Category: travel

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Poinsett’s Enduring Charm

By Chuck Cecil

Five generations of Hansons have enjoyed a cabin at Lake Poinsett – including (from right) Jeff Hanson, his daughter Katie, his mother, Elaine, and his granddaughter Hannah.


For centuries, Lake Poinsett, one of South Dakota’s largest natural lakes, has been a popular stop for visitors attracted by its beauty and its bounty.

Called”the lake of the prickly pears” by early-day visitors wary of the profuse cactus on its shores, it became Poinsett in 1838 to honor then Secretary of War Joel R. Poinsett, also known as the man who brought the Poinsettia plant to the U.S. from Mexico.

Stone and bone artifacts found along Poinsett’s shore and in nearby fields indicate the lake was a popular camping and hunting ground for over 13,000 years. Today it remains a captivating place for residents, visitors, campers, fishermen and hunters. On warm summer weekends, Lake Poinsett’s population may exceed four or five thousand, more than any community within 20 miles.

The deepest of Lake Poinsett’s sprawling 8,000 acres are 16 feet. It holds about 2.5 billion gallons of water, enough to provide wiggle room aplenty for game fish. The lake is one of the state’s largest natural bodies of water, competing for bragging rights with Waubay Lake and Lake Thompson. No one really knows which is largest because sizes vary with the weather.

Harlan Olson (shown with his great-grandfather’s skis from Norway) has a collection of artifacts and antiques that were used or found near the lake.

Most of the lake’s long history can be read from artifacts left by nomads, fur traders and homesteaders. Harlan Olson, a life-long lake resident born on a farm nestled against the lake’s south shore, has been harvesting the lake’s rich history for most of his 70 years.

Olson, a born raconteur and skilled writer, is the lake’s unofficial historian. He’s always had a knack for artifact hunting. Working his father’s fields as a boy, he was constantly spotting something of interest. He has been”hunting” ever since.

His impressive collection is in a museum at Lake Poinsett State Park. Tacked on to the park’s entry-information office, the museum was built in 2007 by the state Game, Fish & Parks Department. The Lake Poinsett Area Development Association donated $15,000, and more in sweat equity, to the museum. Over 2,500 people from 33 states and seven foreign countries visited last summer. As a volunteer museum guide, Olson uses the artifacts he finds as the commas and question marks to punctuate his narration about the lake through the centuries.

He begins with accounts of early nomadic lake visitors. He then segues to the Olson clan of homesteaders. Both nomads and Norwegians of a later time were all drawn to the region for many of the same reasons their fellow travelers migrate there today.

“It’s a Garden of Eden for amateur archeologists like me,” the soft-spoken Olson says.”I can visualize the life that was here thousands of years ago.”

Arrowheads from Olson’s collection.

While the stone and bone objects illustrate time’s distant chapters, more recent Lake Poinsett eras are represented by rusted rifle barrels, a gnarled cavalry spur bent useless by some long ago force, colorful trading beads and other objects lost in the swirling dust of the fur trading days and the hardscrabble times of Dakota Territorial settlement.

Visiting the museum is an interactive, hands-on experience. Visitors can handle stone weapons and tools, heft a mammoth leg bone or gently poke around in a bin of sand in which Olson has buried an array of objects such as authentic Native American arrowheads.

Museum visitors can also participate in Olson’s woolly mammoth spear-throwing challenge. He hauls a mammoth-like target around in his pickup truck (it isn’t nearly as large or as fearsome as the real thing that once tramped and trumpeted through the area). He also crafted an atlatl, a type of sling used by mammoth hunters for greater spear-throwing leverage. Both skill and luck are necessary for a kill, even on Olson’s inert model. He awards few success certificates each season. Olson jokes that the state requires no mammoth license.

Lake Poinsett’s timbered shores have always been inviting habitat for waterfowl and wildlife, although the elk herd reported at the lake in an 1882 story in the Brookings Press may have been the area’s last. The October 1885 issue reported that L. C. Dewing, S. Lyon, C. W. Collier and a Mr. Ripley returned to Brookings from a successful hunt on Lake Poinsett with 205 ducks and prairie chickens.

