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Finding White in a Brown Winter

By Christian Begeman

Winter has been mild in southeastern South Dakota. There hasn’t been much snow and temperatures have been above normal. I seem to remember far more brown winters happening when I lived West River than in the Sioux Falls area. Even though no snow means fewer travel headaches, I do miss the snow. As a photographer, the way the light can strike fresh snow early or late in the day is breathtaking. That is, if the subzero wind doesn’t take away your breath first.

The paragraph above is a poor attempt at complaining about how I haven’t felt motivated to get outside the last month to make photographs. Realizing this is a”me problem” and not the weatherman’s doing, I decided to do something about it. Where can you find snow, frost and ice even during a”brown” winter? Around here, it is our parks and public land along the Big Sioux River. So, I made it a point to get off my warm couch and get out there.

On three different occasions, I found myself wandering along the banks of the Big Sioux and seeing things that made the bundled-up journey worth the energy and effort. It was a gray day with occasional light flurries on my first trip to the hiking trails of the Big Sioux Recreation Area near Brandon. I saw a red fox scoot along the river bottom for a brief second but could not locate it again. A few woodpeckers and nuthatches entertained me for a bit after that. Once I started looking at the little things, however, things got fun. The light flurries left lone snowflakes on leaves, bark and my favorite … resting on the trail’s wooden bridges. I spent half an hour with my macro lens attempting to find the perfect snowflake.

My next excursion found me along the river near Newton Hills State Park. There is a bend that rarely freezes because of shallow rapids. I’ve seen bald eagles there, so I decided to walk down the edge of the bank and settle in to see if any birds or other wildlife would appear. On the way to my perch, I became distracted by large pieces of ice on the river’s edge that were showing due to recently dropping river levels. Then I got the scare of the afternoon as I stumbled on a well-hidden Canada goose slumbering against an old cottonwood stump. No eagles ever landed after all the ruckus, but I saw nearly a half dozen fly overhead. They likely spotted me far sooner than I saw them. Regardless, it was a nice hour spent along the river taking it all in.

Speaking of birds, winter offers all sorts of opportunities to see and photograph birds along the river. Eagles and owls as well as chickadees and finches can be spotted (or heard) quite regularly. A favorite find recently along the Dells of the Big Sioux near Dell Rapids was a pair of uniquely raspberry colored purple finches. On Super Bowl Sunday, I also spotted a Barred Owl at the Big Sioux Recreation Area, which allowed me to post a Superb Owl photo that day as well. (Groan. I know, I know, but I didn’t make that up. It is a real thing, and I will admit, I was happy to participate in the Superb Owl fun.)

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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Chasing Cats

By John Andrews

Illustration by Mike Reagan.

In the spring of 1949, Roy Groves was a 64-year-old grandfather who lived with his wife Alice in a little white house just a short walk from Toby’s Lounge, today a legendary chicken shack in Meckling. He stood just under 6 feet tall, was stocky and had the quiet countenance you might expect from the grandfatherly figure shown in black and white photographs with an old fishing hat perched atop his head.

Groves knew a lot about fishing. Some considered him an expert. In fact, during a remarkable four days in May 1949, he pulled two monstrous catfish out of the James River that proved to be state and world records — a 94-pound, 8-ounce blue catfish and a 55-pound channel catfish.

His blue catfish record stood until September of 1959 when Ed Elliott, an electrician from Vermillion, caught a 97-pounder in the Missouri River. It was surpassed again by current record holder Steve Lemmon of Elk Point, who landed a 99-pound, 4-ounce blue in the Big Sioux River on July 21, 2012. But when Groves died at age 82 in 1967, his channel cat was still the state champion, and it remained so until 2019, when the South Dakota Department of Game, Fish and Parks issued a ruling that justified what many anglers had long suspected — that Groves’ channel cat wasn’t really a channel after all. His 70-year-old record was voided.

The decision rankled Groves’ grandchildren and great-grandchildren, many of whom still live in South Dakota. But it also rekindled interest in the bewhiskered creatures that swim South Dakota’s waters.

