Category: history

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We Gave One the Chair

By Gail E. Myers

South Dakota borrowed this electric chair from Statesville, Illinois 67 years ago. Photo by Gail E. Myers.

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


When murderer Clifford Hayes faced electrocution under South Dakota’s three-year-old capital punishment law, it posed a problem for Warden G. Norton Jameson because South Dakota didn’t have an electric chair.

Hayes was convicted of murdering Grant County Sheriff Melbourne Lewis in the summer of 1941. Thirty-year-old Hayes had just been released from prison for good behavior and intended to ride the rails to the West Coast. He waited in Aberdeen for a westbound train, but when none came, Hayes sneaked on a boxcar going east and got off in Milbank. He stole a .22 rifle and ammunition and later shot the gun to scare some kids. A report of a man shooting a rifle on the Milbank streets brought out Sheriff Lewis. Hayes reportedly hid in a shed and opened fire on him.

Hayes brazenly announced as he pleaded guilty that he’d already spent too much”bad time in jail” and wasn’t going to spend the rest of his life there. He’d die first.

The 1939 state legislature passed a highly controversial return of capital punishment, illegal since 1915, and mandated electrocution. However, they made no provision or appropriation for the chair nor the extensive wiring, power sources, switches and high-voltage transformers needed to carry out an execution.

Warden Jameson solved the problem using the creative management skills that made him a legend in penal administration. He borrowed an electric chair for Statesville Penitentiary in Joliet, Illinois. Statesville was notorious for electrocuting three men in one day in 1928.

He might also have been aware of some power-play Illinois politics. A confusing mandate said that only counties with a population over one million could maintain an electric chair, conveniently moving all Illinois executions to Cook County and leaving electric chairs across the state out of commission.

Jameson oversaw a prison revolt in 1942 and the 1947 execution of George Sitts during his 25-year tenure are penitentiary warden.

In a letter dated Sept. 11, 1942, Warden Jameson wrote about the chair’s expense to the state of South Dakota.”I do not have the exact figures on the cost of the chair, but to date it would not exceed $250 which includes transportation and installation.”

He also described how it was installed.”The chair was set up by a man from Illinois who does not desire any publicity, and our own men here. It was transported out here by him in a truck.”

The borrowed chair occupied a room near the penitentiary’s high-ceilinged and cavernous jute mill. The mill was full of noise, brown dust, and clusters of men feeding rope-making machinery. Outside the execution room stood a closeted and locked high bank of electrical transformers, throw switches, and heavy cables. Through windows in an adjacent stone wall, the switch operator could see both the chair and the victim.

Finding the electric chair was just the beginning of the warden’s responsibilities. Jameson needed to set the execution time and announce it to the public 48 hours in advance. He also had authority over assembling witnesses and notifying attendees required through statute, such as the attorney general, the states attorney and the trial judge. The inmate could request two clergy of any denomination and up to five relatives or friends.

Everything was ready in 1942, but the Joliet chair would be used only when the defendant’s lawyers exhausted their appeals and the condemned man declined commutation from death to life in prison.

The electrocution never took place. On Dec. 7, 1942, Hayes changed his mind and asked to have his sentence commuted to life without parole. He died in 1993 at the state penitentiary. There is no published record of what happened to the borrowed chair.

Before the electric chair was banned in South Dakota, one man died in its clasp. Thirty-three-year-old George Sitts was executed on April 8, 1947 in Sioux Falls. Sitts had escaped from a Minnesota jail where he was serving a life sentence for killing a liquor store clerk. He killed Butte County Sheriff Dave Malcolm and State Criminal Agent Thomas Matthews near Spearfish in 1946 while resisting arrest.

Sitts was the fourth man sentenced to electrocution in South Dakota, but the only one whose sentence wasn’t commuted. He was executed at 12:15 a.m. with 41 witnesses. His last words reportedly were,”This is the first time authorities helped me escaped prison.”

The chair used that night is now kept at the Cultural Heritage Center in Pierre. It is almost identical to the borrowed Illinois electric chair. Collections Curator Dan Brosz carefully compared photos of the Joliet model with the museum’s and concluded the two look similar but are not the same. Those differences suggest that inmates constructed a second chair using the borrowed chair as a model.

Thirty-three states in the nation have capital punishment, but only six states still employ an electric chair as an option. In 1984 South Dakota followed other states and mandated lethal injection, believed to be more civilized.



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The Buffalo vs. the Bull

By Jim Dickson
Folks from both sides of the border gathered to watch the contest between Scotty Philip’s buffalo and a Juarez fighting bull.


