mapping, for the decline.

Perhaps sensing this development, some Black Hills residents are insisting that accidental tourists shape up right now and behave like traditional ones. Recently I overheard an elderly woman scolding a man whose only hope was to see Minnesota by nightfall. He had no intention of seeking out Mount Rushmore.

“You’ve got to see it!” she insisted. “It’s the Shrine of Democracy!”

“Okay, I’ll take a look. I can see it from I-90, right?

“No!”

“Why not?”

Why not, indeed. If only South Dakota could be condensed, so all our finest features were adjacent to I-90 and I-29, we’d rank first in quaint.

Editor’s Note: Paul Higbee has written regularly for South Dakota Magazine since 1991, serving as our Black Hills correspondent. This column appeared in our May/June 1998 issue. To order a copy or to subscribe, call us at 800-456-5117.

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Peace for Wounded Warriors

By Rebecca Johnson

Pat Baird had houseguests during the 2011 Black Hills Stock Show when she became sick with the flu.”My husband got the company out of the house for the day and I went to bed. Around midafternoon I came downstairs and looked at my computer,” Baird remembers.”There was an email that said, ‘Watch the Oprah Show today. There’s a young couple from South Dakota who will be on. The husband was severely injured in the war.'” Baird checked the clock. The show started in 1 minute so she pushed record and went back to bed. A few days later they watched the episode featuring Yankton’s Corey Briest, a soldier gravely wounded while serving in Iraq.”Heart strings were tugged and we said, ‘Wow. We’ve got to do something,'” Baird says.

The couple, both retired military, soon founded Operation Black Hills Cabin. The non-profit organization provides a free, or nearly free, weeklong vacation to qualifying combat-wounded Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and their families. OBHC hosted its first family June 2011 in a borrowed cabin, but coordinating donated time-shares was difficult. An OBHC board member suggested purchasing a Governor’s House after the city of Custer donated land on the edge of town.

“It took us six months to order the house because we were so scared of this huge bill,” Baird says. But the group fundraised enough to dissuade fears and ordered a three-bedroom house built by prisoners at Springfield’s Mike Durfee State Prison.”They don’t even build the three-bedroom house anymore, but they did that just for us,” says Ione Fejfar, a board member also from Custer.”Then they contacted all of their normal suppliers and said, ‘This is what we’re doing. Can you help us?'”

Many businesses were inspired by their mission and donated upgrades like a fireplace, sprinkler system, vaulted ceilings and air conditioning. Patriot Guard Riders escorted the 1,200-square-foot, handicapped accessible home to Custer in March 2013.

Board members expected to write a large check upon arrival but found they owed nothing.”The house was granted to us by the governor through the South Dakota Housing Authority,” says Carol Johnson, a board member who helps remotely from Watertown.”Then the furniture was donated and then the window treatments were donated. It’s incredible how anybody who hears about the cabin is inspired by it. It really is South Dakota’s thank you gift to our wounded veterans.”

Contributions have come from across the state for upkeep, insurance, taxes and snacks for each family. Local quilters provide a Quilt of Valor and Black Hills attractions donate free admission and meals. But guests don’t have to sight-see. They can just relax, Baird says.”We had a quadriplegic from New Orleans come up. He said that as he was sitting on the deck and listening to the pine trees that this was the first time he had peace since he came back from the war.”

The most recent donation is the Healing Hike planned by volunteers from Ellsworth Air Force Base and the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology Veterans Club. They’ll build a path behind the cabin this spring with inspirational messages, a wheelchair accessible picnic table and benches.

And remember that email Baird received telling her to watch the Oprah Winfrey Show? Baird couldn’t remember who sent it, so she went back to check and couldn’t find it.”There was no email,” Baird says.”Everything with this project has fallen into place like that.”

Update 07/31/15: Operation Black Hills Cabin welcomed its first South Dakota family in June. Jason Meyer, an Iraq War veteran, visited the cabin with his wife Amanda and their two daughers. The organization hopes to serve more South Dakota families in the near future.

Operation Black Hills Cabin is open May 1 through September 30. For more information or to download an application for consideration, visit www.operationblackhillscabin.org.