Revelers enjoy lake camaraderie at the Arlington Beach Resort.

Poinsett and seven nearby feeder lakes were scooped out by the grinding underside of a ponderous glacier thousands of years ago. Those feeder lakes have remained full the past two years, and Lake Poinsett residents have dealt with flooding.

Connected to Lake Poinsett on the north is another body of water with the oxymoronic title of Dry Lake. It is located at the Stone Bridge on Highway 28, although the historic 1883 stone crossing has been replaced by stressed concrete trusses. Charley and Ida Nitteberg’s renowned Stone Bridge Resort opened nearby in 1906, and the Lakeview Casino dance hall moved to the site later. The dance hall was a cool haven for visitors who danced to the music of Big Tiny Little, Lawrence Welk and other big bands.

The resort, later operated by Nitteberg’s children, had a fleet of 50 wooden rowboats for rent. Its 15 small cabins were booked every summer and even into the fall months, when visiting hunters headquartered at the lake. It’s all gone now, but the stories linger and Stone Bridge remains synonymous with the Nitteberg family.

To the west of Lake Poinsett is Lake Albert, located opposite a wide isthmus. As Poinsett’s few remaining lake frontages are being claimed, Lake Albert’s shoreline is experiencing increased development. This lake was named to honor Colonel John Abert, chief of topographical engineers. Over time, misspellings eventually changed Fremont’s Lake Abert to Lake Albert.

A recreation area on the south shore has more than 100 campsites.

The recent development of homes on Lake Albert was an impetus for expanding Lake Region Golf Course to 18 holes. Ron Cooley, manager and golf professional for 27 years, has seen club membership grow to over 200.

The Albert-Poinsett isthmus is the most commercialized area on the lake. North-south Highway 81 becomes a four-lane down the isthmus, skirting past three resorts. Another brand new resort is located on the lake’s south side at Arlington Beach.

Miles away on the lake’s east side is the Dakota Ringneck Lodge where farmers Ken and Ellen Hansen cater to hunters. The Hansens also own other nearby hunting lodges and continue to farm along the lake.

Most of the lake’s shoreline is in Hamlin County, but Brookings County claims a sandy-shored sliver on the south side. Except for a few low-lying spots, most of the shoreline is filled with lake cabins and year-round homes. Over 700 residences, many wedged cheek by jowl, line the lake. Some range up to a million dollars or more in price. Hamlin County Assessor Renee Buck estimates total assessed value of lake property in her county at about $64 million. Joyce Dragseth, Brookings County assessor, places lake property in Brookings County at about $11 million.

All that progress brings problems. In the late 1990s a few lake residents tried to form a legal municipality. The idea raised some cane and more eyebrows and soon was soundly defeated in an election.

The most pressing need is more sanitary sewer systems, says long-time lake development supporter Bob Westall. About a third of the lake homes have sewer service, and although the task of organizing other districts and finding funding is daunting, work continues toward a goal of sewage districts all around the lake. Westall serves on the lake development association with Marv Nofziger and Frank Felix, who also edits the association’s newsletter for its 450 members. Felix is a retired banker from Arlington who lives on the lake year-round.

Jody Lemme (with wife Jan) grew up by Poinsett and owned a boat before he had a car. He bought a trailer house on the south shore when he graduated from high school and he has expanded it throughout the years. Their home is now a gathering place for friends from near and far.

Nofziger and his wife head for Arizona before the snow flies. After retirement as an executive with an office product company, Nofziger and his wife left their home of 33 years in Fresno and moved to South Dakota to be closer to their son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren in Sioux Falls. They selected Lake Poinsett as their summer home because of its proximity to Sioux Falls, but they also liked its beauty, wildlife and golf course.

Nofziger, Westall, Felix and the other board members meet monthly during the summer to work on the problems of lake living. They are developing a website, and they continue to monitor sewage system opportunities, work for better roads and fight the never-ending war against aquatic and noxious weeds. There’s talk of establishing an official weather-reporting site at the golf course, and the board wants the state to install a handicapped fishing and boating dock.

All of the five or six towns within 15 or 20 miles of Lake Poinsett benefit economically from the lake community, but nearby Estelline and Lake Norden are especially blessed.