There’s no one quite like a four-year-old for pondering the imponderable. My grandson Little Jack once asked me if a saber-toothed tiger could beat up a Tyrannosaurus rex. I told him I’d have to think about that, but I did know that a South Dakota buffalo could beat up four Mexican fighting bulls. At least that’s what happened in Juarez, Mexico in 1907.

Scotty Philip, the well-known Stanley County cattleman and buffalo fancier, was in Texas on a fall buying trip and encountered a couple of sports from Juarez who were given to loud and repeated boastings about the stamina, fierceness, and fighting heart of the sharp-horned bulls they bred for combat in the bull rings of that country.

In response to this chauvinistic yammering, Philip politely suggested to the boastful Mexicans that he had, on his ranch, any number of ordinary buffalo that by damn could mop up the ring with the finest of those so-called fighting bulls. He furthermore offered to ship one or more of these buffalo to Juarez to prove his point and solidified his proposition with a substantial wager.

The Mexicans had seen only pictures of buffalo, and the prospect of one of the awkward, shaggy creatures challenging their fast-stepping, muscled beasts of destruction translated to them as an unprecedented opportunity for mucho dinero. Philip’s sporting proposition was quickly joined, and arrangements were made for publicity and use of the Juarez bullring.

Unfortunately, a severe blizzard required Scotty Philip’s presence on the ranch that January, so he was unable to make the trip to Mexico. In his stead, he dispatched his nephew, George Philip, to look after family interests and those of the local community, which had accumulated a sizeable pot to be wagered on behalf of the buffalo. Cowboys Eb Jones and Bob Yokum were sent along to tend the livestock.

From his ranch near Ft. Pierre, Scotty Philip selected two run-of-the-herd buffalo bulls, an eight-year-old and a four-year-old, for the contest. He called the older one Pierre; the name of the other isn’t recorded — Murdo, perhaps. The bulls were loaded into a specially reinforced boxcar, and the entire party made the trip to El Paso and across the Rio Grande to Juarez in seven days, amidst a generous amount of en route hoopla due to the advance publicity and general interest in the outcome of the matchup.

Stanley County matadors? George Philip and fellow South Dakota businessmen posed in the ring after the famous fight. Photo from S.D. Historical Society.

When they got the buffalo to the bullring on the designated Saturday, George Philip (according to his account of the trip in South Dakota Historical Review thirty years later) and company were surprised not only at the size of the facility, but at the number and fervor of the partisans from both sides of the border who had gathered for the spectacle.

When Pierre ambled out into the arena, the crowd emitted a buzz of anticipation. But the buzz became a groan as the shaggy bison reached the center of the ring and, tired from his long trip, calmly flopped himself down. Then there was a great reverberating roar as the Mexican bull was turned into the ring. Enraged by the darts that had been plunged into his shoulder to enhance his fighting spirit, the snorting, pawing bull launched himself at the unkempt mound in the middle of the arena like some 1,500 pound juggernaut from hell.

Pierre managed to get to his feet in time to take the bull’s charge head-on. There was what sounded like an underground explosion, and the dust cleared to reveal the unmoved Pierre stoically contemplating a surprised and slightly dazed bundle of bovine bewilderment that had been bounced back a rod or so from the point of impact.

But the bull’s momma hadn’t raised any dummies; after all, hadn’t he a pair of sharp horns that could slice this upstart’s liver right out of his body? So he sidestepped to a position that gave a clear shot at the buffalo’s uncovered flank, lowered his head and charged in for the vivisection.

Alas, the bull’s momma hadn’t told him about a major difference between bulls and buffalo; namely, that buffalo turn on their front, rather than rear, legs. This ability allowed Pierre to pivot at the last minute and once more absorb the bull’s charge with his massive skull plate. And this time, the buffalo put some thrust behind powerful counter-blows.

After the final encounter had brought him to his knees, the once-fearsome fighting bull fled to the nether regions of the arena and tried to climb out of the ring. Failing that, he could only stand shaking as the catcalls and imprecations of the angry crowd rained down.

Claiming a fluke, the Mexican breeders called on George Philip to allow them to try one of their “best” bulls against the buffalo. Ever willing to go the extra mile, George agreed; and a fresh contender — sinewy and belligerent as the first bull — roared out of the corral directly at Pierre, who stood patiently at ring center. The outcome was the same as before: no matter from which direction the bull charged, he was met head-on.

This scenario was replayed that afternoon with yet two more bulls — and to the same end. By the time the sun had started to sink behind the stands, four battered and shaking Mexican fighting bulls huddled in the shadows by the west wall while the pride of Stanley County rolled contentedly on his back in the arena sand. George Philip offered the younger buffalo in combat the next day, but all the heart had gone out of the Mexican breeders, and they declined. For them the question had been settled, and they had no desire for any further decimation of their prize stock.

