Posted on October 29, 2026 by john — Leave a comment

Finishing Crazy Horse

Are the mountain carvers preparing to set a completion date?

By Paul Higbee

Seventy-seven years into sculpting at Crazy Horse Memorial, there was a burst of technical developments in 2025 perhaps unparalleled in previous carving seasons. The advances — driven by young, confident, whip-smart South Dakotans — might even bring the memorial’s completion date into sight.

On a cool Black Hills summer morning atop Thunderhead Mountain, more than a mile above sea level, a dozen workers assembled to continue cutting the massive figure of the 19th century Lakota legend from the mountain’s granite cap. They are experts in wielding power drills, rock saws, hand chisels, jet-fuel torches, and also at fabricating unique tools suited to this type of sculpture.

A new Liebherr 1000 EC-H tower crane was embedded in 8 feet on concrete by the Morrow Equipment Company. The robotic arm reaches 263 feet in all directions — the very same distance as Crazy Horse’s outstretched left arm.

More likely than ever, answers Caleb Ziolkowski, the director of mountain carving. He believes the world’s largest sculpture could be finished in decades, not centuries as observers a generation ago sometimes projected. Caleb, 41, believes the work may be mostly done in his lifetime. Children alive today almost certainly will see its completion.

Caleb and his brother, Vaughn, who is three years younger and in charge of day-to-day mountain operations, are grandsons of original Crazy Horse sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski. Their grandfather worked on the massive carving for more than three decades. He died in 1982, before Caleb and Vaughn were born.

Korczak was such a big personality that some observers saw the project as a one-man show. However, the charismatic artist always answered to a board of directors. The Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation has remained a constant force and today’s CEO, Whitney Rencountre II, 46, comes with a background unlike any of his predecessors. He grew up on the Crow Creek Reservation in central South Dakota, a son of Indian Country who hails from, as Crazy Horse famously said, “where my dead lie buried.”

Even before Rencountre took charge in 2022, the mountain was quieting. Absent is a sound that many recall from Korczak’s era: blasting to remove rock. Sometimes there were ceremonial night blasts, with the public invited, that marked special occasions. “But we haven’t used explosives for the past nine years,” Caleb says.

Today’s scientific methods differ greatly from Korczak’s approach. He often labored alone, utilizing hardened muscles, explosives, jackhammers and a bulldozer. The 2025 crew put that old-school hardware to use, too, but this spring Caleb also spent several weeks learning to operate the remote-controlled crane and a German-made robotic arm. The latter will be programmed for carving tasks in spots difficult for humans to reach and for repetitive work that could be painfully mundane for people. The only drawback may be that robotics and some other advanced technologies don’t function well when temperatures fall below 40 degrees. That limits full carving activity at Thunderhead Mountain to about 120 days per year.

Korczak was thought of as a self-taught artist. But Caleb has learned that his grandfather was always open to learning evolving technologies and to outside expertise. Technology development, then and now, “has always been market-driven,” Caleb says. “And when it comes to mountain carving, we’re a market of one.”

Still, there are other endeavors that parallel what mountain carvers do. In the mid-1970s, civil engineer Gary Renner surveyed Ziolkowski land in Custer County. He got to know Korczak and mentioned how engineers use coordinate geometry and surveyors when planning earth moving projects. Renner thought that system would work for calculating rock removal for the sculpture, too. Years later he demonstrated his idea successfully on the mountain and “basically gave the Crazy Horse carvers a new tool, and they ran with it,” Renner says.

The 2025 mountain carving team included (back row, from left) Isaac Parsons, Malcolm Guest, Warren Nash, Brady Rose, Jesse Wheeler, Evan Bennett, Caleb Ziolkowski and Chaytan Palmier; (front row, from left) Vaughn Ziolkowski, Kayden Varland, Kenneth Kiser, Cody Castelan, Skyler McGiveron and Joey Meboe.

Caleb and Vaughn’s grandfather designed the carving in the 1940s — Crazy Horse astride a steed and pointing to lands his people lost to Euro-American geographic expansion. But Korczak always knew he would struggle and compromise as the mountain revealed its geology. “That hasn’t changed,” Caleb says. “I’m honoring my grandfather’s vision and the laws of physics.”

Korczak set the project up for perpetual financial struggle by proclaiming that it would never accept government money. The foundation relies on visitor admissions and individual and corporate support. In 2025, the year the term DOGE entered the American vocabulary, that commitment never looked wiser. After all, struggles “are part of the part of the DNA of this place,” Caleb says.

Millions of Americans first caught a glimpse of the burly, bearded Korczak Ziolkowski, and heard his Boston-accented voice, in June of 1961 when he appeared on a national TV game show called “To Tell the Truth” and explained his dream to a celebrity panel. Television and newspaper reporters, eager for rugged Black Hills adventure, beat a path to his mountain north of Custer. They watched Korczak carve, heard stories about his rough upbringing in Boston, and learned of his role as an assistant to Mount Rushmore sculptor Gutzon Borglum in 1939.

Caleb has researched his grandfather’s life and that of the significant Lakota chief Standing Bear, who believed Crazy Horse (Tasunke Witko) best represented unwavering resistance to encroaching settlement in the 19th century. “I don’t believe Standing Bear had much interest in the arts until he saw what Gutzon Borglum was doing at Mount Rushmore,” Caleb says. “By 1931 he was in contact with Borglum about a possible Crazy Horse mountain carving.”

Rushmore kept Borglum occupied for the rest of his life. When Standing Bear read how Borglum’s assistant, Ziolkowski, had won first prize in a sculpture competition at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, he approached Ziolkowski and found him intrigued. Others were less enthused, including U.S. Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes. Caleb recounts that Ickes listened to Standing Bear’s vision and replied, “Those are lovely words, but I don’t like my mountains carved.”

Standing Bear persevered even as his sculptor of choice left for World War II combat in Europe. At some point a government official advised Standing Bear to consider Porcupine Butte, between the Black Hills and Pine Ridge. “Standing Bear said no, that Crazy Horse gave his life in defending the Black Hills,” Caleb says. “The Black Hills were where this memorial had to be. Standing Bear didn’t just suggest this project, he fought for it.”