“It’s huge,” says Tammy Krein of Estelline, speaking of the business lake residents bring to her town. She and husband Ken own the Country Corner at a strategic intersection in the town of 650, where famous author Hayden Carruth edited the local newspaper in the 1880s. The Country Corner is a favorite stop for the lake-bound traveling I-29 from Sioux Falls, Brookings and places in between.

“Our local customers are very loyal, but without the lake customers business would be much different,” Krein says.”They might also stop for groceries at Ward’s Shopping Center, then stop here.”

Across main street from Ward’s is the Red Carpet Lounge, a popular watering hole and eating establishment. Business picks up about 4 p.m. on summer afternoons when lake residents drop in. The Red Carpet and other establishments are also busy when warmly dressed fishermen stop to get supplies and relax after a cold day on the ice.

Don Lappe and his granddaughters planted a vineyard near the lake.

Business is much the same at the other end of the lake in a little town of 500 called Lake Norden. Situated next to a lake of the same name, Lake Norden is the home of South Dakota’s Amateur Baseball Hall of Fame. There’s also a unique toy museum on Main Street, a gift of the late Don Christman, an area farmer.

While the economic impact of Lake Poinsett is tremendous for Lake Norden, it also got a huge boost of cash and confidence in 2002 when a Davisco Foods International cheese plant came to town.

Jeff and Sharon Jager, owners of Lake Norden’s Jager’s Grocery Store, have reached out to Lake Poinsett residents with a store on the lake’s west shore in the Siouxland Resort building.”So far, so good,” she says.

Lake Norden businessman Rusty Antonen says Lake Norden’s summer youth baseball and softball programs draw youngsters spending summers on the lake with their families. It was Rusty’s father, the late Ray Antonen, who envisioned the South Dakota Amateur Baseball Hall of Fame and raised most of the cash to build it.

Many lake dwellers also attend church in Lake Norden, as they do in Estelline.”Poinsett people are part of our community,” Antonen says,”and people in town can certainly tell by the traffic when the summer season ends.”

Lake Poinsett has enjoyed steady growth since the days when Native Americans following the buffalo carefully walked its shores to avoid prickly pear ambushes. The buffalo and cactus are gone, but Lake Poinsett’s inviting beauty still reaches out to capture today’s nomads who come to enjoy what it has always had to offer.

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

Poinsett’s Wind(less) Festival

By John Andrews

Most would think wind is a necessary ingredient for the Lake Poinsett Wind Festival, but when pilots arrive for the event every June, wind is the last thing they hope to find.

“If anything it should be called the Anti-Wind Festival, because wind will wipe it out,” explains coordinator Dwayne LaFave.

The festival brings pilots from South Dakota and surrounding states to the Hamlin County lake. General aviation planes and helicopters often participate, but most aircraft are ultralights, particularly powered parachutes, or PPCs

A PPC includes a cart with an engine for lift and a chute. They fly low and slow, from 500 to 1,500 feet off the ground and around 25 to 35 mph. Flights usually last between one and two hours.

LaFave says winds need to be less than 10 mph for ultralight pilots to get off the ground. In blustery South Dakota, sometimes that’s a tall order.”One year we were there for three days and never flew a minute,” he says.”We need to fly when the wind is working for us. Just about all the flying happens within three hours of dark on either end of the day.”

When wind conditions aren’t right, pilots take aviation refresher courses offered by other local pilots and instructors from Lake Area Technical Institute in Watertown or just swap stories and enjoy the camaraderie.

Traditionally the festival is held in fields between Lake Poinsett and Lake Albert. Pilots also make use of a conveniently located airstrip owned by local pilot Jerry Runia on the east side of Lake Poinsett. Spectators are welcome, and a few pilots offer rides.

“The lakes are such a nice area, we mostly just fly around and see what’s there,” LaFave says.”All pilots are a little extroverted at heart, so we tend to find people and just be there for them to enjoy.”

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Buffalo Ridge Resort

Gary’s School for the Blind is now a top-notch resort

By Paul Higbee

Historic buildings and the small-town setting give Buffalo Ridge a unique ambiance. The property is also attracting new business enterprises.

