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Fire Bomber

By Paul Higbee

Spearfish pilot Arnold Kolb (far left) and his crew used a fleet of refurbished B-17 bombers to fight forest fires.

A photograph shows a relaxed Arnold Kolb standing near his B-17 bomber the way other men pose with a newly acquired sports car. Yes, Kolb loved flying. But this airplane meant business. He and his crews used it to douse forest fires. Their daring adventures and remarkable record of success earned Kolb and the pilots of Black Hills Aviation a reputation that quickly spread from their base in Spearfish across North America.

Those who witness wildfires may say,”Better to face them from high in the sky than up close.” That’s not how Kolb worked. He swooped in so low that afterwards pine needles were sometimes found in his wing flaps.

“I looked out and saw treetops at eye level,” recalls Rick Plocek, who worked for Kolb on the ground out of high school and memorably flew to a Black Hills fire with him.”Then the load dropped, and it felt like being in an elevator when it starts, like you’re weightless for a second.”

Among fellow pilots, Kolb held a reputation for being able to drop slurry on a dime and for being creative when necessary. One time, firefighters on the ground were trapped on a ridge with flames moving toward them. Pamela Parker recalls how her father made a drop so that slurry backsplash drew a line between the firefighters and the fire, saving their lives. Slurry dropped directly on people would have killed them as surely as flames, but with the steady Kolb at the controls, that would never happen.

Born in 1927 on the Kolb family ranch near Bison, Arnold was the fifth of nine children. Most of the siblings remained closely associated with one another through aviation over the course of their lives. It was a time when airplanes were transforming South Dakota ranching by reducing isolation, moving cattle, rounding up renegade horses, crop dusting and more.

Arnold’s older brother, Raymond, taught him to fly in 1945. Like so many of his generation, Arnold grew up fast. By age 21 he was vice president of a family flight enterprise in Lemmon. He married Florence Dutton, and they had four daughters and two sons.

The Kolbs bought lots of planes.”I know there’s money in aviation because I put a lot of it there,” Arnold once quipped. If he had an instinct for flying, he also possessed one for business. He would make back his investments many times over and survive considerable economic turbulence.

In 1958 Arnold and Florence bought How Kola Flying Service of Spearfish.”The concern,” reported a local paper,”which operates under a lease agreement at the county-owned airport, will be known in the future as Black Hills Aviation. Kolb is a flight instructor, a commercial pilot with instrument rating and an aircraft and engine mechanic …. Black Hills Aviation will sell and service airplanes, offer ambulance and charter service, do flight instruction and crop dusting.”

Spearfish was an airplane town, first intrigued by flight when Kansas City daredevil Crash-‘Em Up Smith thrilled it with stunts in 1912. Homestake Gold Mine’s Ed Curren led efforts to build the airport in 1922. The next decade saw Works Progress Administration (WPA) labor build a distinctive native stone administration building with a tower, and crowds gathered for an annual air show. Spearfish was home to Clyde Ice, a central figure in daring medical emergency flights and advisor to Henry Ford’s aviation production efforts. In short, there was no place in South Dakota better equipped with flight expertise and airplane mechanics. But in many cases Arnold had to look no further than his own brothers, especially Delbert, a pilot and gifted mechanic and fabricator.

Kolb’s first B-17 could carry 2,000 gallons of slurry, though federal regulations limited it to 1,800.

Still, Spearfish’s airport didn’t match amenities pilots take for granted today when Kolb arrived. Lighted runways were a few years away.”So when Dad flew in at night,” remembers his daughter, Theone Oliver,”Mom would take us to wait on the runway, in the car with headlights on. We’d watch for him to go into a landing pattern. He’d pass over the car and land, and she’d race behind with her brights on, lighting the way.” Kim Craig, another Kolb daughter, thinks the landing procedure epitomized Arnold and Florence’s tight partnership in all aspects of life.

In the 1950s Americans gained awareness of forest fires because much of the population was moving west where wildfires were common. In that environment, in 1955, Californian Nick Nolta made headlines by arranging a mission that deployed a single-engine Boeing Stearman 75 Kaydet to dump 170 gallons of fire retardant on a blaze at Mendocino National Forest in California. Nolta expanded to a fleet of seven Kaydets for the 1956 fire season.

Impressive. Yet the Kaydet was a light civilian plane typically put to work for flight instruction and crop dusting. Kolb, although he never served in the military, believed the best way to attack fire would be to use heavy-duty surplus military aircraft. In 1959 he flew a B-17 against the intense Deadwood Fire that forced the town’s evacuation and charred 5,000 forest acres. In 1963 he bought his own B-17 (more would follow), converted it to a tanker, and was ready for the 1964 fire season. The plane could carry 2,000 gallons of slurry although federal regulations limited it to 1,800.

No other World War II era plane was tougher than the B-17, also known as the Flying Fortress, and used extensively and aggressively both in Europe and the Pacific in the 1940s. Western South Dakota felt some ownership. Many B-17 war crews had first assembled at the air base that became Ellsworth and learned to maneuver the mighty, four-engine aircraft over ranch country. Some South Dakotans said they could identify the sound of B-17 engines without looking up.

But they never witnessed a B-17 in action like Kolb’s during fire season. Kolb described slurry as water thick with soils (including bentonite) that coated trees and other vegetation for protection. It was colored pink so firefighters on the ground and above could see its spread. Fertilizer to stimulate post-fire regrowth was often part of the mix. The U.S. Forest Service supplied slurry, part of a contract it established with Black Hills Aviation that paid Kolb a daily stand-by fee, payable whether he flew that particular day or not.

Kolb and his son Nathan traveled to Washington, D.C., where one of Black Hills Aviation’s B-17s was exhibited at the Smithsonian.

For much of Black Hills Aviation’s time in Spearfish, Rick Plocek says, there were two B-17s always available while a third sat in the hangar, undergoing a constant series of improvements that Kolb devised. In his business, Kolb believed, research and development”is where the competitive edge lies.” A significant development that inspired modifications everywhere stemmed from Arnold and son Nathan’s system that allowed slurry to be released in stages rather than one dump.

Black Hills Aviation grew but never ceased being a family business. For several years, the Kolbs lived onsite in the WPA building, upstairs in three small rooms, because”Dad and Mom made the decision to put profit back into the business instead of buying a house to start out,” says daughter Maurita Autrey. Florence ran the office from that building. She prepared meals and insisted Arnold eat them instead of working through dinnertime and was the family pillar of strength and faith.

The company was always prepared for emergency responses. Crews of two had 15 minutes to take off after an alarm came in, and in seasons when fire threat was greatest, they literally lived with tankers. Still, remarkably, there was a laid-back feel to Black Hills Aviation, thanks to Arnold.”He was a prankster, always pulling tricks on someone,” Plocek says. One time, he put worms in worker Bob Lamb’s Copenhagen to hopefully help the young man stop chewing.”Worms were often part of his pranks, but never done with malice,” Lamb laughed.

But then, in an instant, a phone call could shift the mood into intense work mode that might last days or even weeks. Arnold told the Bison Courier he didn’t consider his fire work more dangerous than other aviation, but there were differing opinions about that. Once he doused a burning train and it exploded. The blast rolled his plane over at low altitude, but he maneuvered to safety, flying upside down until he reached enough altitude to right the aircraft.”Anything he flew could become a stunt plane,” Maurita says. Arnold recalled a northern California forest fire when”the visibility was extremely low because of the volumes of smoke. We got trapped in blind canyons because of the visibility problems.” More than recalling fear when recounting that adventure, Kolb seemed to remember the frustration of not seeing where to drop slurry.

“Nothing scared him,” says Gary Coe, who knew Kolb as his flight instructor.”I had learned to fly from my dad in Perkins County but had to go someplace to make it official, and my family knew the Kolbs. In the air Arnold was relaxed because he had thousands and thousands and thousands of hours flying, and I think that helped beginning pilots relax, too.”

Speaking of relaxed, Kolb’s son-in-law, GB Oliver, called Arnold”the best pilot I ever knew at flying a plane at high altitude while taking a nap. When he made an adjustment, he did it without opening his eyes.” Oliver often accompanied Arnold as co-pilot but said,”When you flew with him you were really mostly a passenger. There was no plane he couldn’t fly. In fact, I always said he didn’t just fly a plane. He wore it.”