Caleb Ziolkowski (left) and his brother, Vaughn, are the grandsons of Korczak Ziolkowski, who blasted the first bits of granite off Thunderhead Mountain in 1948.

He was joined in the fight by Ziolkowski, who returned to South Dakota in 1947. Together they secured Thunderhead Mountain in the Black Hills’ high granite country, in part by utilizing laws that make mining a priority. Mountain sculpting, after all, can be classified as mining. “I’m impressed that my grandfather believed in this enough to make it his life’s work when he was in a position to live comfortably pursuing commissioned sculpture,” Caleb says.

Those he touched were similarly committed, including his first wife, professional musician Dorothy Comstock Ziolkowski, whose support never wavered even after the couple divorced. His second wife, Ruth Ross Ziolkowski (Caleb and Vaughn’s grandmother), became a true South Dakota icon as she led the Crazy Horse project for 32 years after Korczak’s death. “I can’t carve a mountain,” Ruth said, but she promised to do anything else she could behind the scenes. That included leading project and financial planning with the board, raising 10 children (some of whom proved they could carve a mountain), welcoming a sitting U.S. president to the site, and answering phones. Ruth’s voice was heard by countless callers when they telephoned the memorial.

It’s hard to overstate what Ruth did in moving the project forward in the late 1980s when she broke from her husband’s carving plan to focus on, and complete, Crazy Horse’s face. There was pushback from some close to the project but, Caleb says, his grandmother demonstrated “bravery in staying with the idea of altering the plan.” Ruth and Korczak’s daughter, Monique, stepped up as head sculptor during that period. The face (87.5 feet long) became the carving’s first fully discernible feature and won the project immense public credibility. Today it gazes across the Black Hills, as recognizable to South Dakotans as Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln just down the road.

Crazy Horse’s face is bigger than the Rushmore likenesses, so it surprises people to learn that it will encompass only 1.7 percent of the finished sculpture. That’s a reminder of how huge the completed memorial will be: 641 feet long and 563 feet high. People who snap a picture of Thunderhead Mountain from the visitors’ center may feel they’re fairly close but, in fact, are 4,000 feet away. The finished sculpture will comprise 300,000 square feet of finished surface, compared to Mount Rushmore’s 10,000 square feet.

Caleb earned a master’s degree in statistics at UCLA and a Ph.D. in law and diplomacy from the same university. He had previously studied at Tufts University. “You can’t get a degree in mountain carving, but I sort of selected classes and made my own major,” he says.

“Caleb is beyond brilliant and always kind,” says Kay Jorgensen, the Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation’s past chair who played a role in hiring him. Like Rencountre, the Ziolkowski brothers are successful products of a small South Dakota town — in their case Custer. Their father Joel (Ruth and Korczak’s son) is a longtime pastor there. Caleb and Vaughn credit their aunt Monique for bringing them into substantive creative work at Crazy Horse.

Their workforce on the mountain hails from across the country, some with small town South Dakota roots similar to what Caleb, Vaughn and Whitney knew. By contrast, Tom Castelan had never heard of Crazy Horse Memorial until he visited the Black Hills from Arkansas several years ago. Impressed by what he saw, Castelan applied for a job and got it. Today he manages a big shop built into the mountainside and fabricates heavy-duty carving equipment not commercially available and maybe not even invented yet. Accepting a job here means committing to a process of perpetual learning. A few hundred feet from the machine shop on that summer morning, carvers were gearing up to tackle granite with noisy drills. Suddenly a sharp metallic clanking pierced the air as Tyler Brezke, a Webster native, used a manual chisel and hammer to add details near the great figure’s left hand.

The most recent work on the mountain has involved shaping Crazy Horse’s left arm and fingers.

Several blocks of granite, car-sized and bigger, sat on ledges near the summit and reflected an important way in which procedures here differ from Mount Rushmore’s. There, when granite was blasted or chiseled away, it fell and broke and comprised a rocky slope that remains in place today. In fact the “talus slope,” as the National Park Service calls it, is now considered part of Mount Rushmore and will never be removed. Caleb calls a similar rocky slope below Crazy Horse “the muck pile.” He plans to remove it all, enhancing the sculpture’s height and also yielding the granite blocks for construction projects. Each is labeled, documenting where on the sculpture it originated.

“As building material it will be meaningful because of where it comes from,” Caleb says. The granite could end up in structures anywhere across the region and will certainly be part of the buildings in a developing complex below the mountain, which already includes the Indian Museum of North America, the Native American Educational and Cultural Center, and the Indian University of North America. Eventually, Rencountre and the Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation board hope to see a medical training center developed there. Visitors often say the museum, originally designed by Korczak and Ruth’s late daughter, Anne, is the off-mountain component currently most developed and meaningful for them. In the 1970s and ’80s, Anne took on a huge responsibility in seeking exhibit items not only from Great Plains peoples, but from tribes across the American continent. Sometimes when Rencountre sees visitors fully engaged in studying one of the museum exhibits, or enjoying cultural presentations, it reminds him of when he left Crow Creek to attend Black Hills State University and the joy he felt in a learning community where students and faculty genuinely cared about his people’s stories. As Caleb studies technologies that will improve cutting granite, Rencountre is looking into technologies that will enhance museum storytelling. Though their tasks and backgrounds differ, the young men have become great friends.

A day may come, Caleb says, when the public “sees the mountain as the smallest part of it all.” He adds that then no one will ask when the project will be completed because the educational aspects and human services missions of the memorial — as with other proven institutions — will hopefully never end.

In 2025, there have been moments that brought satisfaction in their own right, sometimes separate and more immediate from the memorial’s lofty goals. “I remember thinking,” Caleb says, “for the longest time, how cool it would be to set up one of the world’s largest free-standing cranes on top of a mountain.”

