Tag: beadle county

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Huron’s Marvelous Murals

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

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

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

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

All things you can only do in Huron.

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South Dakota’s Sledding Hills

Local youth take to their sleds at Yankton’s Morgen Park. Photo by Bernie Hunhoff.

By Bernie Hunhoff

South Dakota’s reputation for geographic diversity holds true when it comes to snow sledding. Some of our eastern cities are too flat, and the slopes in some of our mountain towns are too rugged, steep and rocky.

In Aberdeen, where the terrain has been described as”flat as a barn door,” city leaders manufactured a 25′ hill so kids could enjoy winter. However, we discovered that most communities have a natural hill that becomes a hot spot when it snows.

Pack your sleds as you travel this winter because there are plenty of hills to explore. Most of the snow hills are unsupervised, so adults should be ready to act if they see something dangerous — a heavy toboggan sled, for example, that could carom out of control and hurt someone, or a motorized vehicle on the slopes. Sledding has long been a favorite winter tradition, even for our flatland friends. Let’s keep it alive.

Here’s our list of city slopes. Tell us what we’re missing. We’d also like to know where to find the closest and richest hot chocolate after a day on the slopes.

ABERDEEN — God created most of South Dakota’s hills and mountains, but man assisted with the modest slope in Baird Park (1715 24th Avenue NE), the most popular sledding spot in the Hub City. City officials created the gentle 25-foot just for kids.

BELLE FOURCHE — Slopes behind the Tri-State Museum (415 5th Avenue) are a favorite, though they may be too fast for younger kids and there is a walking path at the foot of the hill so watch for pedestrians.

CUSTER — Pageant Hill has been touted as one of the finest family sledding spots in the Black Hills. It may be too steep and long for younger kids, but you don’t have to descend from the very top. The hill is the summit of beautiful Big Rock Park, which also includes hiking trails and a disc golf course. It rises above the city’s south side.

HOT SPRINGS — Southern Hills Golf Course (1130 Clubhouse Drive) is fun and scenic.

HURON — Toboggan Hill (6th Street & Lawnridge Avenue), aka Slide Hill, is a bluff above the Jim River valley on Huron’s east side.

LEMMON — The ever-resourceful people of Lemmon discovered years ago that it was less expensive to build a small hill for their new water storage rather than just build a taller tower. Then someone got the great idea or also making it into a sledding slope with a warming shack. Tank Hill is quite easy to spot on the city’s west side. Many years ago, when the water tower developed a leak during a cold spell, kids were able to slide on the ice flow all the way downtown.

PIERRE — The slopes above the soccer fields in Hilger’s Gulch are popular. The gulch is a scenic valley just north of the State Capitol building.

RAPID CITY — Meadowbrook School Hill (3125 W. Flormann Street) is a good spot, as well as the Civic Center hill that rises above the Holiday Inn Rushmore Plaza parking lot downtown.

SIOUX FALLS — Tuthill Park in southeast Sioux Falls is the site of weddings and parties in the summer months, but when the snow falls it becomes the domain of well-bundled children with sleds. Spellerberg Park (2299 W. 22nd Street), closer to the city center, also has a fair slope. Great Bear Ski Valley welcomes snow tubers, who get to ride the ski lifts.

SPEARFISH — Hills behind the Donald E. Young Center on the Black Hills State University campus are fast and fun.

STURGIS — Lions Club Park (off Lazelle Street) is a good place for younger kids, and Strong Field Hill on Ballpark Road is fun for older youth.

WATERTOWN — St. Ann’s Hill, a sledder’s delight, is so named because St. Ann’s was the original name of the nearby Prairie Lakes Hospital. Take Highway 20 to 10th Avenue and turn uphill.

WESSINGTON SPRINGS — It’s worth a drive to experience Ski Hill on the west edge of Wessington Springs. The natural setting in the Wessington Hills is idyllic, but the real attraction is an old, homemade invention with an electric motor that powers a 1,200-foot rope lift. Jokingly called the”Rube Goldberg ski lift,” the simple equipment has been lovingly cared for by handy volunteers, including Lloyd Marken, 85, who helped to build it in 1956.

YANKTON — Morgen Park (1200 Green Street) is the go-to sledding hill in town, however kids also like to slide down the earthen slope of Gavins Point Dam, where it rises above Pierson Ranch Recreation Area west of Yankton.

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The Comeback City

By Paul Higbee

Children dance to live music in Huron’s Campbell Park. Family Nights are held each Thursday during the summer.

It’s my favorite South Dakota trivia question: Who were the two U.S. senators born in Huron?

Lots of South Dakotans answer quickly although, I’m sorry to say, they’re almost always wrong. You’ll find the answer later in this article, but my point is that South Dakotans generally say they know Huron well when, in fact, they could benefit by taking a closer look.