He recalled flying with Kolb in Mexico, where flames climbed a steep mesa and threatened a resort up top.”He flew right at the mesa wall, and we lost sight of it as he rolled the plane and released slurry,” Oliver says.”I can’t explain how he did that, except to say he had an instinct. Flying, for Arnold, was as natural as walking.”

Arnold and Florence’s worst business turbulence came in the 1970s. Parts for old B-17s became hard to obtain so they decided to switch to Lockheed P2V planes, used mostly by the Navy. The Kolbs were in a position to do that, but there was nothing they could do to alter South Dakota’s routing of Interstate 90. The new highway cut their runways, making them too short for slurry tankers. In 1972, Black Hills Aviation relocated to Alamogordo, New Mexico. The recognized and respected company name was retained even though the Kolbs were now based 900 miles south of the Hills.

The move went well. Arnold and Florence envisioned a long-term future for their company as their youngest, Nathan, born in Spearfish in 1965, demonstrated remarkable piloting aptitude. In short order the young man held single and multi-engine licensing. In 1984 the Smithsonian Institution put Black Hills Aviation’s last B-17 slurry tanker on display and Nathan was at the controls as the plane flew into Washington, D.C. The welcoming committee was visibly surprised to see a teenager descend from the pilot’s hatch.

Kolb was a thorough pilot who did his own inspections, mechanical work and creative renovations.

But three years later Spearfish and Alamogordo were stunned when 21-year-old Nathan died in the crash of a company Lockheed Neptune while fighting fire. Co-pilot Red Miller was also killed. The news got worse. It was revealed that the Neptune was shot down. The U.S. military had summoned Black Hills Aviation to attack a fire on the White Sands Missile Range in southeastern New Mexico. The military had fired a missile that ignited the blaze, and then, after a tragic miscommunication, fired more that brought down the Neptune.

The day Nathan died, September 10, 1987, Florence stood once again as the family pillar of faith.”Oh honey, don’t cry,” she told Theone when her daughter broke the news to her.”We know when these airplanes go out, they may not come back, but when we’re Christians it is not the end.”

Over the decades, a total of nine pilots and co-pilots didn’t come back, none by pilot error or mechanical failure. Five tankers were lost.

Kolb’s daughters believe that Nathan’s death broke their father’s enthusiasm for Black Hills Aviation, but he flew a few years more because he had contracts to fulfill. It’s possible he found some solace in the sky where he always felt at home. Arnold and Florence sold their tankers and the business in 1993. They bought a house in Spearfish and spent much of their retirement there, while also visiting their daughters across the country. Arnold died in 2011 at age 83. Florence followed in 2017.

More than 50 years have passed since Kolb slurry tankers took off from Spearfish. But Black Hills Aviation lives vividly in the minds of longtime Black Hills residents. Last summer, as smoke drifted south from terrible wildfires in Canada, they could almost hear the engines roar and see Kolb slowly ascend into the sky, ready to fly anywhere to put down a fire.

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.

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Night Walking South Dakota

By John Andrews

John Banasiak in his office at the University of South Dakota, where he has taught since 1980.

John Banasiak is a passionate experimenter. As we sit in his office at the University of South Dakota — filled with prints, cameras and other ephemera collected over nearly 50 years of teaching — he talks about something that’s been on his mind at least that long.”Over the summer I tried to tweak this process that I did years ago, and I stopped because I almost burned my house down doing it,” he says.”But I thought there had to be some way to do it.”

Back when he attended the School at The Art Institute of Chicago, a professor told him,”You know photography exists, but there are lots of ways to get to it. You invent photography.” That led to an interesting mash up of photography and biology in which he purloined several of his mother’s begonias and put them in the closet, hoping the darkness would manipulate the starches. Later, he taped negatives to the leaves and replaced them in sunlight. He expected the combination of light and starch would produce an image. It kind of worked, but more than 50 years later he thought he’d revisit it by boiling leaves in ethyl alcohol to remove the green caused by the plant’s chlorophyll.”But at a certain temperature it catches fire,” he says with a laugh.”So that was the problem. I threw the pan out the window and there were all these flames. It was crazy.”

Digital photography has captured the 21st century — even in Banasiak’s classes — but there’s still a bit of mad scientist in him that enjoys tinkering with solutions and creating photographs that bring him and his students to places they’ve never been.”There are so many things you can do in a darkroom. There are all these magic tricks you can do that help invent some language, and it’s shocking to people. Then they go on and do it for years. They’re looking for some language, and when they see it happen, they want to do it.”

Thousands of students have found inspiration in Banasiak’s methods, but a career in art was never something the people in his neighborhood on the south side of Chicago envisioned for him. His grandparents from Poland and Ukraine settled there during World War I, finding comfort in the steady work provided by the factories that had popped up along the southern shores of Lake Michigan. Banasiak, born in 1950, was destined to follow his father and uncles into a lifetime of factory work until a teacher at his Catholic grade school noted his artistic ability. In high school, his art teacher pushed him to apply to the Art Institute of Chicago, eventually landing him a full scholarship to attend classes there in the fall of 1968.

A television set peeks out of a repair shop window in Kadoka.

He was admitted based on his talents in drawing and painting, but then he took a class in photography.”The only time I would have ever taken any photos would be for family gatherings, birthdays, graduations,” he says.”Sometimes my mother would hand me the Kodak twin lens reflex and I’d take a shot. I was just nervous I would shake or jiggle the camera because film was expensive, so I didn’t really relate to it at all.”

He loved the poetry of photography, especially in late-night photos that he captured while much of Chicago slept. Banasiak worked as a night watchman at the Art Institute. When his shift was over at 2 a.m., sometimes he stayed.”I slept under Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grande Jatte. I’d wake up to that,” he says.”There was Toulouse-Lautrec’s At the Moulin Rouge down that way and The Old Guitarist by Picasso. There was a Rousseau jungle painting and van Gogh’s bedroom in Arles. It was my favorite gallery, and I’d just sleep there on one of the cots because I had to get up early for my art history class that was right downstairs.

“On occasion, I didn’t feel like going to sleep and I’d just walk around Chicago with my camera. I like walking around at night. It was like a stage set waiting for the actors to show up. During the day, the sun would move, there would be light and shadows and it would all change. At night, there would be streetlights and it would stay like that for six hours. I could move around and get what I wanted.”

The results included poignant images of alleys, storefronts and other urban settings seen in a different way. It was the beginning of his”Night Walks” series, a constantly growing collection of photographs that continued after he moved to Vermillion in 1980. Though he was 500 miles from urban Chicago, Banasiak found commonalities as he explored his new, more rural home at night.”The atmosphere of the environment is all you need to make up stories. I think they’re part of my wanderings in my memory bank. When I see something, I’m drawn to it because it’s a familiar place. It resembles something of an environment that I have in my mind. They’re kind of archetypal, in my own head. Maybe other people don’t see anything in them. But I see something because they just look so familiar, even though they’re taken in different places.”

A UFO merry-go-round at a playground near Lewis and Clark Lake.

After graduating from the School of the Art Institute, Banasiak received a grant to attend the University of Krakow in Poland. He returned to earn an M.F.A. at the Art Institute in 1975. He served as artist in residence at Light Work and Syracuse University and spent a year teaching at the State University of New York in Oswego. He’d always wanted to explore the South Pacific, so he moved to New Zealand in 1979 and spent a year conducting photo workshops and teaching.

He seriously considered staying, but his mother called to tell him he’d won a sizable grant from the Illinois Arts Council. When he got home, he discovered they’d awarded the grant to someone else because he had been so difficult to reach in New Zealand. He was organizing notes and photos from his travels when someone from the Art Institute told him the University of South Dakota needed a full-time photography teacher.

“It looks just like New Zealand out there,” they told him.”And it did kind of look like central New Zealand. There was the river. I looked it up. And they showed a picture in this encyclopedia of East Hall, and I thought it looked like the Harvard of the West.”

His brother drove him to South Dakota for an interview. When John Day, the longtime chair of the art department and dean of the College of Fine Arts, called to tell him he had the job, he figured he’d stay for a year or two.”But I met all these great people, and the faculty, we’d meet for dinner almost every other night. I loved it out here, and it was peaceful. I applied to a couple of other schools, but I just couldn’t see myself leaving Vermillion.”