This year Caleb, Whitney and their workers did exactly that — and it might be the catalyst that helps bring the family’s original vision to fruition faster than anyone could have dreamed.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the November/December 2025 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

Posted on August 31, 2026 by john — Leave a comment

Good on the Bad

Nemo painter Mark Zimmerman’s exploration of the anything-but-square Bad River valley

By Bernie Hunhoff

Wild landscapes inspire Black Hills artist Mark Zimmerman, so imagine his delight when he discovered the Bad River, which pigtails 161 miles from Fort Pierre to Philip in western South Dakota.

The river valley is a picturesque and sparsely populated stretch of ghost towns, grasslands and big ranches. Zimmerman researched, explored, photographed and sketched the region. Now he is creating art that he hopes will convey his love for a land most Americans consider flyover country.

Open spaces provide his greatest inspiration, but artist Mark Zimmerman’s home and studio are deep in the forest near Nemo.

“I want people to love it the way I do,” he says. “Of course, I know that doesn’t happen just from looking at a picture. I hope I can capture the feel of the space. If you are a child of the prairie, it’s in your soul, and if you are not then you might look at it and still see it as empty.”

Zimmerman is that child. He was born in Greeley, Colorado, east of the Rockies, and raised in Kansas and North Dakota. As a graduate student at Illinois State University, he discovered that he missed the wild prairie. He felt claustrophobic when surrounded by industrial landscapes. Even the Illinois farm fields were too square, too civilized — too straight.

A sculptor from Chicago once assessed Zimmerman’s paintings and told him that something was missing. Zimmerman remembers the critique: “He said, ‘That’s all great, but where is the other stuff? Where is the stuff you don’t like?’”

The painter never forgot the sculptor’s question. “I know what I don’t like about the land I love,” he says. “I don’t like the squares.” So, he began to insert squares in his paintings — jarring interlopers to otherwise natural shapes.

He returned to North Dakota and was working at The Arts Center in Jamestown when he met Mary Wipf, a visiting artist from the Black Hills. She told him that she lived on a small ranch in South Dakota. He imagined a windswept and treeless prairie homestead, which only added to her allure. They married and he moved to South Dakota in 1997.

As it turns out, the ranch is in the forested Black Hills, just a few miles from the tiny town of Nemo, but that hasn’t hindered their relationship or his art career; Mary looks for lichens and fungi in the lowlands, while he prefers to hike the ridgetops.

However, he still seeks opportunities to explore the open prairie. In autumn of 2001 he was awarded a state Arts Council grant to visit Harding County, which he once called “the last best corner” of South Dakota. He spent his days teaching art at the rural schools, and then he drove the backroads, shooting photographs of scenery that has inspired his art ever since.

Zimmerman seldom references his photos as he paints because the prairie is embedded in his imaginative mind. As he developed the Harding County series, his style changed from abstract to expressive landscapes that reflect his affinity for the land of barbed wire, native grasslands and dirt roads.

He also respects the ranching families. He remembers the fifth grader who drove herself to Painter School in a big truck, and the youngsters who spent recess catching garter snakes in a creek. “That was a long time ago and I’m still painting memories of that place.”

Twenty years after Harding County, Zimmerman became interested in the Bad River when he was invited to participate in a 2023 project called “Navigating Narratives: The Corps of Discovery in Titonwan Territory.” Craig Howe, the project’s curator, asked artists and writers to produce a work based on Lewis and Clark’s journal entries from late September of 1804.

Zimmerman chose September 25, a day when the explorers had a tense confrontation with the Lakota at the intersection of the Bad and Missouri rivers in today’s Fort Pierre. Even then, the waterway was known as the Bad River (wakpa sica) by Native Americans because of a major flood in 1738 that killed many people. Lewis and Clark called it the Teton River because of their confrontation with the Teton Sioux, but the original name has survived.

“I read and reread everything I could find from the journals about that day and then I forgot everything and just started to draw and paint landscapes,” Zimmerman says. “I drew circles for the sun and the moon and stars, and intrusive squares. While I was imagining the mouth of the Bad River, I got the idea to paint it like I did Harding County.”

He proposed another plan to the South Dakota Arts Council, and before long he was back in open country. “The first time I ever saw it, I was driving north of the little town of Midland on the Bad River Road,” he recalls. “My first impression was from high above the foothills, and it wasn’t what I had in mind. Then you drop into the valley, past Capa and Van Metre, and I said, ‘Yeah, this is what I like!’”

He took notes and photographs, and he soon wrote a poem of his travels that includes these lines:

Head out, up the Bad River Road,

A stranger in a rangeland,

Steer the gravelly ruts, dust billowing.

Step into wildly surging winds,

Rattling in dancing autumn cottonwoods,

Hissing in sparse, brassy grasses.

Wheel round wriggling rattlesnakes,

Squint into a blazing sun,

Taste gritty dirt

Sweeping the spaciousness.

He wrote of the Capa School (“gone are the laughing children … the forgotten dreams”) and of driving the Capa and Van Metre trails (“where gravel eventually tapers to wandering twin tire tracks, roads named for disappearing places”).

Zimmerman wandered the Bad River for four days. Cattle ranches dominate the valley. Cows and calves share grasslands with deer, pronghorns, eagles and a plethora of other wildlife. On the southern edge of the valley is Ted Turner’s 141,000-acre Bad River buffalo ranch.

In the evenings, Zimmerman retreated to the Farr House, a historic bed and breakfast in nearby Pierre that was once the residence of Governor Peter Norbeck. He sorted his digital photos and notes and did sketches that are now taking shape on canvasses at the studio he shares with Mary near their home, which is buried in the pine forest a few miles south of Nemo.

Nemo, he notes, is a Latin word for nobody, so it is a good place to contemplate his Bad River experience and convert it to art. The spacious studio, which they call Green Ink Gallery, is a remodeled horse barn. There are stalls for their two horses and hay mounds for a big tabby cat that shares the ranch with them, along with a German Shepherd they call Echo.