South Dakotans think they know Huron because so many of us have traveled there year after year, since childhood, for the State Fair. What’s more, Huron historically has been South Dakota’s center — not its geographic center, but for decades the approximate center of East River. It’s been known as a center for homesteading, organized labor, women’s suffrage and basketball — for many years it boasted the state’s premier arena for state high school hoops tournaments.

Dakota Avenue is Huron’s main street, where you can find everything from homemade donuts in the morning to live music at night.

Jeanne Cowan remembers moving to Huron as a child in the 1950s after her father contracted polio.”St. John’s Hospital was a regional center for polio treatment,” she said.”I grew up thinking Huron was the best town anywhere. It had the big Armour plant, lots of railroad traffic, recreation at Ravine Lake and professional baseball in summer.”

In the 1950s and’60s it seemed Huron had everything a major South Dakota community could want — except for something it once worked hard for but couldn’t swing: the state capital. In 1890, when South Dakotans voted to select their capital city, Huron was a 10-year-old town bursting with energy and confidence. Established by the Chicago and North Western Railroad as a construction camp, railroad of officials named the community for the indigenous Huron people several hundred miles east. It seemed an odd choice considering there were plenty of local American Indian names to celebrate, but the moniker stuck. Huron grew quickly as a jumping off point for homesteaders after a land office opened in 1882. Thousands of farm families began working the surrounding land as the 1880s progressed. Huron civic leaders in 1890 were confident they could land capital city designation because of their town’s easy access by rail, and because South Dakota’s population spread so evenly from this booming center.

But voters thought otherwise and gave Pierre the nod. In 1898 Huron gained a measure of revenge when Pierre University, a Presbyterian school, moved east to become Huron College. John and Mamie Pyle worked diligently to bring the college to town, and after John’s death Mamie devoted years to ensuring the school’s success. Yet that’s not why she’s remembered a century later. Mamie and her daughter Gladys led the movement to win South Dakota women the right to vote. Gladys not only voted, but in 1922 she became the first woman elected to the South Dakota State Legislature. Later she was elected South Dakota Secretary of State and, yes, she’s one half of the answer to that trivia question. In 1938, Pyle won an election to complete the last two months of the late Sen. Peter Norbeck’s term. When she retired from politics, Pyle reinvented herself as a successful Huron businesswoman and was active in community affairs for most of her 98 years. After her death in 1989, her home was made into a fine museum that remains open today.

Cousins Gus Marcus (left) and Todd Manolis run Manolis Grocery, started by their grandpa, Gus Manolis, in 1921. Today the store is famous for lunch sandwiches and cold beer – and for the interesting local characters who hang out there and were captured in oils by local artist Doug Dutenhoffer in a mural that hangs high on the shelves.

As Pyle made a name for herself in politics, a talkative and affable young man was working in his dad’s Huron drugstore and considering a career in pharmacy. Other vocational interests came into play, though, and Hubert Humphrey went on to win election as Minneapolis mayor, U.S. Senator from Minnesota and Vice President of the United States. Not surprisingly Humphrey is the most common reply to the trivia question about Huron-born senators but, in fact, was born in Wallace. In the 1960s especially, during Humphrey’s vice presidency, countless travelers moving across South Dakota via U.S. Highway 14 stopped to visit the Humphrey Drugstore. It stood second only to Wall Drug as a South Dakota pharmacy turned tourist attraction. Visitors learned about Humphrey’s early life here and discovered this was where he met Huron-born and Huron College-educated Muriel Buck. The two married. After his vice presidency, Humphrey again represented Minnesota as a senator, and when he died in office Muriel was appointed to succeed him until a special election could be arranged. So, two Huron-born senators, both women, Pyle a Republican and Humphrey a Democrat.

Half a century ago Huron was launching other big time careers, too, as baseball’s Philadelphia Phillies and then the Chicago Cubs fielded farm teams within view of actual farms at Memorial Field Stadium. One of the best-remembered players is Larry Hisle, destined for a fine career with the Twins and Brewers. In 1968, Dallas Green managed the Huron Phillies, 12 years before he managed the Philadelphia Phillies to the team’s first World Series title. Key contributors to that 1980 world championship were catcher Greg Luzinski and infielder Manny Trillo, both of whom played for Green at Huron.

The state fairgrounds hosts several livestock exhibitions, including a 2014 show where Jack Bratland, of Willow Lake, brought his sheep, Jetta.