One or two years has turned into 44. Sabbaticals took him to Morocco, Jordan, Ecuador, Poland, Spain, Turkey, Nicaragua, Panama, Cuba and China. Back home, his teaching brought numerous faculty awards as well as the 2021 Governor’s Award in the Arts for Outstanding Service in Arts Education.

A collection of tree shadows on the outfield fence at Riverside Park in Yankton.

Those honors are wonderful, but it’s clear that Banasiak’s passion will always be the photographic process.”I bought some beet powder not long ago,” he says, and sure enough, a package of beet powder rests on a counter beside some turmeric and other chemicals. He’s exploring how emulsions made from different plant juices produce images.

“The past couple years I’ve been kind of exploring, tweaking and rearranging†possible processes,” he says.”When I do something, I like doing the whole process. When I get done, I’m done with it. I don’t care if I exhibit or sell them. It’s really in the meditative process of doing it. Whatever I learn doing my own art is what I end up teaching. Classes are always different. I’m coming up with new ideas. I’m excited by them, and when I share them with the students they go nuts.”

The idea of retirement is a non-starter. He’ll invent and teach as long as he’s able. He knows infirmities come to all who live long enough, but he’s thought about that.”Sometimes, now that my eyes are having some issues, I might experiment with photographic braille,” he says.”I don’t think that’s out of the realm of possibility. I might try printing some photos on wood or plastic with the laser cutter that we have in the graphics department. To see with the touch of fingertips can be something worth exploring photographically.†I don’t really believe people see†with†their eyes anyway, they see†through†their eyes, and it makes me think, ëWhat else might I be able to see with?'”

If there’s a way, John Banasiak the experimenter will find it.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the November/December 2023 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Seeking Spring Ornaments

By Christian Begeman

Spring in South Dakota is a joy to watch unfold. It is not always the same within the particulars, but the rhythm of new blossoms and migrating birds are always harbingers of the season of life taking hold. This year saw a hot, windy and dry stretch in early May followed by cool, rainy days. It is now after Memorial Day and the landscape is lush and green out my window, even if the clouds are low and gray. Last year’s barn swallow couple is back inspecting my light fixture outside my front door for another nesting season. I’ve been doing a spring journal for over a decade in this space. This year, more than ever, you’ll see images featuring new blossoms and spring birds. I’ve called them”spring ornaments” in the past and that is how I still see them — fleeting glints of color showing off after a long, cold, Dakota winter.

March 28

I photographed my first pasqueflowers of the season in McCook and Hanson counties.

April 4

Snow flurries in rural Deuel County slowed a small flock of flicker woodpeckers arriving from warmer climates.

April 16

The first plum brush blossoms and bumblebees delighted the senses in Union Grove State Park.

April 19

A few trout lilies were in bloom on the hillside along the Union Grove State Park road.

April 26

Bluebells and pasqueflowers were found in the Slim Buttes of Harding County.

April 27

Star lilies in bloom along a trail of the Sage Creek Wilderness in Badlands National Park.

April 29

A black and white warbler was one of the first migrating songbirds I saw and photographed at Palisades State Park.

April 30

I spent an evening after work chasing a small flock of warblers at the Big Sioux Recreation Area near Brandon. Yellow-rumped warblers and a single palm warbler obliged for a quick portrait session.

May 1

These Canadian goslings at Palisades State Park were among the first babies of spring.

May 3

After a work trip to Minnesota, I stopped at Hartford Beach State Park where a pair of red-bellied woodpeckers were prepping their nest. I also spotted my first prairie smoke wildflower in eastern Brookings County later in the afternoon.

May 4

Tulips and decorative trees bloomed on a near perfect spring day in Sioux Falls.

May 10

A yellow warbler posed at Palisades State Park.

May 12

A Baltimore oriole came in close for a quick snapshot.

May 14

Eastern red columbine were in bloom and a few comma butterflies soaked up the spring sun at Palisades State Park.

May 17

One of my favorite warbler species, the magnolia warbler, gave me a good look at Palisades State Park.

May 25

I took a quick trip to see family and check out the landscape in northeastern South Dakota. Highlights included a patchy of small white lady’s slippers and blue-eyed grass in Deuel County, Tabor Lutheran Church in Strandburg flanked by American flags to honor Memorial Day and a superlative sunset beyond Garfield Lutheran Church west of Lake Norden.

Christian Begeman grew up in Isabel and now lives in Sioux Falls. When he’s not working at Midco he is often on the road photographing South Dakota’s prettiest spots. Follow Begeman on his blog.

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The Thrill of the Chase

By John Andrews

Watertown’s Alex Resel is happiest chasing storms across South Dakota.

Alex Resel’s passions are photography and severe weather, and they intertwine perfectly from late spring to early fall. Though he is only three years out of college, the Watertown storm chaser has already driven tens of thousands of miles in pursuit of thunderstorms, tornadoes, derechos and all manner of nasty weather, returning with beautiful photographs that often belie the dangers.

He’s quickly learned the ins and outs of chasing, such as what to look for on radar and where to safely position himself, but it wasn’t that long ago that his interests in storms and photography were just blossoming. On a humid Father’s Day in 2012, storms rolled into Watertown, bringing heavy hail and setting off the city’s tornado sirens.”Until that point, I had no interest in weather, but something clicked after that storm,” says Resel, who was 12 at the time.”From there, I would draw maps of South Dakota and look at the local weather forecast and do my own weather map forecasting.”

His first”chase” came three years later, when his dad drove him 30 miles north to Summit after seeing a forecast from the National Weather Service’s Aberdeen bureau. Storms were set to fire northwest of the little Roberts County town.”We sat there for probably an hour, just watching them move in. Eventually they merged into a line and drifted toward Watertown.”

Any photos taken that day were captured with a smartphone, but in 2016 he got his first digital camera. He spent the next few years practicing landscape and storm photography and earned a business degree with an emphasis in photography and media from Lake Area Technical College in 2021.

A supercell over Clark.

Resel launched Outer Shots Photography, where he offers prints of landscapes, the Northern lights and the severe weather that he’s been chasing in earnest since the summer of 2020. The makings for strong storms were present west of the Missouri River on June 6, so he headed to the Badlands on his first solo chase.

“It looked like a couple cells could fire, but it didn’t happen because of an ingredient called cap, which prevents storms from growing,” he says.”It’s like putting a lid on a boiling pot of water. I thought the day was over, so I went to the Badlands to hike around for a couple hours and then head home. But I noticed dark clouds were coming in from the south and west, so I decided to wait and see what was going on. A big line of storms started moving in from Nebraska and Wyoming. It developed a beautiful shelf cloud and packed a lot of winds. I watched it move in from one of the overlooks. I was looking south, and as the line was moving overhead a tornado formed right in front of me in the Badlands. That was my first tornado, and it was a really cool thing to see.”

Resel plans his routes based on weather models and utilizes a weather app on his phone, which stays mounted to his windshield.”I’m looking for moisture, instability, lift and shear,” he says.”If all of those ingredients are in place, it’s usually a good sign that you’re going to get some organized severe storms. If multiple storm cells are firing at the same time, I look at which one is the tallest. Usually that’s going to be the dominant storm. Hopefully I’ve picked the right storm so I can get the shots I need.”

A lightning storm over Watertown.

That doesn’t always happen. South Dakotans likely remember where they were on May 12, 2022, the day an unusual and violent derecho raced across the state at 50 to 70 mph, packing straight line winds of 60 to 100 mph, the equivalent of a Category 1 hurricane. Resel noticed a localized enhanced tornado risk forming near Redfield, so he headed to Spink County.”Big cumulus clouds started to form, which is a good sign that storm activity is brewing, but as soon as they bloomed the derecho moved through and they disappeared. We didn’t get any storms to mature.” At the same time, he heard concerning reports closer to Watertown, including the tornado that caused extensive damage in Castlewood.”It’s a scary feeling being away from home and not knowing what’s going on.”

To help assuage those same feelings in others, he regularly reports what he sees to the National Weather Service, either by calling an office directly or through social media. Chasing severe weather can provide an adrenaline rush unequalled in other endeavors, but chasers are generally not simply reckless thrill seekers. There’s an important public service component to their work.