Long ago American Indians carried rocks to a designated spot on a hillside, west of present-day Gary. No one knows which native people they were, nor in which century they lived. With the rocks they created a great replica of an arrow. Does their artwork mark a burial ground, or did it perhaps point to a gulch flush with game? Roger Baer, active in the Gary Historical Association, has done some investigation and thinks the arrow could be a kind of compass indicating the region’s prevailing winds — northwest to southeast, and southeast to northwest.

If so, the arrow has proven strangely symbolic in the 21st century. Wind is a powerful force in Gary today, having delivered employment at renewable energy companies here: Broadwind Energy, Dakota Wind, Airstream Renewables. Wind industry profits even saved the original South Dakota School for the Blind campus in Gary. Thanks to Joe Kolbach, owner of Dakota Wind, the campus was transformed in 2009 to become the Buffalo Ridge Resort and Business Center.

Satisfied guests like the quiet setting, an atmosphere that feels like a bed and breakfast, a large patio set up for barbeques, and 50 pretty acres. Kolbach brought back the campus lake, which is actually a damming of Lac Qui Parle Creek — the only eastern South Dakota stream rapid and cold enough to support trout. Guests say they can sense history in the stately buildings, especially in the web of tunnels that visually impaired students once walked daily between buildings.

In the 1870s, when only a handful of people lived on this glacial ridge that runs along the South Dakota and Minnesota border, the ridge offered good soils, stands of burr oak and other timber, and springs feeding clear, rapid creeks. Their setting, early residents believed, was perfect as a welcoming gateway to Dakota Territory. They sprang into action and built a town as the Winona-St. Peter railroad extended its rails west into the territory in 1872. First the fledgling community went by the name Headquarters because it was where the railroad based its construction operation, or by State Line because it sat right on the border. Minnesota was the only state in the equation then, because South Dakota statehood wouldn’t be achieved for nearly two more decades. The name Gary stuck after postal agent H.B. Gary delivered the first U.S. mail by train in autumn, 1872. By 1873 regularly scheduled trains were carrying passengers and freight.

By 1889, the year of statehood, some 650 people called Gary home. Local historian Eldeen Baer says brick making was an emerging industry then, as was a form of tourism. Hunters rode the rails into Gary for waterfowl and prairie chickens prior to the pheasant’s introduction to South Dakota.

In 1894 Doane Robinson, future state historian, became publisher of the newspaper, the Gary Interstate. As state historian in the 1920s he would be credited for first proposing a mountain sculpture in the Black Hills. In the 1890s, on the opposite end of the state from where the Rushmore carvings would take form, Robinson proposed a much different scheme. After Gary lost county seat status to Clear Lake in 1895, Robinson began advocating for the state to commit to a South Dakota School for the Blind, to be built on former county courthouse property a couple blocks north of Gary’s business district. As time would prove, Robinson possessed a knack for pushing big projects toward fruition. Ground was broken for the school’s construction in 1899 and students were on campus in 1900. Over the next 25 years, in addition to the original administration/classroom building, girls’ and boys’ dorms were built, along with a power plant connected to a laundry. Also vital to the school’s operation were a barn and other agricultural outbuildings, recalls Baer, who worked in the school’s kitchen in the 1940s. On-site crops, an apple orchard, cows, pigs, and chickens made for healthy, home-grown meals.

George Selken of Sioux Falls was among the students who lived at the school in the 1940s and’50s, when enrollment averaged 40 or so.”I was there nine months a year for 12 years,” he says.”The way they’ve brought it back is fabulous. It blows my mind, but of course a lot of the students aren’t alive to ever visit it.”

That’s because the school moved its services from Gary to Aberdeen nearly half a century ago, in 1961. Selken says he can count most of his living schoolmates on his fingers. One is Dorothy Fiala, class of 1953, now residing in Browns Valley, Minn. She attended the resort’s grand opening, came back for a barbeque in August, then returned in September with her husband, five adult children, and three grandchildren. It was important, she thought, for her children to fully understand her years at Gary.

Fiala lost her sight at age 11 after contracting both polio and the measles. Just months later she left the family farm near Sisseton for a new world at Gary.”Big changes, of course,” she remembers.”Living in a dorm, the rules of the school, an exact time to be up every morning. Everything was regimented and I came to like that. The structure was a big help in getting my life together.”