But by the time those three Phillies celebrated in 1980, things weren’t going so well in their former South Dakota summer home. There was less railroad activity everywhere, and when South Dakota’s two interstate highways had been completed, Huron sat far removed. Some observers saw Huron as emblematic of the challenges South Dakota communities would face without direct access to I-90 or I-29. Huron experienced plant closures over the next several years, including Armour Meat packing in 1983 and Dakota Pork in 1997. There was some talk, although it never got far, that maybe the State Fair would do better at an interstate highway location. Huron College became Huron University but struggled with finances. It dropped its Presbyterian affiliation as a series of owners tried to nudge the school toward profitability. Its final iteration was as Si Tanka University, owned by the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. But the university closed in 2005 after 108 years in Huron.

It was then that South Dakotans most definitely had to take a harder look at Huron to see past gloomy headlines. Yes, forecasters in the 1980s had been right. Huron would know struggles but, as this state’s history proves over and over, struggles can bring out the very best in South Dakotans. Huron’s residents stepped forward with ideas and, in many cases, their own dollars to move their community forward. Today Huron is a city of 13,000 with a promise of employment for skilled workers. Manufacturing turns out products ranging from tractor and combine parts to steel prison doors. Welders are especially in demand. In 2007, a Hutterite- owned turkey plant, Dakota Provisions, opened and today employs about 800 people who process more than 20,000 birds daily.

Melanie Harrington had a vision of run-down Ravine Lake becoming a family-friendly destination. She worked with the city to clean up the lake area and create Putters and Scoops, where visitors can rent paddleboats, play mini-golf and indulge their kids with old fashioned hard ice cream.

The new industries have attracted a culturally diverse workforce, including Hispanic men and women and refugees from Burma.”Over the past six or seven years we’ve seen cultural changes, and that’s been good for Huron,” says chamber of commerce director Peggy Woolridge.”As a state, I think we need that diversity. In Huron we’re seeing some of these new residents starting to serve on boards and take on other types of leadership, which means they consider this home.”

Huron remains a center for many of the state’s agricultural agencies, notes Jim Borszich, president and CRO of greater Huron Development. Those include the state offices of the Farm Bureau, Farmers Union and Farmers’ Home and Rural Development. Where better than Huron?”We have lots of other things contributing to the local economy, but what drives the market in Beadle County is agriculture,” Borszich said.”Our farms have done well in recent years as far as production, but of course commodity prices are a concern.”

When Borszich describes Huron to outsiders who might consider bringing a business here, he stresses excellent schools and healthcare and a quality of life for families that some Americans can no longer imagine.

Melanie Harrington certainly could, though.”Living in Denver, our hearts bled to come to a place like Huron to raise our kids,” she recalls. She and her family arrived in Huron a few years ago, and today Harrington is a woman Huron residents cite over and over as a contributor to local quality of life. Working with the city’s Parks and Recreation Department, she used flowers and quality ice cream to transform an area adjacent to Ravine Lake and a golf course. A 1930s swimmers’ changing house became Putters and Scoops, featuring South Dakota State University ice cream and other menu items, plus golf cart, paddleboat and kayak rentals and rounds of miniature golf.”But flowers are our signature,” Harrington says.

Owner Kevin Tompkins is renovating Huron’s historic Hattie and Henry Drake octagon house, built in 1893. The wrought iron fence bordering the property came from a cemetery at De Smet. Tompkins and a partner are also restoring Huron’s Masonic Temple into an events center.

Another colorful addition to the community is Splash Central, a sprawling water park that opened in 2013 in the middle of town. Because it sits amid mature trees, newcomers might guess it’s been a park for generations, although the waterslides are obviously new. Actually Splash Central occupies the former campus of Huron College. To the best of anyone’s knowledge it’s the world’s only university reincarnated as a water park (two campus buildings survive, used as a fine arts center and community learning facility).

Through the years Huron has maintained its status as a favorite center for big gatherings, beginning with the State Fair. The fair is doing fine now with a tight, five-day schedule in late summer. Unlike some other state fairs, South Dakota’s hasn’t lost its agricultural focus. It is, in fact, an agency of the state Department of Agriculture. Other huge gatherings at the fairgrounds have included the Wheel Jam truck show and in 2014 the National Red Power Roundup, a celebration of six decades of International Harvester machinery. The roundup drew nearly 19,000 admirers from 45 states, nine Canadian provinces and seven other nations.

Huron is also home to a full season of auto racing, the South Dakota Women’s Expo, the Spirit of Dakota award dinner and autumn events related to pheasant season.