Peter Rogers, the warning coordination meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Sioux Falls bureau, says information received from storm chasers and spotters can be crucial.”We have a lot of complex technology at our fingertips that helps us determine what’s going on, the radar probably being the most important,” Rogers says.”But there are still limitations to that, and there’s nothing better than having eyes and ears on ground watching what’s happening. From the Weather Service perspective, it’s all about the protection of life and property, and all the information that comes from chasers and other spotters is critical information to accomplish that mission.”

Storms that moved from Huron into northwest Iowa in the summer of 2022 turned the skies near Sioux Falls an eerie green. “It was the meanest looking storm I’ve ever seen,” Resel said.

Resel attends the NWS’s yearly severe weather awareness classes, which are offered in the spring. Meteorologists begin with basic terminology, such as the differences between watches and warnings, and then discuss weather in more detail, including how to identify supercell thunderstorms that could produce tornadoes and multicell storms that can cause other hazards. The classes emphasize safety, but Resel also uses the information to help identify the best position for photographing storms.”You’ve got to be on the southeast side of a storm. That’s where you get updraft and it’s where the photogenic parts of the storm are. That also keeps you safe from a tornado or large hail.”

Dangerous situations can still arise. Resel was in a caravan of storm chasers following severe weather in Colorado in August of 2023 when a tornado developed.”It wasn’t on the ground yet, so I felt comfortable, and I knew where to go to get out of its path. As the backside of those tornadic winds wrapped around it picked up rocks and broke out my back windshield. That ended my chase. I did get to see the tornado develop in front of me, but I got out of there as soon as I could to prevent any further damage. That was my first mistake in storm chasing, but luckily it only cost me a back windshield.”

Moments like that are learning opportunities, and not likely to quell the excitement that comes from storm chasing.”Watching the atmosphere work its magic and to have that unfold right in front of you is an amazing experience,” Resel says.”It’s not one that many people know. Each time is different, but you get those same feelings.”

Looking at his photos, you can almost feel it, too.

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.

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Double the Fun in Carthage

By Chad Coppess

Cabaret Days is Carthage’s annual summer celebration and includes a kids’ scavenger hunt on Main Street.

The road through Carthage may not be heavily-traveled, but there’s enough happening in the Miner County town to have two of a lot of things — two recreational lakes, two museums, two antique stores, two eateries and two big city-wide festivals.

In the late 1800s, railroads needed at least a maintenance depot and/or water tower every 7 to 10 miles. Carthage was one of those spots. The original location sprouted from the prairie a bit further east and was moved once the tracks were installed. Surveyor Frank Ward named it for his hometown of Carthage, New York.”All the streets were named after Frank’s brothers,” historian Sally Madison says. They include Thomas, James and Frederick.

Shortly after founding Carthage, Ward donated a lot to the Coughlin family, whose son, Carthage James Coughlin, was the first child born in the new town. Their 13-room house was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2006 and operates today as the Coughlin Inn.

The family’s second son, Charles Coughlin, earned an engineering degree from South Dakota State University in Brookings and served as president of the Briggs and Stratton Corporation from 1935 to 1972. In the 1920s, he donated funds to build the Coughlin Campanile, a 165-foot-tall tower of Indiana white limestone, red brick and concrete that still stands on the SDSU campus along Medary Avenue in Brookings.

Kim and Dave Van Asperen periodically open the former Carthage Opera House as an antique store.

Disaster is a familiar story in South Dakota towns, and Carthage has seen its share. A fire in 1910 destroyed almost the entire north side of Main Street. Longtime resident Lorelee Nelson said people still refer to”before the fire” and”after the fire.” A tornado in 1947 killed one person and destroyed 150 buildings in the area. Although there’s not a traffic light in all of Miner County, Carthage had an airport until around 1948 when the family that operated it was killed in a plane crash.

The Works Progress Administration built a dam and bridge to form”Old Lake Carthage,” but the dam washed out in the early 1960s. A larger dam nearer to town now holds”New Lake Carthage” along with remnants of the old lake. A campground is operated through a partnership between the city and the state Department of Game, Fish and Parks.

Even those with little knowledge of Carthage might recall legendary wanderer Chris McCandless, who spent parts of two years living in town and working at the grain elevator before hitchhiking to Alaska, where he eventually died in an abandoned bus. The story brought Hollywood to town for filming of Into the Wild. Locals fondly remember the wrap-up party that director Sean Penn held in the city park. Memorabilia from the movie is displayed inside The Cabaret bar and at the Straw Bale Built Museum.

More than 1,300 bales insulate the Straw Bale Built Museum and help it maintain a constant temperature year-round. Fundraising for the community museum began in 1999 with volunteers and state penitentiary inmates providing the labor. Norbert and Barbara Moldan operate the museum.”Norbert might be the president, but I run it,” Barbara laughed. The Moldans are proud of the museum’s display of Carthage School class photos from 1923 through 1983.

Barbara and Norbert Moldan operate the Straw Bale Built Museum.

Strawbale Days and Cabaret Days — along with annual events like a haunted house in the basement of the city auditorium, Easter egg hunt and fishing derby — keep the town hopping throughout summer and fall. A community play, parade and cow pie bingo are highlights of Strawbale Days in August. Cabaret Days in June features lawn mower racing, a Main Street scavenger hunt for kids and live music. Pheasant hunting fills area accommodations and a new”Fall Into Carthage” vendor fair aims to send hunters home with local art.

Mayor David Hattervig says the events are important because they attract out-of-town visitors, a big deal in a city of 126 people.”You can only turn over the money within town so many times,” he says.”We need people coming from elsewhere.”

Along with the Lake Carthage campground, the city campground on the opposite end of town has 14 camping spots. The entire park is available for rent to large groups. Since neither campground has shower facilities, the city created a shower hall and laundromat in the former city hall building.

On the south side of Main Street, the Prairie Inn serves as cafe, limited general store and bait shop. Directly across the street is The Cabaret, which serves food inside and in an outdoor beer garden.

When former Carthage News publisher and area businessman Lyle Darnell decided the vacant former grocery store building needed something to keep it alive, he thought back to what founded the town — trains. His friend, artist Alan Windedahl, had experience building model railroad dioramas and the pair began recruiting volunteers for Rails and Relics. A stick-by-stick replica of Carthage’s Main Street in the 1920s got things underway and the project is growing to include a representation of the entire state of South Dakota.

Lyle Darnell, Alan Windedahl and Merlin Moe spend time building at Rails and Relics, a model railroad recreation of Carthage in the town’s former grocery store.

“We are the art kind of model railroad, not an exact replica,” Darnell says. The HO scale layout already includes the Ingalls Homestead at De Smet, the James and Missouri rivers and the Badlands are beginning to rise from the tabletop.”We have no delusions of grandeur,” Darnell laughed.”We know we aren’t going to make Carthage a tourism destination with this, but it gives some old geezers something to really get into.”

Age and health issues have slowed progress on the project, but new volunteers are continually recruited to keep building.”It’s fun to see the people look and find everything,” says Windedahl, who’s family homesteaded on the site that is now Carthage.

Locals are equally delighted when visitors explore the town itself, described by Laura Ingalls Wilder in These Happy Golden Years as the place where she first taught school.”I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else,” Darnell says.”This is a real fine place to be even if you have to drive 25 miles for a loaf of bread.”

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the September/October 2023 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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First Signs of Spring

By Christian Begeman

People who live in the Northern Plains tend to be hardy. They can endure hot, dry summers or long, hard winters with the best of them. Even so, the first signs of spring on the open prairie soften the heart of even the hardiest resident. Winter’s snow is scarcely gone when tiny pasqueflowers first appear on well drained hilltops and hillsides.”Very brave little flowers,” the Cree Indians say,”which come while it is still so cold that they must come wearing their fur coats.” This is in allusion to the furry appearance of the pasqueflower. According to Prairie Smoke: A Collection of Lore of the Prairies by Melvin Randolph Gilmore, a Dakota language song composed to inspire the early appearance of the prairie pasqueflower goes something like this in English:

I wish to encourage the children of other flower nations.

Which are now appearing over all the land;

So, while they waken from sleep and rise from the bosom

Of Mother Earth, I stand here old and gray-headed.