It would be nice to report that the buffalo were given heroes’ welcomes back home; but because of transportation costs, they were sold in Juarez. One hopes they were used to enrich the fighting bull genetic strain, but the likelihood is that the burrito might have been replaced by the buffalito as the fast food mainstay in old Juarez for a time.

Later that year Mr. Scotty Philip founded the town that bears his name. His nephew, George, eventually became a respected lawyer in Rapid City. Eb Jones served as a Stanley County commissioner, and Bob Yokum has evidently been lost to history.

As I told my grandson, a South Dakota buffalo might have a struggle with old Tyrannosaurus rex, but I’m sure he’d give a sabre-toothed tiger all the fight he wants, and then some.

Editor’s Note: The author, Jim Dickson, is a Sturgis native who currently lives in St. Paul, Minnesota. This story is revised from the March/April 1995 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a back issue or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.



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The Home Kids of Dell Rapids

By Amy Dunkle

Harold Kindred, Orville McDonald, Ed Kindred and Earl Hormann were a few of the orphans housed at the Dell Rapids Home.

Note: The Odd Fellows Home, built in 1910 in Dell Rapids, was a refuge for orphans and elderly members of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and their sister organization, the Daughters of Rebekah. In 2001, Amy Dunkle visited with a few of the former residents still living to learn what orphanage life was like.

The Odd Fellows Home was home in every sense of the word for about 100 children who arrived without either material belongings or the innate sense of security that someone would take care of them. In fact, for many of these youngsters, the Home in Dell Rapids was the last stop in a string of homes.

In 1927, Earl Hormann was nine years old, living on a farm southwest of Mina with his parents and his younger brother, Darwin. Then the boys’ mother, only 28, died in childbirth along with their infant sister. Days later, on a blizzardy February night, their house burned down. “Dad farmed us two boys out,” recalled Earl Hormann. “Back in them days, it was pretty slim pickings. We went from house to house. Finally, they just couldn’t take care of us.”

Ed Kindred’s dad, a fireman in Sioux Falls, died in the 1918 flu epidemic. His mother’s second marriage didn’t work out, and she couldn’t take care of Ed, then six, and his brother, Harold. Despite the turmoil in his early life, Kindred showed no trace of bitterness, no sense of being a victim at being brought to the Home in 1923. “They just put us there. We adjusted pretty good.” Referring to his mother, he said only, “There wasn’t much love there for me and my brother.”

Russell MacDonald was also six when he came to the Home from White River in 1922. Arriving alongside him were five siblings. Russ was three when his father, a farmer and veteran of the Spanish American War, died of tuberculosis. Their mother died of pneumonia.

Girls at the Dell Rapids Odd Fellows Home posed in their new overalls.

Elaine Bokker lived on a ranch north of Bear Butte until her father died in a 1932 farm accident. She was six then, and her mother moved her and her sisters into town. Four years later, her mother died of scarlet fever. The girls’ grandmother had remarried, and her new husband came with his own family to raise, so the girls were deposited in Dell Rapids when Elaine was eleven.

They were a few of the South Dakota youngsters who spent their childhoods at the Home; they became known around Dell Rapids as the Home Kids. Despite the passage of time and the paths they took in the world, the memories of their first days remained clear.

“I was scared to death — cried my fool head out,” remembered Earl Hormann. “My brother and I hid in the closet, crying. But there was a bunch of kids there besides us. We finally made friends with one another and all that good stuff.”

In time, new Home Kids bonded with the other children and with the elderly people who lived at the Home. They experienced the simple joys of growing up and learned the invaluable lessons that would carry them through life. It was, in the words of Russell MacDonald, a good place, a good home, and good times.

The Home’s typical occupancy ran about 28 children and 15 elderly, according to Ed Kindred. “The old people had one part, and the kids usually had the north end. The old people were just like grandparents to us. When we first got there, there was maybe 10 of us. Bedtime was 7 o’clock at night, summer and winter. For the older kids, it was 9. They’d have a high school girl from downtown come up and read a story to us.”

We just kind of stuck together, played like everybody else…

“Every meal, three times a day, we lined up in the hall at the north end, from the oldest kid in the bunch to the youngest,” Kindred said. “We’d say the Lord’s Prayer, go into the dining room and the matron would say grace. The little kids had to sit with the matron. They taught us table manners. We had a nurse who took care of us. We were quarantined with measles, scarlet fever. They put a red tag on the door. We all had chores, even the little ones.”