Speaking of the famous game bird, there’s a quirky image just about every South Dakotan associates with Huron, one that’s made its way into all of our photo albums over the years. That would be the World’s Largest Pheasant, R.F. Jacobs’ 40-foot-high cement creation on the east side of town. It dates back to the 1950s. A few years ago, as the town was re-establishing itself on many fronts, citizens raised funds to refurbish the giant bird. Some towns would have decided there was more important work to tackle, and that they could let a relic from the’50s go, but not Huron. Jobs, schools, recreation and medical services are vitally important in sustaining a community. But a town certain of itself doesn’t forget those things that simply give it unique character.

Editor’s Note: Since this story appeared in our September/October 2014 issue, Mike Rounds, another Huron native, was elected to the U.S. Senate. We trust that Paul Higbee has updated his trivia question. To order a copy of that issue or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Huron’s Humanitarian

By John Andrews

February is Black History Month. Every Tuesday this month, we’ll introduce you to black pioneers and leaders who helped shape South Dakota. Today we feature Hazel Mahone, a Huron businesswoman and humanitarian.

Hazel Mahone lived nearly every one of her 100 years in Huron. She had been a successful businesswoman in the Beadle County seat, but when she died in 2010 she hoped friends and neighbors would remember her for her”love and concern for people. Buildings, cathedrals, palaces, ruins all were important, but of primary importance are the people who occupied the buildings. All I want to do is be nice to people.”

Perhaps that was a lesson that trickled down her family tree from her grandfather, a slave on a Mississippi plantation. One evening his master told him to expect 100 lashes in the morning, punishment for some unknown violation. Mahone’s grandfather was determined that no one would touch him again. He packed a knapsack and ran away in the middle of the night. Thirty days later he arrived in St. Louis, where he joined the Union Army and fought in the Civil War. He was so grateful for his newfound freedom that he never again drank a full cup of water drawn from a well. He always sprinkled some on the ground in thanks.

Mahone’s family moved to Huron in the early 1900s. The men worked on farms or the railroad, while Mahone’s mother served as a maid. Hazel was born in 1910. She excelled at Huron High School, especially in music. When she was a sophomore, her music teacher asked if she would stay after school and try singing two pieces. Her rendition of”Deep River” was so moving that the teacher entered her in a local contest. Mahone ended up winning the state’s alto division that year.

After graduating in 1928 Mahone completed two years at Huron College. She applied and was accepted at Tuskegee Institute, but financial constraints wouldn’t allow her to go. Then Mary Roselle, who operated a beauty parlor in the Masonic Temple, told Mahone to enroll in a short course at the California School of Beauty Culture in Sioux Falls. She applied and studied under Louise Mitchell, another prominent black businesswoman sometimes called the Mary McLeod Bethune of South Dakota.

Mitchell and her husband arrived in South Dakota in 1906 and she immediately secured a job as a beautician. Eventually she opened the school and helped dozens of young black women, especially from the Deep South, to learn the trade and find jobs in parlors around the Upper Midwest.

Mahone completed the short course and secured a position in Roselle’s beauty parlor in 1932. She was soon in high demand. Clients — all of whom were white — waited weeks for an appointment with her. Still, Mahone dreamed of pursuing a career in singing. In 1949 she moved to San Francisco and studied voice at the Conservatory of Music. After two years, however, she realized she felt more at home at Roselle’s beauty parlor in Huron.

When Roselle died, Mahone was surprised to discover that Roselle had willed the business to her. But the will had to be probated, and Mahone was tasked with finding $250 so the business could be transferred. She didn’t have the money, so her fellow tenants in the Masonic Temple raised the sum and Mahone took ownership.

At age 46 she married William Mahone, a retired inspector and waiter-in-charge on the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad. They traveled the world and became involved in countless humanitarian projects. In September 1967 the Mahones embarked on a tour of Africa. “We want to meet the people, not just see the scenery, animals and airports,” Mahone said. “Really we are going as ambassadors of our country and as ambassadors of Christ.”

When they returned, the Mahones raised money to purchase 10 barrels of supplies. They went back to Africa to personally oversee their distribution.

William Mahone died in 1972, but Hazel continued traveling, visiting more than 80 countries and compiling over 100 travel logs, many of which are housed today at the South Dakota State Historical Society in Pierre. In her travels, she experienced conditions far different than what existed in Huron.”We never experienced any racism, no segregation or anything,” she said of growing up and living in South Dakota.”We were accepted everywhere. Our family was well educated, we had music and books. I was happy and stayed in this little town.”

In 2007 Mahone was given a Human Rights Award from Christian Women United.”The sum total of human rights means so much,” she said.”Everybody has a chance. It’s what you make of it, you take advantage of it.”

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Flagging a Red Barn

Frank Bootz was an experienced Beadle County house mover in an era when such a man was considered a community asset, like having a courthouse or a good fishing lake.