I often think of these references when I find my first blooming pasqueflowers of the year. This year it was in a small pasture just west of the eastern fork of the Vermillion River in McCook County on March 28. While admiring the backlit beauty of the blooms just beyond the fence line, I heard my first western meadowlark serenade of the season. It can’t get much more”South Dakota” than that! I typically find the first blooms of the year on a hillside near Lake Hanson just south of Alexandria, so I drove a little further west and sure enough, about 20 diminutive blooms of South Dakota’s state flower had emerged in my favorite patch.

On April 5, I reserved a blind on the Fort Pierre National Grasslands for another early spring spectacle. This one happens to be both a feast for the eyes as well as the ears. Greater prairie chickens and sharp-tailed grouse gather from March through May to dance. Not only do the roosters dance, but they also call, cackle and woo. The prairie chicken’s woo is a unique sound that I’ve not heard anywhere else. The roosters fill colorful air sacs on either side of their neck and the sound pours out as they expel the air, deflating the pouches. It is known as”booming,” and on a clear and crisp prairie morning, it can be heard for miles. During my morning on the lek, the sound started about 50 minutes before sunrise from right to left outside the blind. It is pretty dark that far ahead of sunrise so you can’t see the birds. It is quite an experience to hear the sound as it amplifies and surrounds you, but you are unable to see the creatures creating it.

As the light grew, I realized that my lek also had sharpies dancing. They don’t”boom,” but they stamp their feet amazingly fast and cackle to impress the hens. Instead of orange air sacks, the skin on their necks flares light purple and their eye combs are bright yellow. It was cold with a stout eastern breeze that morning, but numbing fingers and toes were worth one of the best homegrown shows that nature has to offer on our prairie hills. Soon the winds will warm, and the rest of spring will follow. It always does.

Christian Begeman grew up in Isabel and now lives in Sioux Falls. When he’s not working at Midco he is often on the road photographing South Dakota’s prettiest spots. Follow Begeman on his blog.

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Ramming Through the Mickelson Trail

Story by Paul Higbee

Photos by Chad Coppess

The Mickelson Trail, a recreational trail built atop an old railroad bed. stretches 109 miles from the northern to the southern Black Hills, passing through forests, meadows, four rock tunnels and several old railroad trestles.

Six hundred avid bicyclists and several dozen trailblazers met at a community hall in Custer last September to celebrate 25 years of happiness, no small feat in today’s anxious world. The gathering included participants in an anniversary ride along with current and former park officials, volunteers, donors, lawmakers and other movers and shakers who helped transform an abandoned rail line into what’s now known as the Mickelson Trail.

The state trail should not be taken for granted. A strange silence had settled over the Black Hills after Burlington Northern’s last train exited the mountains in 1983. The sound of engines echoing down draws was never pervasive, but the understated rumble was always a reminder that railroading helped build high country towns and industries — from Edgemont in the south to Lead and Deadwood in the north — and sustained them for nearly a century. The 109-mile rail corridor was a connection to the outside world that especially helped Homestake become America’s biggest and most technically advanced gold mine.

Three years after the trains departed, a man was walking through the forest when he heard a chain saw. He discovered that someone was cutting down an old wooden railroad trestle. Compared to locomotives, the buzzing of a saw cutting into a trestle in 1986 was more insect-like, but it disturbed the hiker so he contacted Guy Edwards, a young businessman and state lawmaker.

Black Hills activists were already talking about transforming the vacated rail bed into a recreational route under the recently authorized federal Rails to Trails program. Destruction of the rustic trestles seemed like a major step in the wrong direction. Edwards soon learned that the damage was not being done by vandals, but by a salvage contractor hired by Burlington Northern. A few dozen bridges had already been removed. The lawmaker arranged for demolition to cease until matters could be sorted out. Then he convinced state officials to make the trail a priority. So began a complicated, controversial and long-drawn out battle to create a rails-to-trail project.

“Probably 95 percent of property owners along the trail were against us at first,” Edwards told South Dakota Magazine many years later.”I could understand their position. After years of having trains go by their property, it appeared the corridor might meld into the landscape.”

The Mickelson Trail may not exist today if not for the zealous support of its namesake, Gov. George S. Mickelson, who presided over an early dedication ceremony before he died in a 1993 plane crash.

The Interstate Commerce Commission had granted Burlington Northern permission to abandon its business of running trains through the Black Hills, but not the railway. The corridor had been established under federal authority because in the 19th century there had been an economic need, and under Rails to Trails it would remain in place in case another need arose. Meanwhile the public could use it for recreation.

In 1986, Brookings attorney George S. Mickelson ran for governor. He made a $50 donation during the fall campaign to a nonprofit organization set up to advance the trail. At the 25-year anniversary event last fall in Custer, the late governor’s son, Mark, reminisced about his dad’s approach to making things happen.”As governor, my grandfather (George T. Mickelson) was the only state official to show up for the first blast at Crazy Horse Memorial,” Mickelson said.”My father saw a parallel in how his own early support could help make the trail a reality. He loved the Black Hills and being out here.”

After taking office as governor in 1987, George Mickelson said he wanted trail work to commence at”ramming speed.” He used the train term metaphorically, but it did illustrate the work that lay ahead: trestle restoration, culvert development and surfacing the route.

The earliest obstacle was the hundreds of property owners who valued their privacy and were wary of sharing the back country with hikers, bikers and horses. Susan Edwards Johnson, who is Guy Edwards’ sister and was then Mickelson’s tourism secretary, spoke of the governor’s tenacity at the Custer anniversary gathering. She especially recalled a meeting at Mystic, where some cabin owners were personal friends and political supporters of the governor.

After listening patiently to their concerns, Mickelson rose to his feet and told the naysayers to get aboard because,”We are coming through!” Few politicians in South Dakota history ever had the political gravitas to lead so bluntly.

Later, Mickelson spoke of the opponents to Rapid City Journal reporter Jim Holland.”Treasures like the Black Hills are jealously guarded,” he said.”They have different ideas of what the Hills should be used for than we do. We will help to protect the qualities of the lands we both hold so dear. It may be impossible to get them to share our dream, but we promise to be good neighbors.”

“He saw it as a legacy project for South Dakota,” says Kitty Kinsman, who became involved with fundraising for the project in the 1990s. Opponents eventually softened — partly because of their respect for Mickelson, who offered to build private-access gates and fences for property owners to alleviate some of their concerns.

The Mickelson Trail isn’t particularly steep. Grades are generally less than 4 percent.

Kinsman helped organize the anniversary event in Custer. She wonders whether the trail would exist without Mickelson, who was a strong conservationist. Just months before his death, he also persuaded lawmakers to pass his Centennial Environmental Act, a comprehensive program that continues to protect the state’s water and land resources. It’s hard to imagine such a proposal passing the South Dakota legislature today.

Along with the political hurdles came less contentious questions. And there were few models across the country to imitate.”It was an idea ahead of its time,” says Doug Hofer, former director of the state Division of Parks and Recreation, who also celebrated at the Custer event. No one doubted that trail sections close to Edgemont, Pringle, Custer, Hill City, Rochford, Lead and Deadwood would see use. But what about those long stretches far from towns? Would Black Hills weather, famous for rapid changes, scare potential users from venturing on the remote stretches? What about the growing mountain lion population?

Then, seven years into the project, Mickelson died in a 1993 plane crash with seven other men. His family directed memorial donations to the trail effort, but no amount of money could replace the leadership of the popular governor, who did everything in life at ramming speed. Eventually the route was named in his honor.

Hofer says the project seemed to benefit from”divine intervention” after Mickelson’s death. Capable people would appear to tackle aspects of development at just the right times. Among them was Dave Snyder, an ag businessman from Pierre and a member of a national Rails to Trails organization. Snyder contributed significantly to the project when he learned that $1 million was needed to match state and federal money, and he devised a plan based on the route’s trestles for raising the full amount.

More than a hundred trestles had to be rebuilt, decked and improved in other ways, and a value was assigned to each based on length. Private and corporate sponsors could”adopt” bridges for donations that ranged from $1,000 to $25,000. Snyder traveled the state, successfully pitching the bridge builder project.

“We had lots of bridges ranging from $3,500 to $5,000, although donors understood they weren’t buying that bridge, but rather matching dollars for the whole trail system,” Snyder says.

He also believed opposition would fade because that was the history of other trails.”There just aren’t incidents involving trail users,” he noted.”You don’t see trash. I tell people that nobody gets on the trail and then feels worse when they get off.”