Most of the people who will see his paintings have never driven the Bad River Valley. He hopes to show them its natural shapes and curves, and its wild nature. “Sadly, there are subdivisions and cornfields and roads coming for it,” he says.

“We live on a sphere, and we’ve decided to cut it into squares. I view it as an imperiled landscape. Most of our prairie is already cut into squares, which seems like a crazy way of dealing with a landscape that’s anything but square.”

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the May/June 2024 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

Posted on July 13, 2026July 13, 2026 by john — Leave a comment

A Celebration of the Arts

Our July/August issue is out, and it’s packed with stories that celebrate our vibrant arts culture.

Written in collaboration with Arts South Dakota and the South Dakota Arts Council, this 148-page issue also serves as our annual South Dakota Arts Journal. Here’s some of what you’ll read inside:

This Land in 1776: Through Artists’ Eyes
Charlie Brave Heart’s Artistic Vision for Pine Ridge
There’s Something for Everyone at Custer’s Art Expressions
Printmaker Michael Baum Advocates for Wild Spaces
Fellowship Flourishes at Fleurish Flower Farm
How a Tragic Fire Reinvigorated Deborah Mitchell’s Art
James Van Nuys: Rapid City’s Man of Many Talents
Red Cloud’s New Chatku Arts Center
Photographer Cheryl Halsey Searches for Truth
Paul Horsted Shows Us South Dakota Yesterday and Today
Custer’s Hjem A.M. Delights the Eyes and Taste Buds
An Artistic Salute to the Barn
Plus Events, History, Travel Tips and Culture

Subscribe online or call (800) 456-5117 to start your subscription today!

Posted on July 10, 2026July 10, 2026 by john — Leave a comment

Weekend Roundup! Three Ways to Spend Your Weekend in South Dakota

1. Rooted: A Prairie Arts Weekend (July 10–12, Geddes) Head to the Missouri River region for this three-day celebration of art, music and place. Authentic Arts 605 in Geddes is hosting original art, workshops, demonstrations, wellness experiences, heritage stories, live music, food and prairie-inspired gathering spaces. A perfect weekend for slowing down and soaking in the landscape. Our publisher, Katie, will be heading there tomorrow morning. Say hello if you see her!

2. Brookings Summer Arts Festival (July 11–12) Pioneer Park in Brookings comes alive with art, food, free entertainment, living history demonstrations, antiques and a dedicated kids’ area. A great family outing if you’re in the area this weekend.

3. Wall Celebration (July 9–11, Wall) The Wall Rodeo Arena is hosting a rodeo, concerts, a parade and kids’ activities for the annual Wall Celebration. It’s an authentic taste of a West River summer.

Check out our calendar of events for more fun festivals and gatherings!

Posted on May 29, 2026May 29, 2026 by john — Leave a comment

Yes, We Pe-Can

Nut trees can flourish in a sliver of South Dakota, but will their growers ever be more than hobbyists?

Darrell and Martha Ausborn have experimented with nut trees on their 10-acre farm west of Yankton since 2008.

By John Andrews

Dan DeBuhr was 6 years old in the early 1960s when his grandmother returned from a vacation in Texas with two pecan trees. She planted them in the backyard of her Elk Point home — the same patch of land where DeBuhr lives today — not knowing what to expect. “They told her they couldn’t guarantee that they would make it in South Dakota,” DeBuhr says. “And they would never bear fruit.”

Today, motorists passing by on Interstate 29 can easily spot them because they are the tallest trees in town. In fact, measurements taken last June confirm that they are the two biggest pecan trees in South Dakota, both supplanting a 61-foot pecan in Rapid City.

A severe thunderstorm pelted Elk Point with baseball sized hail early last summer, greatly diminishing the year’s pecan crop. But near the end of most Septembers, DeBuhr wages a daily battle with squirrels to collect the prized nuts. The little critters clearly collect their share, evidenced by the tiny trees that spring up from pecans buried around his yard.

We think of more temperate places when we think of pecans, but they have a history in South Dakota. Pecans — as well as hickory, chestnuts, heartnuts, butternuts, English walnuts and maybe even pine nuts — can indeed grow in certain parts of South Dakota, and experimenters are working to create the best varieties for our environment.

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South Dakota is not a robust nut-producing state. Black walnuts are the only nut trees considered native, but John Ball, a professor at South Dakota State University in Brookings, says you can find butternut, American chestnut, English walnut, Manchurian walnut and even pecan, though the growing season is not always long enough to produce nuts. Far southeastern South Dakota, however, is another story.

“It is an unusual part of the state,” says Ball, who is also an SDSU Extension forestry specialist and South Dakota Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources forest health specialist. “We should call it Western Iowa/Northern Nebraska, not South Dakota, and then it would fit. Growing pecans in those states would not be surprising, and southeastern South Dakota is kind of an extension of that. But it’s a rather abrupt line as we move out of there as to where something grows, where something’s a shrub and where something just never makes it at all.”

Our native black walnut provides a good example. “Black walnut is only native to eastern South Dakota, and really the southeast, though there is one population up in Codington County,” Ball says. “But it will even grow in Harding County. I’ve seen some trees out by Union Center and Bison. The difference is the ones down by Yankton and Vermillion can get a couple feet in diameter and 70 feet tall. The ones up in Bison get about 6 inches in diameter and maybe 20 feet tall. So while they can grow there, they grow very slowly. Down in the southeast, you can grow most of the nut trees that can grow out East, though not always as productively and not as quickly. And you have to really work at it. It doesn’t come easily.”

Any discussion of trees and plants and where they might succeed brings to mind the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map, the reference that many gardeners consult before planting. The map is based on a region’s annual average extreme minimum temperatures, with lower zone numbers coinciding with colder temperatures. Much of the northern half of South Dakota lies in Zone 4b (-25 degrees Fahrenheit to -20), though some pockets, including Aberdeen, fall in 4a (-30 to -25). The southern half is largely 5a (-20 to -15), with some areas of 5b (-15 to -10) west of Yankton and around the Black Hills, including Rapid City.