Update 07/31/15: Operation Black Hills Cabin welcomed its first South Dakota family in June. Jason Meyer, an Iraq War veteran, visited the cabin with his wife Amanda and their two daughers. The organization hopes to serve more South Dakota families in the near future.

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Meeting the Need

By Rebecca Johnson

In December of 1996, Dallas and Mary Dietrich had their future planned. The Keystone couple owned four businesses in the Black Hills. Their daughter Dawn and son-in-law Joe Krutzky would soon move from Orlando to manage the couple’s two souvenir shops. Their son Deric, a junior at the University of South Dakota, planned to run their Rapid City and Spearfish ski equipment shops after graduation. But a horrific accident changed all of that.

On Jan. 4, 1997, the entire family was taking Dawn and Joe to the Omaha airport, but blizzard conditions on Interstate 90 made visibility difficult. Dallas drove 35 miles per hour as they neared Alexandria and Mary unbuckled her seatbelt to watch the shoulder. Suddenly, a semi rear-ended them at 75 miles per hour.

“He scooted us one-and-a-half football fields after he hit us,” Dallas says.”So all three of the kids were killed in the back seat and I was crushed between the steering wheel and seat.” Mary suffered non-life threatening broken and cracked ribs, but Dallas had no radial pulse.”They pretty much saved my life in Mitchell with the operation they did on my chest,” Dallas says. He was flown to Rapid City Regional Hospital the next day and rehabbed back and spinal cord injuries for six weeks. Dallas had some use of his legs for a while but now uses a wheelchair.

“With our plans kind of down the toilet, we were sitting around wondering what to do,” Dallas says. He had often dreamed of creating a children’s summer camp”up in the hills.” Mary saw the old Otho tin mine, 4 miles southeast of Keystone, for sale in a real estate magazine.”She said, ‘Why don’t you just buy yourself a town?’ She was joking but I didn’t know that,” Dallas says.”I couldn’t sleep; I just thought about it and thought about it. We came out here and thought, ‘What better way to memorialize the kids than to purchase this place and have people enjoy it for generations to come.'”

The couple bought the mine, established in 1892, dilapidated buildings and all.”Oh man, they were in bad shape,” Dallas recalls.”There were four of them: the bunkhouse, cookhouse, supervisors’ cabin and office. We put foundations under them and my father-in-law and my dad both said, ‘What are you doing? Just level them and start over again.’ But I just felt that this was history.”

As Dallas and Mary worked on their little town, their vision and mission changed. Dallas had long advocated for the disabled. Since 1979 he’s helped organize Black Hills Ski for Light, an event that allows people with disabilities to enjoy cross-country and downhill skiing. The couple recognized the need for accessible vacation options and felt obligated to make their resort available to anyone.”But to get the buildings on the National Historic Register and, at the same time, make them fully accessible was quite a trick,” Dallas says.”It took a lot more time and effort and a lot more money that I ever anticipated, but we got the job done.”

The first group stayed at the resort, now called Meeting the Need, in September 2003 and the Otho tin mine was added to the National Historic Register in 2004. Grants, donations, and volunteers made it possible, and they still operate with no paid employees.

The resort has 23 beds in the original buildings and two new walled tents, but they can accommodate more. There are places for tents and small RVs. Wooden boardwalks connect everything.”Recently we finished the tree house that’s 12 feet in the air. It’s got a 200-foot ramp so little kids in wheelchairs can wheel up and spend a night there, so that’s pretty cool.”

The Dietrichs charge $25 per person per night and guests have access to the fire pit and a few horses.”We have a number of tourist facilities, like Reptile Gardens, the 1880 Train and Crazy Horse, that provide free participation to our guests. And we own an old time photo place so that groups that have disabled family members can get an old time photo,” Dallas says.”It’s pretty affordable for most folks and, of course, if there’s somebody with disabilities that can’t afford it then we would waive all charges.” He’d specifically like to offer free stays to South Dakota’s disabled veterans as a way of giving back.

Meeting the need is open May through September and they still have openings for this summer. Able-bodied guests are welcome, but they give preference to those with disabilities. Call (605) 666-4610 or email dallasdietrich@hotmail.com to make reservations.