She recalls the regimentation in detail: up in the morning at 6:30, lined up for breakfast at 6:50, standing next to her chair in the dining hall at 6:57, taking her seat at 7. Assembly began at 8, followed by classes at 8:30. Girls took walks around the block clockwise, boys counterclockwise. Younger children were in bed at 8 and older ones at 10.

Not that there weren’t whispered conversations after lights out. As would be expected, students found any number of ways to occasionally bend or break rules. Some had favorite hiding places near the school where they’d go to smoke. At least once a group of boys climbed the Gary water tower. As for the tunnels, Fiala laughs,”Thank goodness those walls can’t talk.”

After the school relocated, part of the campus served as a privately owned retirement center for several years. But the buildings were mostly abandoned after 1980. Once in a while, kids broke in to look around, as did raccoons and squirrels. Human visitors started a campfire in the old school auditorium and charred the floor. The outdoors had also changed dramatically after Lake Elsie was filled in, following a drowning soon after the school closed.

So, on a given day, the campus could see vacationers checked into some of the resort’s 19 guest rooms, along with students training across the yard (or through the tunnels) at the administration/classroom building. Meanwhile a meeting could be underway in the former school auditorium, now called the ballroom, and an outdoor wedding could be happening alongside Lake Elsie.

EDITOR’S NOTE ñ This story is revised from the Jan/Feb 2010 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order this back issue or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.

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Life in Isabel

By Bernie Hunhoff

Even without a school, life will go on in Isabel, South Dakota.

Other South Dakota towns have heard the last bell, seen the last yellow school bus and cheered the last touchdown. But life goes on; the latest example is Isabel in northern West River. Isabel’s school closed in May of 2009 when five teens received diplomas, but this is still a town.

Isabel remains a commercial center in Dewey County, with two farm implement dealers and a grain elevator, a weekly newspaper, medical clinic, grocery, hardware store and other establishments. Isabel may also have the state’s senior barber: Marvin Bertsch has been trimming hair for more than 50 years. Ryan Maher, a young Republican state senator, runs Sparky’s Bar and Grill. He decorated the walls with blow-ups of historic Isabel pictures. Sparky’s has a full menu and the town’s favorite dessert — caramel nut apple pie.

Artist and writer Jack Reich still paints and creates novels from his wheelchair in a modest mobile home on the north side of town. Born without the use of his arms, he learned to drive and earned his way as a salesman until he fell asleep while driving near Ipswich and hit a tree. His wife, Faith, was killed in the accident and he spent a year in a hospital. Now he can stand again but he can’t walk, so he spends his days writing western novels on a Dell computer and painting — all by using his mouth and a pointer to move the keys, and a mouth-held brush to paint. His last novel was 46,000 words.

“You do what you have to do and you don’t worry about what’s wrong with you,” Reich explains.”What’s wrong with you is not important. That’s the underlying truth. You do what you have to do.”

He learned that lesson while growing up on a ranch south of town by the Moreau River. He studied art at South Dakota State University in Brookings and then drifted back to Isabel. He would have ranched despite his arms but the place”wasn’t big enough to support dad” so he made a living as a salesman and painted Old West scenes as a sideline. He also served as the town’s mayor for 18 years.

“There are not a lot of young families, and that’s why the school had to close,” he says. But the writer says the lack of a school mustn’t detract from Isabel’s other redeeming qualities.”There isn’t anybody in town who hasn’t lived here a year or more who doesn’t know everybody. And everybody helps everybody. The guy across the street repairs small engines. That’s how it works in a small town; there’s a sharing of human resources.”

Isabel also maximizes its architectural resources. The town of 200 people uses a handsome stucco city hall built in the 1930s by WPA workers. It is a relic of the Great Depression both inside and out, but a new handicap ramp is evidence that city officials aren’t ready to abandon it. Violet Rost runs a library in an even older community hall.