But the map may be irrelevant. Ball says the more important factor for nut trees is the number of frost-free days. “I recommend throwing the zone map out when you get to South Dakota,” Ball says. “The zone maps were first developed in Boston. They started drawing the lines back in about 1927, and they did it without ever coming to South Dakota. The real difficulty is it is based upon only one climatic factor: the annual average extreme temperature, or, essentially, how cold it could get in January. That doesn’t do well here, because what really affects our nut production is our early frost in the fall, late frost in the spring, that cold snap that occurs in April after it’s already been warm or a nice mild fall and then suddenly the temperatures fall to freezing.”

The native range of pecan trees stretches from east Texas and Louisiana up through Oklahoma and Arkansas into portions of Missouri, southern Illinois and southern Indiana. They tend to follow river valleys, extending as far north as the Iowa/Illinois line along the Mississippi River. Those areas are most likely to give pecan trees the minimum 140 frost-free days needed for nut production. In South Dakota, those conditions are most likely to be replicated in the southeast.

Perhaps that’s why the DeBuhr pecan trees have flourished in Elk Point. Three more pecans purchased from Gurney’s Seed and Nursery in Yankton in the mid-1940s tower over Rick Gray’s home just north of Dakota Valley High School near McCook Lake. And Ball knows of a few pecan trees in Sioux Falls that produce nuts every few years. “While we do define areas and which trees will grow and perform well there, no tree has ever read a book,” Ball says. “We always get the outlier, the tree that’s growing where it shouldn’t, yet performing better than anyone would ever expect. And that’s the fun of South Dakota. It’s not like trees grow everywhere, and you really appreciate it when they make it.”

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John Goeden is an agronomist and self-described “collector of cultivars.” When he’s not consulting on corn and soybean hybrids for Channel Seed, he’s tinkering with trees on his 1.8 acres just west of McCook Lake. “My dad was a carpenter, and he loved hardwood trees, particularly walnut,” Goeden says. “That’s probably where it all started. I helped him take out a grove of about 100 walnut trees that were going to get ripped out of the ground and farmed in the late ‘90s. So in some ways, I’m paying for the sins of my father — and myself.”

John Goeden is a self-described “collector of cultivars.” His grove at McCook Lake includes at 25 pecan varieties.

He is particularly interested in pecan and hickory trees. He believes hickories were a prominent part of the river valley landscape until homesteaders began flooding the Plains in the 1860s. “We had a huge mass migration of people from east to west, and they came in wagon trains made of wood and iron,” he says. “When they were making and repairing things, they were all looking for the straightest, hardest, most durable wood they could find, and hickory was it. That’s probably a reason why we don’t have a lot of hickory remnants left. It’s also the best firewood.”

Historically, the Lakota were familiar with hickory from their time living in eastern Minnesota, before they were pushed west. Similarly, many Great Plains tribes had a word for pecan. “That means that they were either trading in pecan or making trips to where they were plentiful, which would be eastern Iowa, Illinois and Missouri,” he says. “They knew pecan.”

Those species command most of his attention. By the summer of 2024, Goeden’s experiments with tree grafting had resulted in at least 25 different pecan cultivars, along with 15 hickory and four English walnut.

Grafting is a tricky process by which two trees are fused together. Scion wood from a donor tree is cut and attached to rootstock so that their corresponding layers of cambium — the main growth tissue located just beneath the bark — align. The graft is then tightly wrapped and kept moist until the tissues begin to grow together.

“We’re probably not going to extend the harvest to Timber Lake,” Ball says. “But they’re trying to improve the quality of the nut. The rule of thumb I always use is the better the nut, the less chance it has of growing here. You’ve really got to work to develop those qualities, and grafting is how we do it. Thank goodness for the hobbyists that are doing that work to help push the limits and extend the higher quality nuts to our area.”

It was a failed graft that led Goeden to learn about the process. “I had planted some English walnuts,” he says. “I had them in the ground nearly 20 years and they produced nuts. Well, if you look at the leaflets you can tell the difference between an English walnut and black walnut. Somewhere along the line — either before I got those trees or perhaps after — the graft died back, and the black walnut took over. That’s what I actually had.”

His interest in grafting led him to the Nebraska Nut Growers Association, an organization that since the early 1970s has worked on grafting nut trees and placing them in the northern landscape. Grafting is particularly beneficial when working with nut trees, because it can dramatically reduce the time it takes to bear fruit. Self-pollinated pecan, oak and walnut trees might not produce nuts for 15 to 20 years. A hickory might take 40 years. “But if you take wood from a pecan tree and attach it to a two-year seedling and it takes, chances are in eight to 10 years you can have a pecan in your hand,” Goeden says. “It takes the memory of that tree it was on and puts it on top of a seedling. It basically cuts the time in half.”

Grafting and selected cross pollination have resulted in dozens of pecan cultivars, each with different nut sizes, bearing times, percentage of nut meat within the shell and cracking ability. Goeden is growing several of them in his backyard. “My goal is to see what we can effectively grow here and what we can’t,” he says. “Pecans and hickories can grow here, and we’ll find out which ones will survive. I’m trying to get the biggest, best nut possible, and the way to do that is to look at a number of cultivars in your own environment.”

Several of Goeden’s grafted cultivars are growing on Darrell and Martha Ausborn’s 10 acres of land west of Yankton overlooking Lewis and Clark Lake. Ausborn is a retired forester who began in private industry in Florida and Alabama. He later transferred to the Bureau of Indian Affairs where he worked as a forester until retirement.

He and Martha, an Alabama native, chose the Yankton County acreage because, Martha says, “he needed a place to play.”

To stay busy in retirement, the couple set their sights on nut trees. In 2008 they planted a batch of grafted seedlings that included English walnut, black walnut, pecan, Chinese chestnut, heartnut and butternut. As they’ve experimented, the Ausborns have added cultivars from various nurseries as well as grafted cultivars from Goeden.