With money available for construction supplies, Paul Bosworth of the U.S. Forest Service, among other duties, led National Guard men and women assigned to the work. Many were novices when it came to construction, but enthusiastic about the trail.”They were super fun,” Bosworth says.”Of course, this was part of their military training and sometimes they had to take a break when they were ëattacked,’ grabbing guns and shooting blanks at guys playing the enemy.”

The trail follows several meandering Black Hills creeks.

Kinsman, who had never pedaled a mountain bike before she began working with Snyder and Edwards Johnson on the bridge builder campaign, now rides the Mickelson regularly.”I’m struck by both the scenery and solitude even when you’re not far from roads,” she says.

Today, 15 trailheads make it easy to jump on and off for short rides or hikes. Rest and shade areas and interpretive signs have been created. A 5-mile paved spur was developed by the state Department of Transportation to take users close to (although not into) Custer State Park.

It took governors, state and federal officials, private sector donors, volunteers and the Burlington Northern to complete the project. The full 109-mile trail opened to hikers, cyclists, runners and equestrians in 1998 — 15 years after that last train — and soon gained a reputation as one of the best Rails to Trails routes in the country. It passes through varied landscapes of forest and prairies, four rock tunnels, and, of course, over those trestles.

More than 20,000 people purchase $15 annual passes, and many more buy $4 day passes. Park officials believe more than 70,000 people traverse it throughout the year. The annual Mickelson Trail Trek, which celebrated its 25th year at Custer, is limited to 600 registrants; most years, the registrations are gone within 24 hours. A three-day Summer Trail Trek is now held in June to accommodate more people.

One of the trail’s many charms is the way it pops out of the pines and passes through small towns. Julia Monczunski’s favorite trail memory is running the 2006 Mickelson Trail Marathon.”Actually, I competed in the half-marathon, my first long-distance race, and it was neat to be running in the mountains and then ending in Deadwood,” she says.”I was tired but felt a burst of energy from the crowd cheering us on as we came into town.”

Monczunski, who has also raced on pavement, appreciates the Mickelson’s forgiving crushed limestone surface. Cyclists also like the control they feel with limestone on long downslopes. Trail developers say limestone is aesthetically appropriate to the Black Hills and less vulnerable to water damage during heavy rains.

Trail use continues to evolve. E-bikes are the newest twist.”They’ve made the trail more accessible, especially for people who aren’t adjusted to altitude,” Kinsman says. “They’re here to stay.”

Nineteenth century railroad workers built the train corridor in about one year. Converting the path to a trail required 15 years.

But they pose problems. Collisions with other cyclists happen when inexperienced e-bike riders stick to the center of the trail to maintain a sense of control.”It’s a nonmotorized trail and class one e-bikes have been seen as okay,” Snyder says.”But sometimes there are class two or even class three e-bikes out there, almost small motorcycles, and that has to be watched. And a 50- or 60-pound e-bike is probably okay, but maybe not one that’s a hundred pounds.”

Motorized bikes, mountain lions and even the weather don’t seem to discourage users. Online reviews are dominated by 5-star ratings. The most common complaint is the long ascent that runs south of Deadwood/Lead to Dumont.

The passage of a quarter century and the trail’s place in today’s Black Hills culture doesn’t mean the work is done. The corridor requires constant upkeep. Aging trestle decking will have to be replaced and at least one support beam has been infested by ants. The tunnels are monitored constantly for safety. There’s a spot where Rapid Creek — diverted from its original channel by railroad builders — acts up.

The Custer gathering honored six cyclists who have ridden the autumn Mickelson Trail Trek every year since 1998. Kinsman says it was also an opportunity to relaunch the Friends of the Mickelson Trail group because private donations are needed for the rehabilitation efforts.

Though the trail is part of the state park system, numerous agencies and individuals have always stepped forward to help.”I spent so much time working on the trail, and now when I go there and see people using it, having fun, it makes me happy,” Bosworth says.

Bosworth has been retired from the Forest Service for a few years but returns to the trail to help as a private contractor.”The trail did so much for me in launching my career,” he recalled,”that I’ll do anything for it.”

He’s happy that so many people now enjoy the Black Hills wilderness along the trail, and notes that the major concern of property owners today isn’t the hikers and bikers with whom they share the backwoods, but whether the private gates that give them easy access are in good working order so they can join them.

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

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The Elevator

By Bernie Hunhoff

A skeleton of the Rauville Grain Company still attracts attention north of Watertown.

Dave Goos recalls walking into Lampert Lumber Company in Sioux Falls and buying 9,000 pounds of 20-penny coated sinker nails.

“We were building a new wood crib elevator in Cavour and that’s what we needed,” says Goos, who designed some of America’s last wood structures before concrete and steel grain facilities became the norm.

He has fond memories of the Cavour project and others like it.”They’d already shipped rail carloads of rough lumber to the job site. We would hire local guys — hopefully some young farm boys — and take our foreman and together we would build something that was a key to the economy and the culture of the area.”

What they built has stood the test of time. Grain elevators — some more than 100 feet high and a century old — continue to tower over Cavour and other towns in America’s grain belt. Many wood elevators are still used for grain storage. A few have been repurposed into lodges or homes. Others, though abandoned, are built so solidly that they’ve thwarted all attempts by nature or man to take them down. They represent farm country’s tallest icons of yesteryear, beloved by photographers and painters and every farmer’s son or daughter who ever unloaded a trailer or truck full of grain and then drove home while carefully clutching a handwritten check from the manager.

Some call them the skyscrapers of the prairie or cathedrals of the plains. To farmers, however, they are just The Elevator.

Dave Goos designed classic crib elevators.

D&W Construction, the company that Goos worked for in the 1980s, still exists on the western outskirts of Sioux Falls. He says he loved the chance to build something that was so vital to a town, and he still relishes the stories that developed from such an unusual and rugged occupation.

Like the day Pete Puterbaugh,”a tough as nails ranch boy from North Dakota,” fell off the elevator at Burke and landed on a lumber pile.”He got busted up pretty badly, but he walked away from the fall,” Goos says. On another occasion, Goos says Puterbaugh saw a badger digging a hole in a pasture.”As Pete told it, he got ahold of the scruff on each side of the badger’s belly and tried to pull it out of the hole, but he said it seemed like the badger ‘turned around inside his own skin’ and came at him, looking like it had two fistfuls of 16-penny nails for claws buzz sawing for his chest. All Pete could do was pick it up and throw it as far away from him as he could and run.”

Goos recalls an occasion when a few of the workers painted a picture of a scantily clad lady atop a new elevator.”It didn’t take long for the phone to ring in the office at D&W,” he says.

At yet another worksite, they were addressing a rat infestation, a common problem for grain facilities.”The manager had read about some powerful sonic device that would drive the rats crazy, so he bought one, wired it to a 2-by-6, plugged it in and shoved it up under the backside of the elevator on a Friday night. On Monday morning he was wondering if it made any difference when the guy who maintained the buses at the local school came and hurriedly asked for every shovel and broom they could spare.”

“My god, do we have rats!” said the bus man.

Goos says elevator projects always drew onlookers, but a job at Jefferson attracted an unexpected crowd.”A tornado had come through and taken down two 36-foot diameter bins. We made a mock foundation in the parking lot and built new bins to go on the old foundations. Then we dropped a cable through the bin top openings so we could hoist them with a crane onto the old foundations. But the day we moved them just happened to be homecoming day and they had a parade going on. People left the parade and brought their lawn chairs to sit along the railroad siding and watch us lift the bins into place. It was the last thing we wanted because we didn’t know if it was going to work.”

Goos studied mechanized agriculture at South Dakota State University and worked for GTA Feeds before joining D&W Construction as a project engineer. His job was to design the elevators.

“One of the first things you’d do is meet with the elevator’s board of directors, which was usually a group of farmers,” he says.”They always farmed and did chores until dark, so you’d be meeting late at night when everybody else was in bed. We would already have the place all measured out and we’d present a design. So often, they didn’t know exactly what they needed, but they trusted us — and we felt the weight of that responsibility because the elevator was such an important part of their community.”

The trust was well-placed. Most of the D&W-built wood elevators still stand. Many still hold grain.