Recycling then meant a return trip on a bicycle, but house movers like Bootz saved hundreds of tons of lumber and brick from being pushed into creeks or buried in primitive landfills. Using little more than hydraulic jacks and some cables, they loaded homes, barns and commercial structures onto their rugged flatbed trucks. Sometimes the move was a few yards and occasionally it was a hundred miles: the practicality of a long haul was decided by the number of REA and telephone lines that stood in the way.

Sadly, every year brought new trucking laws and insurance regulations that made house moving more difficult. The story is still told of the day when a young highway patrolman stopped Bootz while he was moving a big red barn down Highway 14 between Wolsey and Huron. The patrolman puled out his citation book and began to berate the old man for failing to display the necessary red signal flag at each corner of his wide load.

Bootz slowly began to lose his patience, and finally he spoke in his own defense:”If they can’t see a big red barn, then how in the hell are they going to see a little red flag?” he asked.

The lawman’s face turned as red as the barn — and then, to his credit, he closed his ticket book and sent Bootz on his way with the barn.

Editor’s Note: This story appeared in the May/June 2008 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.


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Fowl Balls

By Laura Andrews

One of my jobs here at South Dakota Magazine is to call people to verify dates, time and activities for the events you see in each issue’s Traveler section and in our online calendar. It’s fun to talk to people and learn what’s happening around South Dakota, but every now and then, an event puzzles me. For example, do you know how to race minnows? The concept was new to me, but it’s one of the activities at the Rhubarb Festival up in Leola. So I asked Leola’s City Finance Officer, Candice Kappes, what a minnow race was. Her response?”They race minnows.”

Ok, but HOW? Minnows can’t run. You can’t mark them the same way you’d mark a turtle or a plastic duck, and I have no idea how you’d make a racecourse in a tank of water. Turns out Candice has never seen the races either, so she’s going to check them out at the festival on June 1 and let me know how it works.

When I called folks in Huron to find out about Turkey Races, I came across another stumper. I wasn’t puzzled by the races themselves — they’re simple, goofy fun designed to raise money for local causes. Two-person teams, often wearing costumes, coax live racing turkeys from the local Hutterite colony across the finish line. The group with the fastest turkey wins a $1000 nest egg. There are other activities, too — Ringer the Ringneck Pheasant and other local characters compete in a mascot race. The land ski races are similar in awkwardness to the classic sack race — four-person teams strap their feet to two 2x4s and see how far they get.

But the part that puzzled me was the fowl balls.”I’ve never heard of those before — are they some kind of turkey meatball?” I asked. There a brief moment of hemming and hawing on the other end of the line. Turns out fowl balls are the avian equivalent of Rocky Mountain oysters. Aha!

John Hott, Plant Manager of Dakota Provisions, introduced Huron to the testicular tradition. They’re known as turkey fries back in his home state of West Virginia, but acquired the”fowl ball” moniker at Sioux Falls Stadium, where they were once served during Canaries baseball games.

Hott’s ball-handling method is simple:”We cut them into bite-sized pieces about the size of a piece of popcorn chicken, then bread them and deep fry them.” Hott uses a hot and spicy Cajun seasoning to give the nut meats some pizzazz. Then they go in the deep fryer. Wait until the balls bob to the surface, then cook for another ten minutes or so.”I like to go off of the color. You want to make sure they’re a nice golden-brown color,” Hott advises.”Once they start floating, you’d think they’d be done, but obviously you don’t want to bite into a raw testicle.”

The fowl ballers are offering a new product this year. In honor of the Huron Baseball Association, recipient of this year’s race proceeds, they’ll be serving bats — smoked turkey drumsticks injected with Cajun seasoning — along with the balls. Ask for ’em at the fowl ball stand at Turkey Races in downtown Huron on Friday, May 17.

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Cavour’s Lady Leatherheads

By John Andrews

In our November/December 2011 issue, Roger Holtzmann wrote about the Lady Leatherheads of Madison, an all-girls football team fielded at Dakota State University during World War II, when many of the school’s men were serving in the military. They effectively saved the school’s homecoming in 1945 by staging a football game.

We deemed it the first”powderpuff” game ever played, and even reported our find to Wikipedia, which promptly changed its powderpuff page to reflect the discovery. Hopefully the online encyclopedia’s editors are willing to make one more change.

After our article appeared, LeRoy Barton, a former executive at the Huron Chamber of Commerce, sent us a newspaper clipping about a girls football team at Cavour High School in 1926. What’s more is that the team defeated the Lake Preston boys squad 13-7.

Boys were in short supply in Cavour that year, so the school’s girls decided to fill the void. A photograph of the team shows 20 girls and their coach, a Miss M. Dauwen, smiling brightly for the camera. All are wearing jerseys (one with a number 10, another with a capital C), short pants and leather helmets. They played exhibitions against each other prior to Huron College football games and apparently played against other high schools.