***

South Dakota is home to three types of catfish. Channel cats are the most widespread; they live in rivers and lakes throughout the state. Flathead catfish are found primarily in the Missouri River and its tributaries, the James and Big Sioux, but there is also an isolated population in Lake Mitchell. Blue catfish swim almost exclusively in the Missouri below Gavins Point Dam, though they can be caught along the lower James and Big Sioux rivers, as well.

Flathead catfish are one of three species of catfish found in South Dakota. They swim mostly in the Missouri, James and Big Sioux rivers. Photo by Sam Stukel.

Channel cats are easily recognizable by their whiskers, or barbels, that extend from the corners of their mouths. Their bodies are drab olive in color with white bellies and no scales. They lurk close to the bottom of a lake or river, preying on crustaceans, insects or other fish. All in all, a slimy-looking catfish may not be the most attractive species to find on the end of your hook, but according to Geno Adams, the fisheries program administrator for Game, Fish and Parks, they are among the state’s most underutilized fish.”We have some absolutely phenomenal channel cat fishing in South Dakota, and they just don’t get used like they do in some other states,” Adams says.”We’ve always been a walleye-centric state. That’s our number one sport fish. Channel catfish are pretty well dispersed around the country. Walleye are not. But these Missouri River reservoirs are absolutely full of fantastic catfish. When people from other states move here and they’re big cat fishermen, or they come for a walleye trip and get winded off the reservoir and the guide takes them into the back of a bay to fish cats, people are astounded by the quality of catfishing in these reservoirs.”

Biologists are currently studying channel cats and flatheads on the James River from Olivet to its confluence with the Missouri. They hope to learn more about their lifespan and how the populations move and grow. B.J. Schall, a fisheries biologist with Game, Fish and Parks who is helping lead the study, says channel cats can be among the most accessible fish for beginning anglers.”Catfishing can be really inexpensive and really easy to do,” Schall says.”You don’t need the equipment that a lot of anglers use for walleye fishing. You can pull up to a bank, throw out a piece of bait that sinks to the bottom and just let it sit. That makes it a little more low tech than the guys who have depth finder systems and sonars in their boats. And if you can get access to a river system, you can just bump onto the bank and fish. It doesn’t necessarily require a boat.”

Anglers like Jason Stansbury fish for the occasional channel cat, but he’s part of a group that’s passionate about landing trophy flatheads. Flathead catfish stay away from swiftly moving water, opting for deeper pools with plenty of cover. They can live a long time, which allows them to grow to monstrous proportions. Part of the Game, Fish and Parks’ research on the James includes taking spines from a catfish’s pectoral fin, which helps determine age. The oldest flathead they’ve discovered to date was 25 years old, and the largest weighed nearly 48 pounds and measured 44 1/2 inches. But they can get bigger. Davin Holland holds the current state record with a 63-pound, 8-ounce flathead caught in the James River.

Stansbury’s biggest is 56 pounds, caught while fishing from the bank of the Big Sioux.”They’re not like catching walleyes,” says Stansbury, the catfishing expert for Wild Dakota, a popular hunting and fishing television program.”These fish are territorial predators. They’re smart fish. I always say that any size flathead you catch is a win.”

Protection for large flatheads is another reason behind the James River study. Avid catfishermen like Stansbury have long been concerned about the potential overharvest of trophy flatheads because in some places there have been no size limits. Schall says biologists have run some modeling based on their current research that indicates any new regulations are unlikely to result in significant changes in the number of large fish in the system. Still, the Game, Fish and Parks Commission is considering a resolution that would limit anglers to one harvested flathead per day that measures more than 28 inches.

Catfish can be caught from shore, but anglers searching for trophy flatheads and blues often spend the night in boats. Photo by Sam Stukel.

Stansbury caught his 56-pounder in 2019 using a bullhead for bait. The fish bit at around 1 a.m., which is typical given their nocturnal nature. He battled the fish for nearly half an hour before he had it in the net.

Tom Van Kley lives in Sioux Falls and sells insurance for Mutual of Omaha by day, but many nights and weekends find him searching for trophy flatheads and blue cats. He was introduced to catfishing almost by accident.”We were walleye fishing up by Trent,” Van Kley says.”We ended up catching some red horse suckers that we cut for bait, just to see what we could catch. We were sitting by the campfire and our rods just started getting smashed by 8- to 10-pound channel cats. From that night on, catfish just got into my blood.”