From scrubbing hallway floors to planting potatoes and butchering farm animals, the Home Kids learned to tackle their jobs. Their dishwashing skills were nothing short of legendary, said Roberta DeVaney, a Dell Rapids historian who died in 2009. “They had a reputation for really being able to wash a sink full of dishes in record time.” Of course, with no transportation other than their own two feet, there wasn’t any alternative. Twelve blocks separated the Home from school. Youngsters got home at noon and had to eat dinner, do dishes, set the table for supper and make it back to school by the 1 p.m. bell.

“We didn’t fool around,” said Darwin Hormann. He remembered swapping labor with 10 or 12 local farmers so no one had to hire workers.

But along with the work came plenty of fun. The Home bought a pony, Flossie, and a horse, Jim, that never stopped giving rides. The kids also adopted a pup, Buster, born on July 5, 1925. A farmer had put the puppies of a Newfoundland dog in a burlap bag, placed the bag in the horse tank to drown the puppies and then buried them.

“We heard something in the hog yard — two were still alive,” said Ed Kindred. “We took them to Matron and begged her to let us keep one. He lived to be 20 years old. Wherever you saw the dog, you knew the Home Kids were around.”

Ed Kindred, Elaine Bokker and Russell MacDonald — former Home residents.

There weren’t any luxuries. No television, no radio. There was a phonograph that the boys would wind up so the girls could dance. And, said Ed, “We shared our toys. Mother sent a toboggan, sent it for Christmas, and it was community property. It only lasted half a winter. Most of our toys were stuff we made ourselves — slingshots, bows and arrows, little airplanes.”

In time, the Home Kids managed to carve out a typical childhood. “We didn’t know any better,” Elaine Bokker said. “We knew other people had parents. We just kind of stuck together, played like everybody else, met our friends downtown.”

“I tell ya, we had a wonderful matron, Eleanor Kingery,” Earl Hormann added. “She was very strict, but she was kind. I think that made the difference. She made us mind. We did a lot of foolish things, like sneaking out at night. We didn’t do anything wrong, just to prove that we could do it. We’d go swimming when we weren’t supposed to. We were the first ones to swim in the river when the ice was still in.”

When it came to discipline, the boys who stepped out of line were forced to wear dresses, complete with bloomers. “I didn’t know if I was a boy or girl till I was eight or nine, I was in a dress so much,” laughed Ed Kindred.”We’d stuff the dress in the bloomers. But the kids never teased us.”

One time, the Kindred boys ran away from the Home. Ed was about eight. They got as far as Lone Tree. Upon their safe return, he said, the brothers got a spanking and solitary confinement with bread and water. But the older kids snuck in food. “They were pretty tough,” Ed said of the matron and others who meted out discipline. “If they caught you in the apple orchard when the apples were green, Matron had a big jug of castor oil. We all hated that stuff. Me and my brother, one time, we had to kneel on buttons with our chin up against the wall. That hurt.”

Time passed, and the Home Kids went out into the world. Most of the boys served their country in World War II. They married, had children and settled into steady jobs. Ed Kindred was at Pearl Harbor in WWII, and made a career of military service. Earl Hormann became a truck driver after service as a medic. Darwin Hormann flew B-29s over the Pacific, and worked in construction when he came home. Russell MacDonald farmed and quarried stone. Elaine Bokker married her downtown boyfriend and was the mother she lost to her three kids. Wherever they went, Ed Kindred said, “Every one of those kids were successful in what they did. They were taxpaying citizens. Never had serious trouble.”

He contemplated what exactly it was that built such a solid foundation for these children who had lost parents and homes, and weathered the Depression. “The Odd Fellows, they got us off on the right foot,” he said. “When we left the Home, we knew we had two strikes against us, that times would be tough. We didn’t have anything and we didn’t expect to have anything.”

As the Home Kids carved out their niches in life, Kindred said, they found they were just as good as anybody else. What’s more, despite the hard knocks early on, they looked back on their childhoods with fondness and appreciation — the discipline, the dishes, the small town of Dell Rapids, and the elderly Home residents who filled the role of grandparents. And, of course, with her castor oil and caring, matron Eleanor Kingery.

Years later, Ed Kindred mused about how lucky he and his fellow Home Kids were. “The penitentiary,” he said, “it’s full of ëem up there. Kids that never had any love at all.”

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from our July/August 2001 issue. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.