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Our Hub City

By Rebecca Johnson

Aberdeen earned the nickname Hub City in 1911 because four major railroads operated there. The old train depot at Main Street and Railroad Avenue still houses Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, but art, shopping, and health care now make up some of the spokes on Aberdeen’s hub.

My husband and I visited last November so I could attend a yoga workshop. We mainly explored downtown. First stop was Natural Abundance, the community food co-op in a corner shop on Main.”The co-op started as a private buying club in 1978 as a way to meet individuals needs for organic, whole and bulk foods,” says Lara Nelson, general manager.”Over the years it has evolved to be a full retail business.” The store has quite a variety of items — organic produce, grass-fed beef, supplements, health and beauty products are just a few. Thankfully for me, you don’t have to be a co-op member to shop there. I grabbed a kombucha and some bananas then headed to the yoga studio.

Lean Body Barre hosts a variety of hot yoga classes in what was once the Ward-Owsley candy factory.”It must have been pretty popular, because railroad tracks lead parallel to the building so that train cars could be filled,” says Candace Briscoe, building and studio owner. The doors that were used to load trains are now business entrances. Briscoe’s toxin free and organic skin care business has been there since 2004 and her yoga studio opened last fall.”I loved the detoxification aspect of hot yoga,” Briscoe says.”Although it seems as if the hot yoga business was intentionally placed because of its benefit to my other business, it wasn’t until a couple months after the studio opened that I realized the two businesses had so much in common.”

I had fun checking out Briscoe’s shop, sweating and learning with the guest teacher who taught the workshop. After a shower, my husband and I dined at Roma Ristorante Italiano. It’s located on the ground floor of the Ward Plaza, formerly Alonzo Ward Hotel. Raffi Ismaili and Tony Avdiu, half-Albanian and half-Italian cousins, opened the restaurant last February. Ismaili had been in the restaurant business for over 25 years, with restaurants in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, when Avdiu invited him to South Dakota. (Avdiu is also part owner of The Italian Garden in Brookings.) Roma offers a large selection of pasta, chicken, veal and seafood dishes. I tried the spaghetti marinara and my husband had cheese ravioli. Good food, inviting Italian dÈcor and the servers were so attentive. Our water glasses were never empty.

We explored the Ward Plaza a bit after we ate. Alonzo Ward built the hotel in 1894. Fire destroyed it in 1926, but in 1928 he built again. Blackstone Developers renovated the building in 2004 and 90 of the hotel rooms were converted into 15 luxury condominiums. The original dark woodwork in the lobby and the chandelier in the Crystal Ballroom were fully restored. Ward Plaza houses two event spaces, The Ward Plaza Bar and Grill, Karisma Boutique, and Labyrinth Films. Seven hotel rooms remain, but they’ll be remodeled into apartments later this spring.

Our next day’s lunch was at Red Rooster Coffee House, owned by siblings Dan Cleberg and Kileen Cleberg Limvere. They have a variety of sandwiches, soups and salads. We opted for the veggie burger, hummus sandwich and, of course, coffee. It was fun to relax in their mismatched, retro furniture and peruse local art on their yellow and orange walls. The Klebergs have been great leaders in Aberdeen’s cultural community by providing gallery space and hosting regular musical performances. They also sell used books and fair trade gifts like jewelry and scarves.

Last stop on our trip was the Dacotah Prairie Museum. We especially liked the Dakota Central Telephone Company and Western Union exhibit, with its realistic looking mannequins. The Lamont Gallery upstairs was a real treat, too. It features the work of local and regional artists, with six shows each year. We admired photos by Michaela Glugla then headed home, happy having explored some of Aberdeen’s great places!

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Fall Medicine

By Christian Begeman

I had a good day last week. A good medicine day. You know, one of those”good for the soul” kind of days. October is always a bittersweet month for me. The days noticeably grow shorter and it is not hard to feel the whisper of winter on the wind. I don’t mind winter, but the transition to it always seems to get me down. The Saturday before last, however, was one of the rare, late fall days when the sun was shining, the breeze was light and I had nothing to do but go and explore.