I couldn’t dig up any details of the girls’ game against Lake Preston, but it did become national news.”Cavour woke up one morning to discover that it had the only nationally famous high school football team in America,” one newspaper announced.

One player from the Madison team recalled that their game wasn’t as rough as she was led to believe it would be. But Cavour fielded Marjorie Gilchrist, who reporters called the”low-tackling demon of the team and a female Red Grange,” after their first game of the season in early October.

“The girls exhibited surprising ability,” a reporter wrote.”A fumble was a rare occurrence. Line plunges were much in evidence. Marjorie Gilchrist looked like a real football player. She goes low on tackles, unhesitatingly diving through the air. She is fast and she can handle the ball.”

Little else is known about the team and its 1926 season. If you have any information, please comment below.

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The Verne Miller Story: From Lawman To Outlaw

By Brad Smith

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the May/June 1996 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.

No stone would be left unturned in the search for Verne Miller in the aftermath of the Kansas City Massacre of June 17, 1933. FBI photo.


In November of 1920 the Huron newspaper, the Evening Huronite, promoted a young candidate for Beadle County sheriff by editorializing that with his election “crooks and licentious characters will have no protection and the safety of our wives and children and the future well-being of our families will be fully guaranteed.” Thirteen years later the U.S. Justice Department announced a nationwide manhunt for a man they identified as “the most dangerous criminal in the country.”

Both observations were accurate and, incredibly, both referred to the same enigmatic man: Verne Miller. He has been described as “easily the most contradictory and mysterious figure of the 1930s Public Enemy community.” A handsome blue-eyed redhead, he did not drink or gamble and abhorred swearing. However, he was the chief suspect in from five to 12 murders and was rumored to have participated in many more. His path from respected South Dakota lawman to reviled national outlaw is a puzzling one, with unanswered questions at every turn. Even his early life is shrouded in mystery. Various documents list his birth date as 1892, 1895 and 1896, and his birthplace as Interior, S.D., Kimball, S.D. and Illinois.

What is known is that Miller’s parents divorced when he was young, leaving him on his own at an early age. He dropped out of school at the age of ten. In 1914 he moved to Huron to work as a mechanic. In 1916 he joined the Army and served on the Mexican border. In the spring of 1917 he returned to Huron and married. A month later he was recalled to military service. On April 17, 1918, Miller landed in France with the 164th Infantry. Color Sergeant Verne Miller returned from World War I a genuine hero. A decorated marksman and sniper, he was awarded the French Croix de Guerre for bravery. He was wounded twice and suffered lung damage in a poison gas attack.

Soon after his return from Europe, Miller joined the Huron city police force. The local newspaper heralded his arrival. “Lawbreakers had better watch out,” the editor announced, “if they want to keep their health.”

Right from the start, Miller’s law enforcement career was marked by dedication and courage, sometimes to the point of foolhardiness. Less than three months on the force, Miller arrested W.S. Davis, a member of a prominent Huron family, for blocking traffic with his car. Davis argued vehemently but his protests held little sway with the conscientious young patrolman and only earned him a night in jail.

On another occasion Miller’s courage may have saved a life. M.B. Balsiger, manager of the local theater, engaged R.E. Beckwith, a war veteran and popular speaker, to lecture on his military experiences. On the night of the lecture a disagreement arose regarding the speaker ‘s fee and Balsiger knocked the young man unconscious. The war was fresh in everyone’s mind and patriotic fervor was high. When news that Balsiger had beaten up a war hero reached the street, an angry mob gathered outside the theater. The building was doused with yellow paint and the mob demanded that the manager give himself up. A frightened Balsiger turned to Officer Miller for help. Miller first ordered the crowd to disperse. When they ignored him, Miller led Balsiger toward the protection of the police station. Someone in the mob threw a brick, striking the manager in the head. Miller drew his pistol and advanced on the mob. Finally the rioters dispersed and Balsiger’s life was spared.

This sometimes reckless devotion to duty did not go over well with everyone in Huron. In May of 1920 Miller resigned from the police force, saying that he and Police Chief Johnson suffered fundamental disagreements over the conduct of police business. But Miller had no intention of leaving law enforcement. By this time he had already been named the Republican candidate for Beadle County Sheriff. The 1920 sheriff’s campaign was hotly contested with Miller the focus of numerous rumors and accusations. Still he managed to eke out a 41-vote victory.

The career of the once-feared Beadle County Sheriff would come to an abrupt and startling end as Verne Miller turned gangster.

