Category: gallery-top

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A Bouquet of Easter Flowers

Sioux Falls photographer and avid pasqueflower hunter Christian Begeman was shooting photos in the Cave Hills last spring when he noticed a mass of pasques gone to seed. This week, he paid a return visit to northern Harding County in the hopes of capturing the delicate purple blooms.”I thought I got skunked, but then I saw a lone purple spot of color on a ridge just beyond the Forest Service Picnic campgrounds and discovered fifty-plus flowers just starting to poke through.” He decided to share those blossoms with us in honor of the holiday. Happy Easter!

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Lemmon: Our Cowboy Capital

By Bernie Hunhoff

If you designed a town as a tribute to the American cowboy it would look like Lemmon. The little city straddling the border of the two Dakotas has just 1,200 citizens but it seems 10 times that size on days when there’s a rodeo or a cattle auction. Even on a slow day, Lemmon looks like a cowboy capital — thought nobody there would claim the title because real cowboys don’t brag.

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Huron’s Marvelous Murals

Artists have brightened and enlightened the streets of Huron with nearly two dozen murals that illustrate the history and heritage of a city that has developed into one of the American West’s most farm-oriented communities.

Huron is home to both the Farm Bureau and Farmers Union organizations. The South Dakota State Fair, held in Huron since 1905, has developed as one of the nation’s best agricultural fairs. The state’s federal USDA offices are headquartered there, and two of South Dakota’s major livestock auction barns.

That ag heritage has inspired much of the city’s street art. Murals depict pioneer settlers, the legacy of the fair, agrarian politics, the great ’82 Land Rush in the James River valley and pheasant hunting. However, other themes are also represented; a 2002 mural honors the USA’s healing from the 9/11 disaster.

Looking for a windshield art tour? The marvelous murals of Huron are worth the trip. Visit each one and take a selfie by your favorite. Grab a sandwich to go at Manolis Grocery (actually a funky and wonderful old-style bistro that dates to 1921). See the 40-foot fiberglass pheasant on the east side of town along Highway 14.

All things you can only do in Huron.

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Hill City’s Trees and Trains

All who love Christmastime and trains should rendezvous in Hill City this holiday season. (Anyone who doesn’t love Christmastime and trains might plan to see a doctor.) The South Dakota State Railroad Museum is fun any season of the year, but the locomotives and train exhibits truly shine during the holidays when Rick Mills and his crew add tinsel, holly and lights. The museum’s annual Trees & Trains exhibit is open December weekends and Christmas Eve day. It’s alongside South Dakota’s 1880 Train, which transforms into the Holiday Express every December. Families make lasting memories on the two-hour journey, steaming through the Black Hills in winter. The 1880 crew has implemented many COVID-19 policies to keep you and your family safe. All aboard! Several of Hill City’s favorite restaurants are open year-round, including the beautifully decorated Alpine Inn, a Black Hills staple, and a new place, Pizzeria Mangiamo, that features artisan wood-fire pizzas — one of South Dakota’s very few new restaurants to open during the pandemic.

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Autumn Arrives at Shadehill

Sioux Falls photographer Christian Begeman was in the midst of a West River trip when he alerted us to the quickly changing landscape around the Shadehill Reservoir in Perkins County.”It was pretty colorful out there yesterday,” he reported as September turned to October.”Hugh Glass would have wept.”

Glass, of course, is the mountain man who was mauled by a grizzly bear near the Grand River in 1823. Left for dead by the members of his party, Glass crawled 200 miles across the West River prairies to Fort Kiowa. Any tears he may have shed would probably have been in rage toward his friends or pain for his badly broken leg rather than the foliage. Fortunately, we have no such worries, and can simply enjoy the yellows and oranges of autumn descending upon the Shadehill country.

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A Heavenly Visitor

South Dakota stargazers have turned their attention to a new addition in the night sky: Comet NEOWISE, first discovered on March 27 and now streaking across the heavens. It’s the brightest visible comet since Hale-Bopp in 1997 and should remain visible through July. In the morning, the comet appears low on the northeastern horizon and shifts to the northwestern horizon in the evening.”Find the big dipper, line up the two stars that make the bottom of the dipper and let them point you to the comet,” says photographer Christian Begeman, who traveled the state and recorded NEOWISE from several rural locations.