I haven’t had a lot of time between my work schedule and overcast weather to seek out fall color here in the southeastern corner of the state this year. Up until that Saturday, the only good East River fall photograph I was able to capture was taken in Brookings County in the last light of evening after the sun broke through departing rain clouds. That Saturday, however, I was on a quest to find more fall color.

I started at Beaver Creek Nature Area south of Brandon. There I found Allen Severtson harvesting corn with tools of yesteryear, including a 1954 SC CASE tractor. Allen spied me on the road with my camera and motioned for me to come join him. We didn’t harvest much corn where I grew up on the border of Ziebach and Dewey County, but riding with Allen a couple times around the small nine-acre corn field reminded me of when I was a kid and loving riding with my dad in the tractor or combine.

After that trip down memory lane, I made my way to Newton Hills State Park, south of Canton. Hiking along the Big Sioux River on the northeast edge of the park, I discovered some beautifully golden leaved trees hanging their limbs over the edge of the water. Squirrels and birds were still quite active on this late fall day and I even spied dragonflies along the banks.

The next stop was Union Grove State Park, south of Beresford, followed by Adams Nature Preserve near McCook, SD. I saw downy woodpeckers and blue jays while there but was unable to get a decent photo. I decided to head back up the Missouri River. When looking eastward from I-29 I thought I could see the afternoon light glinting on golden bands of cottonwoods near Vermillion.

I wasn’t disappointed. Clay County Park provided wonderful views of the Missouri River framed with fall color. As evening approached, I started making my way to an intriguing unused barn east of Wakonda that I remembered from an earlier trip. On the way there, I drove by beautiful, tall stands of colorful trees south of Gayville. The evening light was perfect. There were high, wispy clouds in the sky above the barn when I got there. What I didn’t realize was that the back wall had a significant hole in it. So when the sun set behind the structure, I could see it clearly through the front opening of the barn. By luck and by being at the right place at the right time, I was able to frame up a unique shot of the barn and setting sun through the two openings. It was a perfect ending to my day.

I’ve learned over the years that days like that don’t come as often as I’d like. I guess it makes it that much more enjoyable when they do. Days like that Saturday have a way of renewing my love for the hobby and life in general, and that alone made the day really good medicine.


Christian Begeman grew up in Isabel and now lives in Sioux Falls. When he’s not working at Midcontinent Communications he is often on the road photographing our prettiest spots around the state. Follow Begeman on his blog.

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Sue’s Back in South Dakota!

By Rebecca Johnson

The saga of Sue the T. Rex began in the summer of 1990 when a team from Black Hills Institute hunted fossils near Faith. While the rest of the crew went to town for a truck repair, Sue Hendrickson discovered the first of the largest and most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton ever found.

Ried Holien wrote about the dramatic story that followed in our May/June 1999 issue.

Pete Larson, BHI’s director, took the specimen, nicknamed Sue (in Hendrickson’s honor), to Hill City to clean, strengthen, and prepare the bones for display. Two years later, after the Institute had invested hundreds of thousands of dollars and countless man-hours in Sue, Federal agents seized the fossil and arrested Larson.

Sue was found on land the Institute believed belonged to rancher and Cheyenne River Sioux tribal member Maurice Williams, who had given them permission to dig. In fact, the land was held in federal trust for Williams. Technically that made Sue government property, and gave federal agents the power to seize the fossil. It also was their justification for initiating a massive criminal proceeding against Larson and the institute.

After a lengthy trial, Larson served 19 months in federal prison. He was released in September 1997, only to find that the dinosaur was on the auction block. Sotheby’s sold Sue in October for $8.36 million. She debuted at Chicago’s Field Museum three years later.

Folks have the opportunity to see the controversial skeleton this winter in Sioux Falls. A replica of the ancient bones is part of an exhibition called”A T. Rex Named Sue” at the Washington Pavilion through January 5. A major renovation of the Pavilion’s 4th floor was completed to accommodate the enormous bipedal carnivore and create room for future traveling exhibits. Sue is 42 feet long and 17 feet high at her highest point.”The tail meets the ceiling almost,” says Erica Lacey, Kirby Science Discovery Center Director at the Washington Pavilion.”It needed every inch.”