“For pecans, we’re about as far north as you can get,” Darrell says. “The trees do okay, but some years there aren’t enough summer heat days for the nuts to mature. Last year they did mature, and this year they are growing. We’ll see how far they make it into the fall. If we get a cool September or an early frost, the pecans won’t be there. But the rest of the nuts do produce.”

A visit to the Ausborns’ grove in early August found healthy hazelnut trees, the nuts still tightly wrapped within flower-like green husks. “You have to hunt for the hazelnuts,” Martha said as she searched the branches. “I like to pick them because it’s like looking for Easter eggs. They lay up underneath the leaves. The husk has to dry and turn brown, and the nut will be loose. When you can touch it and it will spin, usually the last week in August, that’s when you can harvest.”

Dan DeBuhr enjoys pecan trees his grandmother brought to Elk Point from Texas in the 1960s.

The Ausborns also boasted healthy crops of heartnuts, butternuts, English walnuts and Chinese chestnuts. A Korean pine nut tree looked somewhat out of place but seems to enjoy the Yankton County environment. “That was something out of pure curiosity, just to see if it would grow,” Ausborn says. “In about 30 years you might be able to taste a pine nut, so remember it’s here.”

*****

Nut harvests are modest. The Ausborns spend fall days using homemade equipment to gather, wash and shell their assortment of nuts. Goeden shares his pecans and other nuts with friends and family. They gather every winter with the Nebraska Nut Growers Association for an annual nut evaluation that measures each nut’s size, cracking ability, flavor and quality and quantity of nutmeat. The results help them determine what cultivars are working.

They are also willing to help others. “Without the knowledge and expertise of the Nebraska Nut Growers Association, Darrell and I wouldn’t have had the success that we’ve had,” Goeden says. “Grafting nut trees is an fading art that needs to be passed from one generation to the next in order to push yield potential.”

People like Goeden and the Ausborns will never grow rich from nut production. Ball says a commercial operation in South Dakota is likely not viable. Still, with the right trees, bags of South Dakota-grown hazelnuts or pecans could show up at farmers’ markets and craft fairs. “It’s kind of like farming has gone,” Ball says. “When I was a kid, a family of five could live on a 140-acre mixed farm. Now that’s a hobby farm. Nut production is the same way. It’s hard to get the scale to where you’re actually able to make a living out of it as opposed to supplementing your income. But for a supplement, yes, you can have a hobby that actually pays.”

Dan DeBuhr’s grandmother likely never thought of her tiny pecan trees as a profitable side hustle, but she loved all trees and encouraged her grandson to care for them long after she was gone. “My grandma told me, ‘I’ll never be able to see the pecans, but if you stay here long enough, you probably will,’” DeBuhr recalls. “‘Do me a favor,’ she said. ‘When the trees get big, take a chair on the hottest day, when there’s no wind, and go sit under the trees, because they’ll talk to you.’

“One day in July I was out here working, and it was so hot, no air. So I got a chair and put it right between those trees. All of sudden the leaves were just shaking. That’s what she meant by talking.”

Perhaps they were saying they belong here after all.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the November/December 2024 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

Posted on May 12, 2023 by Andrea Maibaum — Leave a comment

Travel Like It’s 1938

Franklin Roosevelt was president and Leslie Jensen was governor of South Dakota in 1938. Ted Turner, now the biggest private landowner in the state, was born that year in Cincinnati. In the summer of’38, Clarence”Pappy” Hoel invited a few friends with motorcycles to a party that became an annual event now known as the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.

Gutzon Borglum and his mountain crews finished carving images of Jefferson, Washington and Lincoln in 1938, so the sculptor decided to begin a 70-foot tunnel to preserve the great artifacts of American history. He thought the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence belonged there, among other items.

Henry Ford’s 1938 Coupe was selling for $625; he had already manufactured 25 million cars. Thanks to Ford and other automakers, Americans were traveling to see the 48 states as the nation rose from the Great Depression.

Because of the hard times, President Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration put people to work building dams, schools and other public projects, including stone bridges and log cabins in Custer State Park. The WPA also offered a special Federal Writers’ Project for struggling artists, poets, authors, photographers and journalists.

Part of the project involved a”See America First” program. Writers in each state were gathered to create a comprehensive travel guide. M. Lisle Reese, a young Pierre journalist, was offered $2,300 a year — a fine salary in a time when the average American earned $1,750 — to lead the South Dakota effort.

Reese’s first job was to recruit writers. There were no professional writers on the federal government’s state relief rolls, but he eventually found a ragtag team that included a well-educated sheepherder from Harding County, an Aberdeen newspaperman known as the”Walking Reporter,” a friend of Huron druggist Hubert Humphrey who liked to write letters to the editor, and a coach at Woonsocket who slipped on a bar of soap and suffered a head injury that ended his teaching career.

Other South Dakotans eventually joined the staff and a lengthy manuscript was readied for publication. Unfortunately, bureaucrats in Washington decided that the South Dakota guide was not worth the printing costs because it was,”the only state with only one bookstore … ,” recalled Reese.

He and other supporters of the guide asked the state legislature for $2,000, but a bill sponsored by Rep. George T. Mickelson, chairman of the appropriations committee, drew scorn and ridicule as being frivolous and”at the bottom of the state’s needs.” Somehow the bill passed in the closing minutes of the 1938 legislative session.

McCook Central/Montrose players (from left) Kobe Doane, Kyle Tuschen, Rylee Klinkhammer and Trey Anderson with a photo of the 1914 Salem basketball team and the state championship cup they won.

1938

The town has a large, well-equipped school, with the classrooms, as someone once remarked,”built around the gymnasium.” Playing for many years in a frame building which competitors dubbed a”sheep shed,” Salem won the State basketball championship in 1914 and came within one point of winning it the next year.

2018

Longtime Athletic Director Jack Rasmussen never heard of the”sheep shed,” but McCook Central is going strong, thanks to a new $7.1 million school. It replaced a 1924 building. Teachers were still arranging things when we visited. In a new trophy case is a team photo of the 1914 basketball team and the cup they received for winning the state tournament — thanks, no doubt, to home-court advantage at the sheep shed.