Sheriff Miller was an active community leader. He was a founder of the Huron American Legion post and served as its delegate to the state convention. He was an avid fisherman and amateur boxer. He proved to be an active sheriff as well. Records note that he located and destroyed nine moonshine stills during his first six months in office. So much bootlegged liquor was confiscated that Miller began using it as antifreeze in the radiators of the sheriff’s department vehicles.

Miller gained a reputation for being quick to use his weapon. It was said that, while a city officer, he twice fired on tourists for violating traffic ordinances. After the election the county commission warned Miller of the legal ramifications of an over-eager trigger finger.

On at least one occasion this reputation proved useful. A prison escapee turned himself over to authorities when, while hiding in a pasture, he heard what was apparently the backfire of a passing car. He told a reporter, “I thought Verne Miller was on my trail and had started shooting at me. I sure wished that I was back in jail again.”

In the spring of 1922 Sheriff Miller was well on his way to re-election and a second term. Then Miller’s wife, Mildred, was admitted to a Rochester, Minn., hospital. Miller told his deputies that he was taking a short leave to visit his wife and from Rochester they would go to a Washington, D.C. sanitarium to take treatments for his lungs. After a couple of weeks with no contact from the sheriff, his deputies became worried and then suspicious. They discovered that, shortly before he left, Miller had withdrawn $4,000 from various bank accounts, money that had apparently come from county property tax collections. The career of Sheriff Verne Miller came to an abrupt and startling end. The career of Verne Miller, gangster, was just beginning.

The State Sheriff’s Office was called in and a search begun for Miller and the missing funds. For three months there was no sign of the sheriff, then South Dakota officials received a call from a St. Paul, Minn., hotel operator wondering if they were still looking for Miller.

In the 1920s and 1930s there were several places where bandits and outlaws could go to “cool off”; communities where a tacit agreement had been reached between local officials and the criminal element. The most popular of these havens was St. Paul. As one criminal noted, “In those days if you hadn’t seen a friend for a few months you looked two places — prison or St. Paul.” The St. Paul police force of the 1920s was the most corrupt in the country, so it was inevitable that a renegade lawman like Miller would seek refuge there. Before the hotel owner notified South Dakota officials he had called the St. Paul chief of detectives and was assured that Miller was no longer wanted. The S.D. State Sheriff’s deputy who arrested Miller reported that Miller’s first phone call while in custody was to that same chief of detectives.

Back in the Beadle County jail where, just a few months before, he had been jailer rather than jailed, Miller displayed his resolute self-reliance. He turned down offers from friends to raise the $ 10,000 bond. Miller pleaded guilty to the embezzlement of $2,600 in county funds and was sentenced to two years in the state penitentiary.

Verne Miller’s 1923 FBI Photo.

Verne Miller entered the South Dakota State Penitentiary on April 4, 1923. Armed with numerous character references, including one from the states’ attorney who had prosecuted him, Miller soon landed the cushy position of warden’s chauffeur. He passed his prison term driving the warden about the city and corresponding with his many friends and supporters. Miller was released on parole in September of 1924. According to records, he found work as a farm laborer near Doland, making $70 a month. But Miller had sampled the good life and it could not be lived on that sum. Within a year he was indicted for bootlegging. He paid a $200 fine in Sioux Falls federal court in October 1925 and disappeared.

The next few years offer infrequent glimpses of Verne Miller and his activities. In February of 1928 he was indicted for his part in a Minneapolis speakeasy shootout. The charges were dropped for lack of evidence. In 1929 Miller was running Canadian gambling interests for Lepke Buchalter, one of the most powerful figures in organized crime on the East Coast and an important connection in Miller’s growing criminal resume.

In late 1930 Miller was back in the Twin Cities. He held up the Wilmar, Minn., bank with Machine Gun Kelly and the dean of American bank robbers, Harvey Bailey. In 1931 with Harvey Bailey and Oklahoma outlaw Frank Nash, Miller robbed a bank in Sherman, Texas.

In the summer of 1932 Miller paid his last visit to his father’s farm near White Lake. Friends and relatives remember that the gangster’s shiny new car and expensive clothes made quite an impression in that Depression-ravaged farm community.

In December of 1932 Miller drove a getaway car for the infamous Barker gang when they held up the Third Northwestern Bank of Minneapolis. That robbery resulted in tragedy when two city officers happened on the scene and were slain in a hail of machine-gun fire. The Barker gang split up after the Minneapolis bank robbery. Miller moved to Kansas City to cool off.

A few months later Miller received a frantic call from the wife of his old friend, Frank Nash, saying that her husband had been arrested by federal agents. That phone call touched off events that would culminate the next day in the bloody outrage that will forever be known as the Kansas City Massacre.