Along with the replica, there are nine hands-on stations to learn about Sue’s eyesight, movement and sense of smell, and a 23-minute film in the Wells Fargo Cinedome called Waking the T. Rex.”The exhibits help you understand as a whole how she lived when she was alive,” Lacey explains.”It also allows us to bring out some of the walking demonstrations we already had on hand related to our Stan the T. Rex permanently on exhibit in the third floor gallery.”

“A T. Rex Named Sue” opened on September 21.”We’ve seen toddlers and adults all come through and enjoy it,” Lacey says. There have been moments of nostalgia for some as they remember the media attention surrounding Sue’s discovery.”For those people to be able to pass it on to their children and family members has been very precious.”

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West River’s Fleeting Fall Color

By Christian Begeman

The colors of fall can be elusive in a predominantly prairie state like South Dakota. Our national forests are mostly made up of evergreens. Autumn winds can blow relentlessly through the rest of the trees as winter’s long arm begins to creep down from the north. Wild weather swings, as evidenced by this past week’s brutal snowstorm on the west side of the state and tornados clipping the southeast corner, don’t help autumn’s splendor stay around for long either. To me, fall’s fleeting nature is what makes photographing its beauty so fun and fulfilling.

This year, I was able to break away from the normal routine to spend a few days searching for autumn color. From Sunday, September 29 through Tuesday, October 1, I made a wide circle through some of the prettiest country our state has to offer west of the Missouri. Last year, I discovered that the valleys and draws of the Sage Creek Wilderness offer some unique fall scenes with the Badlands as a backdrop. I got there maybe a week before the trees were in prime color, however, I found that the early morning sun backlighting the leaves brought out fall’s tints anyway.

My next stop was the northern Black Hills. This area contains two of the most scenic canyons in the state and they are particularly beautiful when dressed in autumn’s hues. Vanocker Canyon Road between Nemo and Sturgis is a short but beautiful drive. Spearfish Canyon’s scenic highway is also a must see during this season. At Savoy, you can get out and hike to waterfalls, alongside creeks and nature areas that will take your breath away.

Around a hundred miles north and a little east of the Black Hills is the furthest eastward unit of Custer National Forest. This narrow band of trees grace the tops and sides of the Slim Buttes of Harding County. I have seen and been impressed with other photographers’ images of that area taken in the fall and always wanted to go and experience it myself. I’m glad I did, as there are views and vistas that had me saying”wow” out loud. I’m not kidding. After only allowing for an afternoon’s visit, I was kicking myself for not allowing the whole weekend to explore. It’s that good.

On the way to the Slim Buttes, I stopped off in the Hoover, SD area to shoot the South Fork of the Moreau River. I grew up near the Moreau River proper around 90 miles to the east of Hoover so this landscape of cut banks, cottonwoods and cattle made me feel like I was home again. After spending the night in Isabel, I made an early morning stop at Little Moreau Recreation Area south of Timber Lake. This relatively wide and scenic creek valley in the middle of the prairie is thick with trees. I had never witnessed what it looked like in the fall before this year. The early morning view was not a disappointment. I had arrived a few days before prime colors, but the scene was still impressive. As a photographer, I’d rather catch fall early than late as the remaining greens can contrast nicely with the autumn’s yellow, oranges and reds.

My last stop was the Foster Bay Road of extreme northwest Stanley County. Here the draws were in full autumn splendor. I found bright reds in the thickets and rich oranges and yellows along the hillsides. I spent a good hour, just taking it all in. A lot of miles lay behind me, but viewing these last bursts of color before the dull and muted hues of winter arrive was truly a blessing. Yes, fall is fleeting in our great state, which means catching it even for just for a moment is a treasure. It’s a good life lesson, really. Life is fleeting, but there are moments and experiences that stand out in vivid color. Enjoy those moments, take pictures and treasure the views!


Christian Begeman grew up in Isabel and now lives in Sioux Falls. When he’s not working at Midcontinent Communications he is often on the road photographing our prettiest spots around the state. Follow Begeman on his blog.