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Cows on Parade

By Marian Cramer

De Smet was a busy prairie town in 1917. Many trains passed through each day, and the three blocks of Main Street hummed with business. Both teams of horses and automobiles could be found on the streets. It was a pleasant town in which to live. There was quiet order to the days. The neat, well-kept houses that faced the street had barns that faced the alley. Some barns were used as garages for the new automobiles and some still sheltered horses. In residence in many of the barns was a milk cow. Refrigeration wasn’t great yet, and although you could order milk delivered from the dairy, many people still preferred their own supply.

Ten-year-old Harold Fritzel had developed a business. In partnership with his father, the two had decided that the Fritzel pasture on the edge of town could accommodate eight or ten milk cows. For $1.50 a month, young Harold would pick the cows up from their barns after morning milking, herd them to the pasture and return them to their barns in time for evening milking. Harold became a successful businessman. He had eight customers.

For the first few days, Harold’s father helped him. Once the cows knew where they were going, they would march out of their barns as Harold opened the door, join the cow parade and swing their tails in good style. None of the cows were above grabbing a bite here and there as they went. A small Jersey was the worst offender and the worst kicker. The tall, thin boy carrying a long stick and following his herd became a familiar alley sight.

In later years, Harold Fritzel recalled, “I knew every step of the alleys and most of the barns in De Smet. Along my route was a house shared by a widow and her blind daughter, Mary. They had neither cow nor barn. Their back yard was as neatly kept as the front. A rope was strung across the yard so the blind girl could walk around. The widow raised a large vegetable garden.

“Every morning and evening as I passed their house the old lady stood between her garden and the alley with a hoe in her hand. They had no alley fence, but I just figured she spent a lot of time working in her garden. I can shut my eyes and see her yet, the clothes she wore, the look on her face, the way she held her hoe.

“I always said … ‘Good Morning Mrs. Ingalls.’ She would reply, ‘Hello Harold.’ It didn’t dawn on me until years later that she stood there with the hoe in her hand to guard her garden, guard it from my cows.

“Of course, no one in De Smet had any idea that Caroline Ingalls’ daughter, Laura, would put us all on the map. “In those day I was just a kid and Ma Ingalls was a polite old lady, an old lady with a hoe, watching over her garden.”

Editor’s Note: Harold Fritzell recalled his daily encounter with Ma Ingalls in July of 1989. He died in 2002. Marian Cramer of Bryant, South Dakota shared his story with our readers in our May/June 1990 issue. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.

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Deadwood Dick vs the Whitewood Skunk

By Ruth McPherson

He never sat with his back to a door, that grim old-timer who claimed to be the hero of the Deadwood Dick dime novels. He assumed the stance of an alert shotgun guard at all times, in spite of the fact that no stagecoach robber had been observed in our little town for many a decade.

His weather-beaten face was flecked with powder burns and his piercing, squinched eyes were ever on the lookout for trouble. He seemed to stand tall, due to his lean build, and the peaked crown of his black Stetson added to the deception. His name was Richard Clarke, but he preferred to be called Deadwood Dick, and most of the townspeople humored him.

Dick lived in obscurity for a number of years and his oft-told tales of vanquished Indians and outwitted holdup men were discounted by local listeners. His prosaic job as a railroad section hand did much to diminish belief in his stories of previous adventures. Some of his neighbors regarded him as a pathetic and deluded old man.

It was in 1927, when he was in his early seventies, that Deadwood Dick was born again. Bert Bell, an energetic and imaginative press agent for Deadwood’s Days of 76, acted as midwife in the rebirth of the fictional hero, and Dick Clarke became the character that he had impersonated for many years. Dick was given a buckskin suit, the use of a cabin in Pine Crest Park for his lifetime, a place of honor in every parade, and he was lionized with proper respect by the cult buffs of the Pioneer.

Robert Casey, in his book, The Black Hills, said that some of Dick’s disbelievers claimed he “didn’t know which end of the gun to hold away from him when he pulled the trigger.” Our family could prove this was not the case.

It was our privilege, when we moved to Whitewood in 1920, to live in the house next door to Deadwood Dick. Before his sudden rise to fame removed him from our town, we considered him a satisfactory neighbor, except for one alarming trait. He was much too quick on the trigger of his trusty rifle. The fact that the index finger on his right hand was missing did not slow his fast draw.

I was a senior in high school when I experienced the humbling result of Deadwood Dick’s fast draw. Mother had mentioned on one of Dick’s visits that a skunk had taken up residence under our screened porch. Dick assured her that he knew just how to take care of the problem.

Why he chose 8:30 the following morning to exterminate the animal, I shall never know, but just as I was leaving for school, a shot shattered the early morning stillness and my life was changed for many weeks thereafter. The skunk returned Dick’s fire with an odor that contaminated our neighborhood for blocks.