On the morning of June 17, 1933, the parking lot of the Kansas City Union Railroad Station was crowded with arriving and departing passengers, their family and friends. Few in the crowd paid any attention to the group of men moving warily among the parked cars. If they had they would have seen seven nervous lawmen surrounding a handcuffed prisoner. The prisoner was Frank Nash. The lawmen, FBI agents Vetterli, Caffrey, Smith and Lackey, Kansas City detectives Grooms and Hermanson, and Oklahoma Police Chief Otto Reed, had reason to be nervous. Nash was a well-known criminal with strong ties in the underworld. They feared that some of his friends might attempt a rescue.

As they loaded Nash into a waiting patrol car, their fears were realized. Three men jumped from a nearby car. One of them, brandishing a Tommy gun, commanded the law officers to “Hold it!” Time froze as the two armed camps regarded each other. Then one of the officers went for his pistol and all hell broke loose.

Within seconds it was over. Bodies were scattered about the parking lot. Grooms, Hermanson, Reed and FBI agent Caffrey were dead. Agents Vetterli and Lackey were seriously wounded. Nash, the object of the ill-fated delivery, was also among the dead. One woman, surveying the bloody scene, moaned, “It’s just like Chicago.” The bandits escaped unscathed.

The late 1920s and early 1930s marked a decade of lawlessness. Colorful outlaws such as Pretty Boy Floyd, John Dillinger, Machine Gun Kelly, and Ma Barker were as familiar to the public as politicians and movie celebrities. Even in that context the Kansas City Massacre was a shocking and galvanizing event. The attorney general declared the massacre “a challenge to the government. The army of crime has declared war against the United States.” It took the FBI two weeks to identify Miller as the leader of the Kansas City gang and their reaction was certain and instantaneous. No stone would go unturned in their search for the gangster.

Controversy still surrounds the Kansas City Massacre. Historians disagree on the identity of Miller’s two accomplices. Even the motives behind the massacre are in dispute. Many say that Miller was trying to rescue Nash while a nearly equal number believe Nash’s death was a gangland hit. Regardless of motive, it is doubtful that the intent was to murder the law officers. Even someone as impetuous as Verne Miller would have foreseen the outrage that followed the unprovoked slaughter.

Miller left Kansas City immediately but the FBI, in their efforts to find the fugitive, put the heat on all of the underworld. Alvin Karpis, a member of the Barker gang, was called before representatives of the old Capone Syndicate. “Where,” they demanded, “is Miller?” Karpis asked what they wanted of his one-time partner. “Everybody’s after that bastard,” he was told.

Miller fled to New York, seeking protection from his old friend, Lepke Buchalter, but the word was out that anyone suspected of harboring Miller would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. No place was safe.

In October of 1933, the FBI traced Miller to Chicago. They surrounded his apartment but Miller escaped in a flurry of bullets. Miller’s escape, though, was an omen of the tightening dragnet. With every lawman in the nation as well as the might of the criminal underworld after him , Miller’s days were numbered.

On the evening of November 29, 1933, a motorist on the outskirts of Detroit discovered a naked mutilated body alongside the road. Fingerprints taken by the FBI confirmed that the search for Verne Miller was over.

News of Miller’s death was greeted by his family and friends in South Dakota with a mixture of regret and resignation. The Evening Huronite reported that most of the citizens of Miller’s hometown “refused to remember his reputation of a life of crime and grieved the Verne Miller, fearless sheriff and valiant soldier, they knew.” His wife, Mildred, though legally separated from Miller since 1929, stuck by him, saying “I don’t believe all the things they say about Verne. Because he became involved in a few scrapes nearly every major crime in the country was laid to him. He was wonderful to me and I have nothing against him.”

His grief-stricken father made plans for the funeral; plans that, like most of Verne’s life, were plagued with controversy. Miller, as a veteran and American Legion member, was entitled to full military rites. However, the national American Legion commander forbade the local post from participating, saying it would only bring embarrassment to the organization. National proclamation notwithstanding, Miller’s flag-draped casket was escorted from White Lake to Huron by a contingent of uniformed ex-servicemen, Miller’s friends. There, following a simple ceremony before an overflow crowd, Verne Miller’s doomed journey came to an end.

In one final twist in the tragedy of Verne Miller’s life, the erstwhile lawman contributed greatly to the future of law enforcement. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover used the outrage generated by the Kansas City Massacre to lobby Congress for a true national crime-fighting force. Prior to the massacre, FBI agents could not carry weapons and were not even empowered to make arrests. Within months of the Kansas City killings, Congress passed a comprehensive crime bill giving the FBI all the powers they sought.

Perhaps it is this that provides some final sense and purpose to the otherwise squandered life of Verne Miller–a lawman gone bad.