“We still help to repair the old wood elevators,” says Jason Hiemstra, who started with D&W in 1987 when it was transitioning to steel construction.”We’ll still replace the siding or the cribbing. The wood elevators are actually the best way to store grain because the wood absorbs moisture while corrugated metal actually sweats and adds moisture.”

D&W Construction of Sioux Falls built wood crib elevators for decades. Jason Hiemstra, who has blueprints of the jobs and a carpenter’s cribbing hatchet, says crews still repair the sturdy structures.

Hiemstra, now one of the company’s owners, says insurance actuaries are the major threat to wood elevators.”They are starting to kibosh them because they see them as a fire hazard.” Grain dust is explosive; even a spark from an overheated bearing is sometimes enough to create an explosion.

He says old elevators also face problems with everything from mice to worn and frayed electrical wiring. Still, he appreciates Goos’ nostalgia for the elevators.”If I had built them, I’d probably feel the same way.”

An artist’s painting of an old elevator hangs in the entryway at D&W and Hiemstra keeps a cribbing hatchet — the main tool for carpenters who built wood elevators — in his office.

Dale Kelling joined the D&W crew in 1969 and retired as company president in 2011. He says D&W constructed its initial wood elevator in 1955, but the crib-style dates to the late 1800s when grain elevators were first built along the railroad tracks of the Dakotas and neighboring states.”Farmers didn’t want to haul the grain any further than they had to in those days,” he says.

Wood construction required skills that are rare today.”That cribbing hatchet was the weight of a heavy hammer,” Kelling says.”We tried air nailers back in the 1970s, but they wouldn’t pound the nail tight enough to cinch the wood together. That’s where the cribbing hatchet came in.”

He says the main purpose of the hatchet blade was to provide weight for the hammer head.”I don’t know if they actually used it to cut the lumber at one time, but we used hand saws. We bought saws by the dozens before we went to circular saws.”

Cribbed elevators were built by stacking 2-by-4, 2-by-6 and 2-by-8 boards horizontally, like logs in a cabin. The widest boards were used at the bottom, and the narrow 2-by-4s finished off the top. Steel rods were used as corner braces to reinforce the walls by resisting the pressure from the grain inside the bins.

Horses powered the grain-moving systems in the 19th century. Gas engines replaced the horses; electrical motors move the grain today.

In the heyday of small family farms, the grain elevator was the hub of most towns.”That was the gathering place,” Kelling recalls.”Some would come for coffee in the morning or to play cards in the afternoon, especially in the winter.”

Many elevators stocked livestock feeds and medicines, seeds, fertilizer, hardware and other farm supplies. They were also an entry to international grain markets. When farmers sold their grain to the local elevator, they drove away with checks that were hopefully big enough to keep a family on the land for another year.

Family farms are fewer in number, but many have survived even as other institutions deserted rural America. Railroads abandoned most of their tracks. Automobile and farm machinery manufacturers consolidated dealerships. Bishops closed churches. Politicians shuttered schools. Bureaucrats eliminated post offices. Consequently, much rural architecture — church spires, train depots and automotive garages — are disappearing on the Great Plains. Wood grain elevators are also fewer in number, but they are outlasting the other structures.

A few have even been repurposed. The Wik family converted a Faulk County elevator near Wecota into a private home. In the Gregory County town of Herrick, a 1907 elevator serves as a local bar and grill called Run of the Mill.

Jenna Carlson Dietmeier, interim director of South Dakota’s State Historic Preservation Office in Pierre, says grain elevators may not appear historically significant to people unaware of the heritage and unique construction.”They are not often seen as exemplary architecture. They are very utilitarian, and they don’t always stand out to the untrained eye. But they definitely tell the story of South Dakota’s agricultural history, and they are worthy of preservation.”

A wood crib elevator is one of the few remaining structures in Esmond, a Kingsbury County ghost town.

Carlson Dietmeier’s office is doing county-wide surveys of buildings that qualify for the National Register of Historic Places.”There are multiple grain elevators that are eligible,” she says. However, many exist in small towns where it’s difficult to find a new use. Some sit alone on the prairie because, thanks to their sturdy crib-style construction, they are the last structure standing.

Neighboring states’ historians are also eyeing elevators. The Montana Preservation Alliance has embarked on a major study of the issue, hoping to not only frame the problem nationally but to also develop models for repurposing vacant elevators.

Bruce Selyem started the Country Grain Elevator Historical Society in Bozeman, Montana, in 1995. He and his wife Barbara research and photograph old elevators; they hope to someday create a museum-quality interpretive site in an old grain facility.

Last year the Alliance for Historic Wyoming developed a tour of historic agricultural buildings that are typically off-limits to the public. On the outskirts of Cheyenne, Wyoming, entrepreneurs are converting a century-old wood elevator into a bar and entertainment center.

North of the U.S. and Canadian border, preservationists in Saskatchewan were alarmed to discover that 94 percent of their province’s historic grain elevators have disappeared. Government officials counted 2,878 elevators in a 1962 study; today they estimate there are less than 180, though efforts are now underway to save some.

Carlson Dietmeier, the preservation officer in Pierre, says 133 elevator properties have been identified in South Dakota’s recent Cultural Resource Geographic Research Information Display database. She believes there may be additional structures not yet surveyed or recorded. Fifty-five of the 133 were recorded as being eligible for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places.

Six are already listed. They include the Herrick elevator which has been converted to a lodge; an elevator on the Barber farm near Lily; an elevator on the Lyons property in Lake County; two elevators at the Sexauer Seed Company in Brookings; and Central Dakota Flouring Mill in Arlington.

“The elevator and the local restaurant were the two hubs of activity in a small farm town,” says Dave Goos, the engineer who helped to build them in the 1980s.”If you wanted to know what was going on, that’s where you went.”

Farmers and ranchers often laud the importance of land by noting that”God isn’t making any more of it.” The same might be said of wood cribbed grain elevators.

While the grain elevators outlasted churches and other iconic rural buildings because of their ridiculously strong construction, even 9,000 pounds of nails isn’t enough to ward off fire worries, insurance actuaries and the vagaries of nature and time.

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

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Dancing with Grebes

Story and photos by Donna Caplinger

Western grebes appear to walk on water during the rush, perhaps the most distinctive element of their spring mating ritual.

My love affair with grebes began when I was a high school biology teacher. During a lesson about birds, I showed my class a movie by Sir David Attenborough, the British broadcaster and wildlife biologist. I was amazed by the beauty and gracefulness of the grebes, with their long slender necks and pointed bills. Their courtship ritual was intricate and complex, unlike any other in the animal kingdom. They repeated each other’s every movement. If there were ever birds that demonstrated love, these grebes put the stereotypical doves to shame.

There are two displays, each including a specific set of steps performed with precision. The first is the rushing ceremony, which begins with advertising as the birds deliver a rolling call. Then comes ratchet-pointing, where they lower themselves into the water and their call becomes more ratchet-like. The next component is dip-shaking, which accurately describes the behavior of dipping their heads underwater and then shaking them from side to side after they resurface. Finally comes the rush, when the grebes run side by side across the surface of the water, necks back and wings up. They are the largest vertebrates on Earth with the ability to walk on water, covering up to 66 feet in 7 seconds through a combination of speed (20 steps per second), splayed feet to help gain traction and an unusual stride.
The weed dance occurs during the mating season. Two grebes arch their backs, stretch their necks and share weeds that they will use to build a nest.

The second display is the weed ceremony. It is equally complex and happens later in the mating season. But it was the rushing that fascinated me. As a part-time wildlife photographer, when I saw the ritual culminate into this beautiful dance across the water, I told myself that someday I would find grebes in the spring and photograph them.

When I retired from teaching, I started going down my bucket list of things I wanted to photograph. Western grebes were high on the list. They do not live in my state of Missouri, so I followed the Central Flyway, a major migration route over the Great Plains that encompasses a large part of the Prairie Pothole Region. Spring rains fill the potholes and they become a stopping point and breeding ground for many species of migratory waterfowl. Ducks, geese, pelicans and grebes take advantage of these pools, which contain a myriad of invertebrates, small fish and aquatic plants for food sources and nesting materials.

I knew about the potholes in South Dakota. Photographers look at each other’s work, and I’m sure I saw a picture of grebes taken in South Dakota. So about six years ago I made my first trip.