By the time I reached the Lemaster home, I knew that I would not be welcome in class, and I decided upon what I foolishly considered a quick fix. I had tied a 25-cent piece in my handkerchief for some notebook paper, so I dashed down to Gustin’s Drug Store for a quarter’s worth of perfume. Earl, in his haste to get rid of me, handed me a half pint of the cheapest, smelliest kind in stock, and held the door open for my departure.

I drenched myself with the malodorous liquid, and in my rush to reach class on time, I failed to realize the full horror of combining the essence of skunk with the overpowering scent of magnolia and musk. I tried to slip into the room without being noticed, but my odor preceded me and as I came through the door, all eyes in class were upon me. I raced to my seat amidst a concert of gagging and retching sounds, and Lorene Jay, who sat in front of me, promptly fainted. Professor Munson quickly appraised the situation and suggested that I leave the room immediately.

As I slunk away, totally disgraced, I noticed that Lorene had returned to consciousness, with many solicitous classmates in attendance. Tearfully, I stumbled home with anger eventually replacing my humiliation. I deplored the fact that no early-day combatants had sent a well-placed bullet or arrow to the heart of our hero, Deadwood Dick, and I plotted ways that I might accomplish the job they had left undone.

At home, I found my exasperated mother trying to air out the house that smelled worse even than I, before I added the putrid perfume. The unfortunate skunk left his imprint on our household for several weeks, but Deadwood Dick has lingered in my memory as he appeared that ill-fated morning so many years ago. Only my futile anger has faded, dissolved by laughter and nostalgia for those “good old days.”

Editor’s Note: Ruth McPherson, a Black Hills native who lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico, wrote this true tale of Deadwood Dick’s exploits for our July/August 1991 issue.

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Callihan’s Infernal Machine

By Roger Holtzmann

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the May/June 1990 issue of South Dakota Magazine, and also appeared in South Dakota’s Best Stories. To subscribe, call 800-456-5117.

Mr. Callihan’s homemade horseless carriage would be any museum’s pride and joy today. Unfortunately, he had a better sense for mechanics than for history. He dismantled it when he needed parts for another piece of machinery.

Edward Scott Callihan was a herald of the Machine Age, and like the prophets of old, he was not always the most welcome of men in his hometown of Woonsocket. He was constantly tinkering with all things mechanical, an eccentric, overflowing font of ideas — a man who didn’t have time to get along with his neighbors. His more outlandish ideas were an ongoing source of amusement around town, but even the locals were surprised when Callihan clattered into Woonsocket aboard a steam-powered, kerosene-fueled horseless carriage.

The year was 1884, 12 years before Henry Ford built his first automobile. With the exception of a few tinkering types here and there, few had ever seen such a thing. Callihan’s vehicle was a tricycle design, with a single, spoked wheel in front and two in the rear; he sat behind the steam boiler on a seat borrowed from a reaper with the steering levers firmly in hand. His two-cylinder contraption had a top speed of 15 miles per hour. The run from Callihan’s home near Artesian to Woonsocket, a distance of about 20 miles, took two hours. With a whistle and water gauge mounted on the dashboard, Callihan can even be credited with inventing options.

Callihan never went past fifth grade. His mechanical aptitudes were inborn, his inventions created through trial and error and gifted insight. He considered himself primarily a farmer, and most of his tinkering was devoted to finding ways to lessen the toil of farming. Callihan produced well-drilling rigs and threshing machines, even a wind-powered turning lathe, but nothing stirred the imagination like his horseless carriage. Horses reared and children charged about, enjoying the racket as Callihan pulled up to the general store. Among those who could do very well, thank you, without a revolution in transportation was the local constable, who ordered Callihan and his infernal machine off Main Street.

Callihan at the controls of his invention.

Shortly after the turn of the century Callihan produced his first gasoline-powered automobile. A group of neighbors, by that time accustomed to seeing him astride all manner of strange contraptions, gathered to watch his first test run. Callihan set off down the road, and upon his return the crowd began waving and clamoring for a ride. He waved back and yelled something, pointing at the machine, but he couldn’t be heard over the roar of the engine. For almost two hours he continued to circle the mystified group Finally the machine sputtered to a stop. As he dismounted, Callihan sheepishly explained that he had mounted the shut-off switch out of reach from his position in the driver’s seat.

Callihan’s original steam vehicle didn’t survive to take its rightful place in a museum as the first horseless vehicle in South Dakota. He took the wheels off and used them for a drag cart — which was very much in character, though it was a loss to history. Edward Scott Callihan lived to see ideas he pioneered become commonplace, the seeds of great fortunes by men in the automotive industry. He died on March 6, 1937 in Woonsocket.