Sioux Falls

1938

(Episcopal), cor. Main Ave. and 13th St., was completed in 1889 as a memorial to Charlotte Augusta Astor whose husband, John Jacob Astor, donated funds for its construction. This handsome building of native stone, French Gothic in design, stands in contrast to the first church in Minnehaha County, the Calvary Episcopal Church erected in 1872 at the northwest corner of Main Ave. and 9th St. and since then dismantled.

A cross made of jasper similar to that used in Conrad’s Glorious Choir in Canterbury Cathedral, England, was placed upon the altar of Calvary Cathedral by Bishop William Hare, known throughout the State as the”Apostle to the Sioux” and the founder of the Episcopal Church in South Dakota.

Another cross, imbedded in the floor a few feet in front of the altar, is formed of about 15 small stones taken from the foundation of St. Augustine Abbey, the oldest church in Britain. Every king, queen, and Archbishop of England from the time of William the Conqueror to George VI, has stepped on or over the stones from which the fragments forming the small cross were taken.

2018

The 1938 editors made a few errors. The 1889 church is actually Richardsonian Romanesque in style. Bishop Hare did not found the Episcopal Church of South Dakota; he came as a missionary in 1873. The cathedral is on Main Avenue between 13th and 14th Streets. And the altar stones are not similar to the ones from Conrad’s Glorious Choir — they are flagstones from the same floor. Furthermore, the monarchy’s coronations and burials at St. Augustine ended with the arrival of William the Conqueror and his founding of Canterbury Cathedral in the 11th century. But the’38 guidebook properly pointed travelers to one of the West’s most interesting and historical sites, and that very same church remains a place of worship today. The crosses of stone remain in their original locations, according to the Very Rev. Ward Simpson, dean of the church.

MASONIC LIBRARY

Sioux Falls

1938

415 S. Main Ave., was begun in 1924 by George Pettigrew, grand secretary of the State Masonic organization. The library lists between 25,000 and 30,000 volumes including a chronological record of the proceedings of the Masonic Lodges in all the States of the Union. At the west end is a small museum, one large show case being filled with trophies from various masonic group meetings. One feature is a stained glass window, which was in the stair room at the Columbia Exposition in Chicago. A reproduction of King Solomon’s temple, delicately carved, with decorative beads worked out in Mosaic pattern is also in the library museum.

2018

The books, artifacts and stained glass window were removed when the Masons sold the building to Architecture Incorporated in the 1990s and renovations began.”The dome had accumulated coal dust from the boiler such that it looked more like frosted glass than stained glass,” says Dick Dempster of Architeture Incorporated.”We had no idea how beautiful the stained glass was until it was re-installed.” Visitors are always welcome to view the dome and other unique features.

THE COUGHLIN CAMPANILE

Brookings

1938

The Coughlin Campanile and Chimes, rising 165 feet and dwarfing all other buildings in the city, was given to the college by Charles L. Coughlin, an electrical engineering graduate, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of his graduation. He was a South Dakota farm boy from Carthage, and is now a prominent Milwaukee manufacturer.

The total cost of the tower was approximately $75,000. It is built of white Indiana limestone, red brick and concrete, to harmonize with the beautiful Lincoln Memorial Library. There are 180 steps leading to the balcony, the highest point that can be reached by visitors. The balcony floor is 112 feet above the ground.

A glass-covered hatchway in the ceiling of the balcony room permits a view of six of the eighteen tubular chimes, and also of Old Faithful, a bell cast for State College in 1885, and one of the 8,000,000 candlepower beacon lights. There are 18 tubular bells in the belfry, which are struck with electrically operated hammers fitted with rawhide tips to give a mellow tone.

2018

The Campanile remains in tip-top shape and climbers are still welcome. While the door is locked, you can borrow a key from the alumni office across the street or University Police, one block north. Interestingly, the Campanile is the only point of interest noted in the guidebook for Brookings. Today, you’ll also want to visit McCrory Gardens, the South Dakota Art Museum, the State Agricultural Heritage Museum and the city’s bustling downtown, where you’ll find Nick’s Hamburgers, a quaint little eatery that was already frying burgers as the Campanile’s 320,000 bricks were being laid in 1929.

DEUELING COURTHOUSES

Gary

1938

Gary, where the State School for the Blind is located, and Clear Lake were the principals in the contest [for County Seat]. Clear Lake was situated in the approximate center of the county; but Gary was the older town, and in addition, had been presented with a new courthouse by the Chicago & North Western R.R. When the battle ended, Clear Lake had won, and Gary’s new courthouse slowly began to fall into a state of desuetude. Today it is used as a chicken house at the State School for the Blind.

2018

We were intrigued by the idea of a courthouse turned chicken coop, so we pulled into the former School for the Blind campus. The school was housed in several beautiful buildings for 60 years, and in 1961 it moved to Aberdeen. The campus was vacated completely in the 1980s. Today it’s home to the Buffalo Ridge Resort and Business Center, featuring a hotel, restaurant and bar. We searched for a chicken coop that had a stately, courthouse look but we didn’t have luck. So we explored and asked questions. We learned that the chicken coop/courthouse was torn down. Some of its wood was used to build the school’s barn, which is still standing. The school administration building is now in the courthouse’s old location. It holds event space and the Rock Room Bar and Grill, featuring Buffalo Ridge’s craft brew,”Talking Water.”

Aberdeen

1938

The Father Robert Haire Monument on the campus [of Northern State] was erected in honor of the pioneer priest of South Dakota. Father Haire came to Dakota Territory in 1880 and built a sod church by his own efforts near Columbia. He was active in the move to place the initiative and referendum law on the statute books of the State.

2018

The priest’s monument still stands in the original college green. His bearded likeness seems somber — perhaps because lawmakers this year made a number of efforts to make initiatives and referendums more difficult to enact.