I’ll never forget my very first experience. The water was out, like it is in the spring. I had parked and was using a beanbag on the door of my truck. The grebes were coming really close, and that’s when I got my first good pictures. I didn’t get to see any rushing that day, but I went back later and witnessed babies riding on their mothers’ backs. I was hooked.

They usually start in April. I watch for the courtship ritual, which continues throughout the summer. But I keep looking because I’m waiting for the babies, too.

Of the 22 species of grebes, six can be found in South Dakota: Clark’s, western, pied-billed, eared, horned and red-necked. Clark’s grebe is similar to the western grebe; sometimes they are found mingling together. The other species are not as large. The breeding plumage of the pied-billed grebe is not as flamboyant. Its bill is not sharp and pointed and its neck is not long and graceful. The horned grebe has some interesting colors, with gold feathers wrapping around its head and a reddish ring around its neck. The eared grebe is arguably the most stunning of the smaller grebes. It has a golden fan of feathers radiating outward behind its eyes. I love grebes in general, but I think the western grebes are the most graceful and the most beautiful.

Photographers don’t always share their favorite spots, especially when you’re talking about birds. If you let it out where you’re going, then all of a sudden you get a crowd of people, and the birds are gone. I have traveled to South Dakota every spring for six years and have observed five of the six grebes during their migration and/or breeding season. (I have not been able to photograph or view a red-necked grebe yet.) Between the rushing and watching the babies, grebes have so much to offer. For a photographer, they are a dream come true.

Donna Caplinger lives in Fair Play, Missouri.

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

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The Characters of Isabel

By Chad Coppess

Ryan Maher provides groceries and supplies for a wide area of the state from the Occidental General Store.

The high school closed in 2009, the local newspaper has merged with nearby Timber Lake and the grocery delivery truck doesn’t make it to town anymore. None of that stops the people of Isabel from keeping this tiny Dewey County community alive.

Isabel was a daughter of a railroad executive when the tracks reached here in 1910.”This was the end of the track,” says local entrepreneur Ryan Maher.”They were going to continue on west, but it never happened.” He said the town of Faith in Meade County is named for Isabel’s sister.

Maher still lives on the Cheyenne River Reservation ranch where his family homesteaded in 1910. He recently completed the town’s latest restoration project of the 1914 Occidental General Store. Along with rebuilding a rotting floor and utilities infrastructure, Maher scavenged cabinets from a school in McLaughlin, the nearby abandoned Firesteel Store and freezers from a store in Gettysburg. Now his former co-op store built by area homesteaders supplies groceries for a large area of West River ranchland residents.

Ashley and Braden Fischknecht run The Branding Iron.

The grocery trucks only go as far as Timber Lake, 20 miles east, so Maher makes the trek with a pickup and trailer to stock his store.”That’s when it’s 120 out or 40 below through snow and sleet.” He’s learned to keep milk and other items in the pickup with him to keep them from freezing on winter trips.

“It’s 150 miles to bigger towns and the closest Walmart is Pierre or Bismarck, but still a store like this shouldn’t exist economically,” Maher says.”The big winner in having this store open is the city’s sales tax.” Along with being a state legislator, Maher is also a city councilor, so he knows where the taxes come from and how they are spent.

In the Post Office next door to the grocery store, you’ll find Maher’s mother and postmistress Marcia.”It’s amazing how people survived,” she says of life on the prairie.”Our characters make our little town unique.”

There are plenty of stories about those characters, like Yank Robinson, an alcoholic blacksmith who, when his arm wouldn’t function to raise a glass, would wrap a towel around it and raise it with the other arm.

In the 1960s or ’70s August Shutz welded a nickel on a bolt driven into the concrete sidewalk just to watch people try to pick it up. Coin collector Hans Gugenschlager chiseled it out. Marcia Maher remembers Gugenschlager as an eccentric bachelor who had money buried in his shack.”He would come into church and warm his hands over the candles in the windows and I realized he didn’t have heat in his shack,” she says.

Then there was Jack Reich, a motel owner, insurance salesman, one-time mayor and artist who overcame numerous physical challenges. In addition to being born breech, which caused nerve damage and limited the use of his arms and hands, he was involved in a car accident in 2002 that killed his wife and left him in a wheelchair. Despite those limitations, he studied art at South Dakota State University after finding that he could draw by holding a pen in his mouth. His oil paintings, many of which can still be found around town, are a tribute to the West River countryside that he loved.

Reich’s nephew, Christian Begeman, has become one of the state’s respected photographers. His Prairie Sanctuaries Facebook page, on which he posts beautiful photos of country churches, has more than 15,000 followers. He credits his upbringing on a farm near Isabel with his passion for capturing those rural scenes.

Begeman graduated from Isabel High School in 1991, where his father, Charles, served as superintendent. His mother, Barb, was the longtime publisher of the Isabel Dakotan. He now lives in Sioux Falls and works for Midco, but memories of small-town Isabel are never far.”When I tell people about learning to water ski, I always recount summer Sundays at Isabel Lake, which is a WPA dam on Firesteel Creek about three miles north of town,” he says.”It was just large enough to pull a water skier, provided you stayed in a never-ending figure eight.”

Postmistress Marcia Maher remembers the characters that helped define life in Isabel.

Isabel’s big annual event happens during the first weekend of August and includes a rodeo, parade and all-school reunion. Locals refer to it simply as”the celebration,” Begeman says.”During the centennial, there was a three-day wagon trail ride which I took part of as the photographer. It wasn’t until I was on that adventure that I realized how the town sits on one of the highest hills in the county. Some things you just don’t see until you look at them from a different angle.”

The Lindskov family has been involved with the rodeo for decades. Posters promoting the 1960s events decorate the walls at the family’s Premier Equipment on the south edge of town.

After founding the family ranch in 1934, Bill Lindskov purchased the Isabel Automotive Company in 1951 and four generations of Lindskovs have worked at what is now Premier Equipment, a New Holland agricultural equipment dealership. They also own dealerships in Mobridge, Eureka, Huron, Bowdle and Sturgis.

Lindskov’s LT Ranch is one of West River’s largest, and an annual bull sale attracts buyers from around the world. With around 1,000 Charolais and 600 Angus cattle feeding, the ranch encompasses plenty of prairie habitat for pheasant, sharp-tail grouse and partridge. Lindskov’s Firesteel Creek Lodge provides upland bird hunting on more than a quarter-million acres north of Isabel and has sister lodges in Timber Lake and Utah.

Monte Lindskov, Bill’s son, is proud of the family legacy in Isabel.”You just hope the town is around for a few more generations at least,” he says.

Ninety-four-year-old rancher Paul Stradinger is proud that several generations of his family have made a living in the Isabel area.”My parents homesteaded two miles east of here and I was born there,” he said from his dining room table.”I knew the people that were here, the old cowboys. Now my sons have taken over the ranch.”

Like Maher, Stradinger knows the tiny town is remote.”It’s about 50 miles to the nearest stoplight and if I go to the VA hospital in Sturgis, I’ll only see three stop signs,” he grinned.

Several generations of Paul Stradinger’s family have ranched in the Isabel area.

Stradinger’s grandfather came to the area from what is now Ukraine and homesteaded southeast of Isabel. His mother’s family came from Holland. His parents most likely met at a local barn dance.

“In the ’30s there wasn’t any money,” Stradinger says.”Hamburgers smelled so good, but we didn’t have ten cents to buy one. People are getting sparser, and ranches are getting bigger. But the town is in good hands. They are keeping it alive.”

Ashley and Braden Fischknecht are one of the newest families in Isabel. They purchased the former Sparky’s Bar last fall and renamed it The Branding Iron.”We moved to South Dakota five years ago from Utah,” Braden says.”We just kind of picked a spot on the map.” They owned the cafe in Bison, 60 miles west, before coming to Isabel.

Updates have been made to the cafe and bar, with more planned. The Fischknechts are looking forward to their first summer season, the annual August celebration and the traffic heading to and from the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. They have already discovered that GPS navigation often routes travelers from Minnesota through Isabel on their way to the Black Hills.”Instead of sending them on the interstates, people are wandering through here and need a place to eat,” Braden says.”It works out pretty well for us.”

Isabel was once the end of the track, and even today lies somewhat off the beaten path. But you can still find a hot meal, buy a sack of groceries and maybe hear a story or two about the colorful characters who give it life.

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.