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Joe Foss Remembered

By Dave Beckwith

For a 9-year-old newspaper boy in Pierre, balancing 50 to 100 papers on a bike was a challenge. One day in 1956 I hit a rut and crashed into the pavement. Newspapers scattered across the highway. With a badly skinned knee and embarrassed, I saw a black limousine coming straight at me. I scrambled to get out of harm’s way as the car screeched to a halt.

A man in a suit stepped out of the limousine and began picking up newspapers. I didn’t know he had been a fighter pilot in World War II or that he scored 26 personal aerial victories against the Japanese. I didn’t know he had been shot down over the Pacific or had received the Bronze Star, the Silver Star, the Purple Heart and the Congressional Medal of Honor.

I didn’t know that in 1941, he was the Officer of the Day, in charge of base security at Pensacola, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. He rode around its perimeter defending against Japanese invaders on the only transportation available…a bicycle.

Was this on his mind as he saw me take a spill in the middle of the airport highway? When he said,”Let me help pick up your papers,” I was in awe. Without fanfare, Joe Foss, the governor with a state to manage and a plane to catch, took a few minutes to help a kid with a skinned knee.

Editor’s Note: This story appeared in the July/August 2008 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117. The author, Dave Beckwith, was a retired California pastor who grew up in Pierre. His story later appeared in the book Chicken Soup for the Republican’s Soul.

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Baum’s Aberdeen Oz Was a Baseball Diamond

By Bernie Hunhoff

Editor’s Note: Some of the material in this story came from the Spring 2000 South Dakota History article”Wizard Behind the Plate: L. Frank Baum, the Hub City Nine, and Baseball on the Prairie” by Michael Patrick Hearn. This story is revised from its original appearance in the May/June 2001 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.

Beside the immigrant drawn by free homestead land, the other”typical” settler on the Dakota frontier of 1888 was young, restless and looking to escape the maddening crowd back east. Lyman Frank Baum was the second type.

Baum found room to breathe in Aberdeen. He opened Baum’s Bazaar, and stocked it with the non-essentials of life: fancy goods, sporting equipment, toys and amateur photography supplies, among other novelties. With creative advertisements that hinted at his hitherto hidden literary talent, he pulled his customers in:

At Baum’s Bazaar you’ll find by far
The finest goods in town
The cheapest, too, as you’ll find true
If you’ll just step around

Baum believed Aberdeen would embrace such a business, for it was no one-horse prairie pothole. The Hub City was progressive — there were 20 hotels, a library, four restaurants and a half-dozen newspapers in town. Electric light service and telephones were available. With the addition of Baum’s store, Aberdeen had everything a civilized town might want or need.

Except a baseball team. An ardent”crank,” as baseball fans were then known, Baum felt the lack keenly. Less than a year after he arrived in Aberdeen, L. Frank Baum helped bring a group of local businessmen together to field a team. They were so impressed with his enthusiasm and ideas they made him secretary, responsible for the club’s day-to-day affairs. A subscription of 300 shares sold out quickly, and the Hub City Nine were on their way.

Baum’s Bazaar supplied uniforms and other equipment for the team. Players earned $50 a month plus room and board, and as a further incentive, one of the owners offered a box of cigars to the first man who hit the ball over the center field fence. After playing the likes of Groton, Redfield and Claremont, Baum managed to lure the St. Paul Indians to town for what promised to be the game of the season. The Milwaukee railroad ran three extra trains to bring fans to town. Admission was raised from 25 to 50 cents, but after some grumbling, the fans came anyway.

There was heavy rain the night before, but game day dawned bright and sunny. After playing the powerful Indians tight in the morning, losing only 2-1, the locals were thumped 17-3 in the afternoon. It hardly mattered.”(The contests) gave the public an opportunity to see what good ball playing is,” observed the Aberdeen Daily News philosophically, and just as importantly, the big gate had replenished the team’s treasury. Baseball’s future in Aberdeen seemed assured.

Hub City baseball booster L. Frank Baum.

There was only one fly in the ointment that glorious summer. At some of the games,”there was fully one-half as many people perched on the fence and on buildings and elevations surrounding as there were within the enclosure,” grumbled the Daily News. That was robbing the team of needed revenue, and while the paper implored fans to cease this”most detestable practice” in general, it took particular aim at Lester J. Ives, who owned a house near the new baseball park. It seems the enterprising Mr. Ives was selling seats on his roof for ten cents, so people could watch the games.

“The antics of this individual…have thoroughly disgusted the people without exception,” fumed the editor.”He is evidently a baseball crank — but of the hog species — without shame or self-respect.”