Les and Marcia Lindskov and their four sons have also restored and converted an old ranch house into a historic hunting lodge. The Lindskovs operate a Case-IH farm dealership and a ranch, but they still find time for the new enterprise. The Veal family built the house in 1916 at an old stagecoach stop — a noteworthy fact in a region that values western history. The Veals bought lumber from New York when the house was created, and it became one of the grandest homes in Corson County. However, it was unoccupied for 25 years before the Lindskovs put it on wheels and moved it to their ranch just north of Isabel.

Now known as Firesteel Creek Lodge, the camp draws hunters, wedding parties and family reunions throughout the year. Pheasant hunters pay $2,695 for full-service, three-day hunts.”Yes, we were busy enough already,” says Les,”but we’re meeting the nicest people you’d ever find. And we’re creating some employment.” Guests come to hunt, but many find it just as enjoyable to hang around the lodge and enjoy the clean air, the quiet atmosphere and the views of Firesteel Creek.”We’ve had some who’ll hunt a day or two and then just hang around the lodge.”

Barb Begeman, publisher of the weekly Isabel Dakotan, wants hunters and other visitors to understand that the school closed because of quantity rather than quality.”You must know that Isabel had a good school with good teachers. We simply didn’t have the number of students. One class had two students. Other classes had four. How can you run sports, which parents thrive on, with those kinds of numbers?”

A school closing is an emotional and practical setback. Some teachers move away. Businesses lose sales. Much of the town’s entertainment and culture disappears. And there is one less reason for people to live there.

“Who is going to want to move to a town with no school?” asks Begeman.”Most women like curb and gutter and a Wal-mart a couple of blocks away. And they surely want a school.”

On the other hand, few towns can attract people who will pay $2,695 for three days of prairie solitude.

EDITOR’S NOTE — This story is revised from the Nov/Dec 2009 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order this back issue or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.

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Nine Mile Lake

Shaped by glaciers. Rounded by time. Preserved by the people of Marshall County.

Story and photography by James E. Johnson

Nine Mile Lake’s unique shoreline inspired James Johnson‘s photography and other visual projects.

As an artist I was smitten with the Marshall County topography of high hills surrounding secluded Nine Mile Lake when I arrived in the valley many years ago.

At first glance, the 282-acre lake seems untouched by civilization. But its calming landscape has a history of utopian development based on a concept of keeping the area as green as possible. That goal was ahead of its time in the 1960s, when a group of investors developed building covenants that are in place today.

Still, that’s not too much to ask for a lake whose history can be traced back 20,000 years, when glaciers pressed today’s topography. Huge chunks of ice were left behind as the glacier retreated. The ice slowly melted, slumping the land and leaving large round holes that became northeast South Dakota’s glacial lakes. There are more than 62 such lakes in Marshall County alone.

French explorers came in the early 1800s and called the rolling ocean of grass and wildflowers”prairie,” meaning meadow. Joseph Nicollet coined the term”coteau des prairies,” which is still used today.

Nine Mile Lake was named in territorial days because of its distance from Fort Sisseton, where soldiers were stationed to protect settlers. Other nearby waters are called Two Mile Lake, Four Mile Lake and Six Mile Lake. The names aren’t fancy, romantic or quaint, but their practicality fits the local culture.

The place has become my perennial source of inspiration — my wellspring.

EDITOR’S NOTE — This story is revised from the May/June 2011 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order this back issue or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.

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The Old Swimming Hole

Warm water and rare plants make Cascade Falls a unique place to take a dip.

Story by Katie Hunhoff
Photography by Stephen Gassman

Artesian springs fill Cascade Creek with constantly warm and clear water. Photo by Stephen Gassman.

Today most swimming holes are concrete squares with colorful umbrellas and rows of plastic chairs. But South Dakota still has some natural places and one of the best is 8 miles south of Hot Springs at Cascade Falls, where murmuring falls, lush foliage and warm turquoise-colored pools create a movie-like atmosphere in the middle of Fall River County.

The clean, clear water of the falls originates about two miles upstream at Cascade Springs, where a series of six artesian springs feed ever-warm, 67-degree water into Cascade Creek. The water’s temperature creates thick vegetation around the springs, creek and falls. Rare plants are found there, including a fern, prairie gentian and orchid that are nonexistent in the rest of South Dakota.