HIGHWAY ARCH

Ipswich

1938

The promotion of the Yellowstone Trail (US 12) from”Plymouth Rock to Puget Sound” was begun at Ipswich by Joseph W. Parmley. A World War Memorial Arch spans the highway, bearing the name of the Yellowstone Trail and its founder.

2018

State officials demanded that the arch be removed when Highway 12 was expanded in 1973, but they also found monies to move the stone memorial to a nearby park where it stands today.

PETRIFIED TREE

Near Bison

1938

This town is the seat of Perkins County. [Outside] town is a sign,”Petrified Tree.” Left here 3 m. to a Petrified Tree, claimed to be the largest in the world. Competent observers have declared that there is no record of a larger mass of petrified wood all in one place. The tree, buried in a hill, was discovered only recently. Seventy-five feet of it have been uncovered and there is still more in the hill. At the base the diameter is 2 ft. Scientists say that this gigantic tree is a member of the Sequoia family.

2018

We found the tree, lying just as the 1938 writer described. Unfortunately, it is in a remote pasture known as the Haas Hills, far from any public road, so readers will not likely be able to get there. But you’ll see plenty of

Posted on June 22, 2020 by Andrea Maibaum — Leave a comment

Building a Pizza Box Oven

In the story “Open-Air Cooking,” which appeared in the July/August 2020 issue of South Dakota Magazine, we delved into a number of outdoor cooking techniques. Unfortunately, we ran out of room to illustrate how to construct a pizza box oven. Here are a few visual aids to assist you in your craft construction.

Posted on April 10, 2020 by Andrea Maibaum — Leave a comment

Sky High Meal Deal

In the mood for dinner and a flight across South Dakota? Just order a take-out meal or buy a gift card from a local eatery, send South Dakota Magazine the receipt and we’ll subtract the cost of your meal from the purchase price of our newest book, Sky High South Dakota, a collection of beautiful aerial photos by Yankton pilot Dave Tunge.

Ordinarily the book costs $39.95 plus s/h, but because we want to give South Dakota’s hometown restaurants a boost, your price is $39.95 minus the cost of your meal — whether it’s $5 or $39.95. We’ll send you an invoice for the balance and will waive shipping fees.

Let’s support local restaurants — and then travel South Dakota from an easy chair! Here are three easy ways for you to submit your mailing address and a photo of your receipt from a meal at a South Dakota-owned restaurant.

1. Email subscriptions@southdakotamagazine.com
2. Send South Dakota Magazine a Facebook message
3. Text 605-660-5989

Posted on April 1, 2020 by Andrea Maibaum — Leave a comment

A Black Hills Search for Solace

By Brook Gassman

Editor’s Note: South Dakota has become a second home for the Gassman family of Platteville, Wisconsin. Stephen Gassman is an acclaimed photographer who has worked extensively in South Dakota and contributed many images to South Dakota Magazine. When his wife, Suzanne, died in June 2019, the family headed west, hoping to find healing at some of their favorite Black Hills places. The Gassmans’ daughter, Brook, wrote this upon their return. Another essay and photographs by Stephen appear in the May/June 2020 issue of South Dakota Magazine.

Ninety-eight signs. That’s how many roadside advertisements there are for Wall Drug between our hometown of Platteville, Wisconsin, and Wall. One year, while my brother, Mom and I were traveling there to visit my dad, I counted them all. For hundreds of miles, I watched out the window, passing hills, grassland, prairie and the Badlands, just to count the signs. At the time, I thought it was a fun activity to enjoy and laugh about with my mom and brother. Ninety-eight is such a ridiculous number of signs to advertise for a place that’s claims to fame are free ice water and 5-cent coffee. That number held memories of how beautiful nature could be when you experience it with your family. With that number, I associated the splendor of Sylvan Lake, the awe of the Badlands, and the powerful feeling of finishing the hike to Black Elk Peak. Now, that number reminds me of better times before my mom passed away.

My mom was an incredible woman who, even when she couldn’t walk on her own, wanted to experience every bit of nature she could. We pushed her in a wheelchair during her final weeks so she could feel the wind on her face and experience the changing of the seasons. She would often wear a shirt she got in South Dakota that said,”Hiked It, Liked It.” This was one of her favorite shirts along with a plethora of many other outdoorsy-inspired graphic T-shirts. They reminded her and us of how important nature was, inspiring us to go on hikes and live life past its limits. My mom often encouraged us to do everything in our ability to experience the world, and, in South Dakota, this consisted of the Badlands, Sylvan Lake, Black Elk Peak, Reptile Gardens, Sunday Gulch, and, her favorite, The Purple Pie Place. Now that she’s gone, these places are little snow globes, memories caught in time that will always remind us of her.

We planned a trip to South Dakota immediately after the funeral. My family and I needed to get away, reminisce of better times while simultaneously making beautiful new memories. Our biggest goal was the climb Black Elk Peak with some of her ashes. So, on a Wednesday in June, my aunt, uncle, dad, brother, cousin and I set out on a 3-mile climb to the highest peak in South Dakota, letting my mom take one last hike. On the way, we shared a few laughs, met some other kind tourists from Wisconsin, and reveled in the beauty of the West. When we reached the top, we breathed in the cool air and let our mother see for thousands of miles, because I know that even though she can no longer experience the beauty of this earth, if I see it, she will too. After we finished, we hiked back down, releasing some of the pain and giving us the ability to move forward a little easier. While the path up the mountain might have seemed difficult, it was the hike down that made it all worth it.

So, I guess those 98 signs pointed us in the right direction — a path of healing, caring and family. South Dakota showed me that no matter what, there is something new to look at, something beautiful to experience, and someone new to cherish. I feel blessed to have such a wonderful state by which to forever remember my mother. I feel honored to say thank you to the West. I urge it to be wild, free and full of memories.

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Posted on June 13, 2018 by Andrea Maibaum — Leave a comment

Dakota Duets

Spearfish folk singer Jami Lynn traveled the state during the summer of 2018, pairing with singers and songwriters from every corner of South Dakota in a web series called Dakota Duets.

See the original story here.