To counter Ives and his cheap seat”hoodlums” the ball club erected a high latticework on top of the existing fence, to obscure their view. Lester responded by putting high chairs on the ridge of the roof, which forced the management to string canvas atop the lattice. At one point the dispute got so intense that team manager Henry Marple ran a hose from the railroad roundhouse and threatened to turn it on the people engaged in their”sneaking game of looking over the fence. (If) the powerful stream [should] knock Ives & Co. from the rooftops and result in their death, over thirty of the stockholders, all business men, have guaranteed the management to stand by them and pay funeral expenses if required.”

Cooler heads, including Baum’s, prevailed before it came to that.”Mr. Ives is not so black as he has been painted,” Baum wrote following a blistering attack in the newspaper, and the whole affair was eventually settled amicably.

At least some of the displaced rooftop fans, presumably, made their way back as regular, paying customers, but not enough of them. Though the Hub City Nine was an unqualified success on the field — they reigned as the unofficial champions of North and South Dakota after defeating the best teams in both states — the club lost $1,000 that year despite the team secretary’s unstinting effort.”If we have a baseball team next year,” a disillusioned Baum said after the season,”I am of the opinion that someone else will have to do the work.”

Sadly, L. Frank Baum’s novelty store fared no better. After barely more than a year in business, it was given over to his creditors. Baum termed this a”temporary embarrassment,” but it was also fortuitous in that it turned him closer toward his true calling. He bought a newspaper, renamed it the Saturday Pioneer, and was on his way. Aberdeen liked his lively writing style, but Baum’s career as a newspaper owner was all too brief: the Pioneer died shortly after its first birthday. Health problems, coupled with the stress and worry of being a business owner, caused him to move on once again. Baum took a newspaper job in Chicago, and Aberdeen’s soon-to-be-famous crank never returned.

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The Super Bowl of Drug Busts

By Bernie Hunhoff

Akaska is home to two dozen people until the walleye start biting, and then the population swells with anglers. The quiet village on the east shore of the Missouri is an hour’s drive from Pierre — but your DC-7 can make it in ten minutes, and you can land in the grasslands near the river. It’s been done.

On Super Bowl Sunday afternoon in 1980, some local men left their ice-fishing shacks on the Missouri and headed home to watch the game. About sundown a huge plane flew low over their heads. They saw it land about 3 miles away.

The fishermen followed with their pickups, thinking they’d seen a plane crash. When they neared the landing site, they saw a suspiciously undamaged plane. Two men in the plane said they had engine trouble; one of them muttered something about being low on fuel.

One of the Akaskans parked his pickup in front of the plane so it couldn’t take off, and another ducked around the back of the plane and let the air out of the tires. Soon the two strangers fled into the night.

Local authorities eventually arrested six men and seized $18 million worth of marijuana in the plane — the biggest drug bust in state history. Apparently the plane had flown to Colombia to rendezvous with local dealers. They intended to land during the Super Bowl when everyone would be watching television, but due to a strong south wind, they arrived early and were spotted.

This is one fish story they don’t have to embellish at the Sportsmen’s Bar in Akaska.

Editor’s note: This story originally appeared in South Dakota Curiosities: Quirky Characters, Roadside Oddities and Other Offbeat Stuff by Bernie Hunhoff. To order a copy, visit our online store or call us at 1-800-456-5117.

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Borglum’s Last Christmas

By Robert E. Hayes

Editor’s Note: The author, Bob Hayes, grew up in Keystone. He worked as a mining engineer for 40 years before retiring to his hometown, where he has been an active participant in history gatherings. This story comes from “Collected in the Alex Johnson Hotel,” a group of tales gathered at the West River History Conference that appeared in the July/August 2006 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.

Sculptor Gutzon Borglum often entertained his workers at Mount Rushmore with lavish dinners in the boarding house near the mountain or at the Alex Johnson Hotel in Rapid City, or at picnics at his Hermosa ranch.

My father, Edwald Hayes, ran the tramway up and down the mountain for eight years. As part of the Mount Rushmore family, I attended many of the parties. I especially remember the Christmas of 1940 in the old studio building at Rushmore, where Dad played Santa Claus. It was a role he would play in Keystone for more than 50 years.

Mother took my four-year-old sister, Judy, and me to the party. Of course, Dad did not go with us. When we got home, Judy was excited to see Daddy. She ran jubilantly to him shouting,”We were at Rushmore and we saw Santa Claus, and he had shoes just like yours!”

That party was perhaps Borglum’s last. He died the following March in a Chicago hospital.