Cascade Falls is the only place along the creek recommended for swimming.”The water isn’t too fast and you can find different depths of water,” explains Cindy Reed, who lives with her husband Marc Lamphere in an old building that was the Allen Bank in the town of Cascade.”People feel safe about their kids being there. It has the added nuance of being a historical public swimming hole for well over one hundred years.”

Early settlers at Cascade hoped their village would become a popular destination for warm mineral baths and spas, but leaders of nearby Hot Springs plotted Cascade’s demise by directing traffic away from the town. Photo by Stephen Gassman.

Cascade was founded in the 1880s between Cascade Springs and the falls. Town fathers hoped it would become a thriving spa destination due to the confluence of the warm mineral water and a railroad through the Hills. By the turn of the century, Cascade had 50 businesses, a post office and 400 residents. Fred Evans, an ambitious businessman who owned much of the land around Hot Springs, put a quick end to Cascade’s growth, along with the economic crash which eliminated a lot of the town’s financial support. Evans was determined that Hot Springs would have the only mineral spa in the Hills, and he even went to the expense of paying a stage coach driver to not stop at Cascade.”The age of the stage passed, the railroad went in to Hot Springs and Cascade withered and died,” wrote journalist Jerry Wilson after a visit to the valley.

J.G. and J.H. Keith, husband and wife, were founders of Cascade who remained there decades after everyone else had given up and left town. The Keiths owned much of the land around the former town and their heirs eventually donated Cascade Falls and Springs to the Forest Service, believing them to be so special they should be shared with the public.

If you go

Cascade Falls Picnic Grounds is 8 miles south of Hot Springs on Highway 71. The area got a makeover recently by the U.S. Forest Service. There is a small parking lot, restrooms and a picnic area. An established trail and steep stairway connects the parking lot to the falls. The area is ideal for swimming or picnicking, but watch for poison ivy on the banks of the creek.

EDITOR’S NOTE — This story is revised from the July/Aug 2010 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order this back issue or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.

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Backpacking Sage Creek

By Carl Johnson

Photographer Carl Johnson traversed the Badlands for three days without a human encounter.


Badlands National Park is a pleasant, scenic loop away from fast-paced Interstate 90 in South Dakota. Most visitors enjoy short hikes among the formations or fossils on designated trails in the Cedar Pass area. But, unknown to many, the Badlands also offers a superb backpacking opportunity in Sage Creek Wilderness. During Carl Johnson’s month-long visit photographing the park as an artist-in-residence he took a three-day trip to explore the area. Here are excerpts from his field journal.

May 1

There is no designated trail system in the Sage Creek Wilderness; you merely need a compass, a map, and a desire to explore. At 11 a.m., I started at the Deer Haven check-in point, just behind the picnic area on the Conata Road. Deer Haven is a ledge of grass and thick juniper above the main floor of the Conata Basin. I decided to go through rather than around Deer Haven, so I checked the contour lines on my map and surveyed the land for the best way up. Each time I found myself traversing areas with abundant mule deer tracks. I followed them because I figured they knew the terrain better. Their trail led me to a clay scree field, where I crawled up about 10 feet on all fours.

Once over the top, I headed west. There were a lot of drainages coming down through the Sage Creek area, all flowing where I wanted to go, essentially forming the beginning of Sage Creek. Again, I noticed game trails, now a mixture of mule deer, bison and bighorn. To find the best way through the drainages, I followed the trails. Without fail, every time I needed to cross a drainage, creek or gorge, the game trail provided the easiest path. Where I had to cross an active stream, the game trail always led through the shallowest point.

I stopped for lunch atop a small hill adorned with interesting formations, some of which looked like pyramids made of volcanic ash. I had my first bison encounter as I photographed what looked like a crumbling wall from an old city, a geological formation called a clastic dike. The bison stared at me, and I talked to him, letting him know that I was just passing through and wouldn’t bother him. After leaving him I saw something new — several scattered rock beds of quartz and sedimentary rocks. I encountered another bison as I entered greener areas, closer to where I wanted to pitch my tent for the evening. I finally selected a spot, about six miles from where I started, on the edge of some rock beds. The sky was getting cloudy and the wind had picked up. I made dinner, eager to have a hot meal and hoping the weather would change. It was still cloudy when I finished dinner, so I waited inside the tent, taking notes on the day’s trip. The sky opened just before sunset. I worked furiously with my camera, and then retired to read my book.

May 2

Johnson’s journal describes a day’s changing light as the sun rises and moves across the Badlands sky: “It washed across the landscape like a painter’s brush, selecting pastels to adorn the scene.”

When I arose at 5 a.m., the skies had cleared and there was a spirited exchange of howls and yips from coyotes to the west. I grabbed my camera gear and headed to a small hill I identified the previous day as a good spot to catch the morning light. In the distance, I spied three bull bison sitting on the same grass ledge where I saw them yesterday. There was another large bull about a half mile to the west — grazing in the middle of my planned path. Just before the sun crested, I saw a pink glow on the ridges and formations to the south. As the light climbed, it washed across the landscape like a painter’s brush, selecting pastels to adorn the scene. I kept working with the light until its magical golden hue disappeared, then I went back to camp, made breakfast and was on the trail by 7:50.

Fortunately, the large bull was no longer on my path, and I found myself meandering along a landscape shaped by drainages and a creek that frequently changes course. Eventually I left grassy mesas and a stark, white clay terrain, littered with rock piles and slides, washed and wiped over the centuries by flash flooding. Bizarre pedestal formations popped up intermittently, a reminder of the strangeness of this place.

I finally got around the end of an east-west formation I had paralleled all day and worked my way southwest. I found myself in the middle of what appeared to be the bison freeway. Sets of heavily traveled trails, exhibiting tracks from hundreds of animals, littered this gumbo clay area. By 1 p.m., I found a flat, grassy table — almost a small mesa — about 30 feet wide, 60 feet long, and 50 feet high. Even though it was early, I had found a good spot and did not feel like hiking in the heat. I set up camp, took off my boots and crawled inside my tent.

I loved the rocks on that table. There were several large and unusual boulders covered with a variety of lichens, predominantly a vivid orange. As the evening concluded, I played the same song and dance with the skies. From hot, sunny and clear, it had turned cool and windy with thick, scattered clouds. I worked with those clouds and found some breaks of sunlight to photograph the landscape. I retired my camera for the evening and went inside to read. Sleep came as I lay there, completely alone in this broad landscape, listening to the soft sounds of the winds, accented by the occasional yip or howl of a coyote.

May 3

Realizing that light would not hit as early here as yesterday, I slept in until 5:15 a.m., and made breakfast while waiting for sunrise. Again, it was a clear morning with nary a sign of clouds, and I enjoyed the rare opportunity for solitude in a majestic setting.

By 7:05, I was on the trail toward Sage Creek Campground. Within a mile of my final destination, I stopped for a drink. Soon I realized that I was looking upon a large prairie dog town. What clued me in was the cacophony of back and forth chattering among the mounds. After my snack, I passed through the town and noticed that one prairie dog must have picked a bad time to come out of his hole — bones were scattered around one of the openings. I took some photos, and then hiked to a small grassy hill, where I spooked several grouse. The encounter highlights how well camouflaged these birds are; I could not see them at all until they flushed and headed southwest.

I was on my final approach. There was a hill I had been hiking toward for the last few miles that I thought was the last rise before the campground. I was about to discover the accuracy of my navigational skills. Around noon I reached the top of the hill, looked down to the left and saw the campground right where it should be. Then I saw two large bull bison in the middle of my path. I gave them a wide berth, watching them as they watched me, and then crossed the creek using a game trail that crossed a shallow, gravel bar area. I noticed people camping, so I chatted with them while waiting for my ride. In three days, I had not encountered anyone. Then at the end of my journey I found a man and his son enjoying the quiet and solitude that other visitors miss. I recommend taking time to do what 90 percent of park visitors do not — get off the road. You will discover a Badlands you have never visited.

EDITOR’S NOTE ñ This story is revised from the May/June 2010 issue of South Dakota Magazine. Carl Johnson was the Badlands National Park artist-in-residence in May of 2009. He lives in Anchorage, Alaska with his wife, Michelle. Visit Carl’s website to see more of his photography. To order this back issue or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.