Eventually he began looking for even bigger cats, but the transition wasn’t easy.”The first year that I primarily targeted flatheads I didn’t catch one all year long,” he says.”Then finally, on our last trip of the year down in Omaha, I caught two out of the Missouri River. The next year I didn’t catch one until July. But then I went out with a guy who really knew what he was doing and he kind of showed me the ropes. We just smacked them. We caught eight or nine fish that night up to 25 or 30 pounds each, and I never looked back.”

His biggest catch came during a tournament in Sioux City. He was fishing near Dakota Dunes on the lowest stretch of South Dakota’s Missouri River.”We were sitting on this spot that I thought would be pretty good, but it was midnight and we had no fish. And the weigh-in was at 2 a.m. My buddy wanted to call it a night, but I said, ëA lot can change in two hours.’ About 35 minutes later one rod folded and we had a 20-pound fish on.”

They rebaited their hooks and waited. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw another rod bend. He grabbed it and less than 10 minutes later reeled in a 56-pound flathead. They won the tournament with 76 pounds of catfish.”We’re usually fishing from 7 p.m. until the sun comes up,” Van Kley says.”You put in a lot of work to catch a few fish. If you pull in three or four flatheads in a night, you did pretty good. You put a 50-pound fish on the floor and it’s pretty surreal.”

It’s a thrill that Roy Groves knew well.

***

Groves awoke at 5:30 on the morning of Sunday, May 22, 1949. An hour later he was unfolding his chair at one of his favorite fishing spots, about a mile north of where the James River flows into the Missouri just east of Yankton. He cast out two lines — one a 20-pound test line and the other a little heavier — using crawfish and chub minnows for bait.”He cast from the bank into a spot that he was pretty familiar with,” says Marc Rasmussen, a senior vice president at BankWest in Pierre and Groves’ great-grandson.”He knew there had been some fish out there, but he wasn’t having a very good day. He sat there for a long time and only picked up one carp. He kept having his minnows chewed off the line, so he knew something was going on down there, but he couldn’t quite figure out what it was.”

Groves fished for nearly 12 hours that day. Shortly after 6 p.m., he put his last chub minnow on the 20-pound line and cast it out. Two minutes later,”Wham! It felt like I hooked a submarine,” he later told a local newspaper reporter.

The fish swam about 15 feet before Groves set the hook, but that didn’t faze it. The giant cat took about 100 yards of line off Groves’ reel.”She did what she wanted with the line after that,” Groves recalled.”After a half hour to 45-minute fight, she just dove to bottom and stayed there.”

Roy Groves of Meckling is pictured with his 94-pound, 8-ounce blue catfish (measured by grandson Gary Groves), which set a state record in 1949. It was the second record catfish Groves had caught that week.

Groves grabbed a pair of pliers from his tackle box and started hitting his fishing pole. The vibrations traveled along the taut fishing line, rousing the cat into another burst of swimming. Groves’ hands were already bloody from trying to stop his reel. His line was quickly running out. Finally, the fish stopped fighting, and at 8:20 p.m., Groves pulled his state record 94-pound, 8-ounce blue catfish ashore.

Rasmussen remembers seeing the big blue mounted above the fireplace in Groves’ home, right next to the Shakespeare rod and reel he’d used to land it. In fact, when Shakespeare heard about Groves’ record-setting catch, they supplied him with new equipment for several years.”The fish was a big part of his life,” Rasmussen says.”He wasn’t a boastful guy, but whenever he would talk to the kids and grandkids, he’d talk a lot about how proud he was. People used to follow him around. He’d have to sneak out to go fishing because they would all try to get into his spots.”

Catching one monster catfish would have been enough to secure his angling legacy, but the blue was actually the second record cat he’d caught that week. Four days earlier, and about 200 yards farther downstream on the James, he landed the channel catfish that eventually became the subject of intense scrutiny within the South Dakota fishing world.

For 70 years, fishermen, biologists, ichthyologists and anyone else intensely interested in catfishing looked at the old black and white photos of Groves standing alongside his champion channel, examined the fin structure and wondered if it wasn’t really a blue catfish.”It was always presumed to be a channel cat,” Rasmussen says,”and there are channel catfish that have been caught since that time in other states that have been bigger.” (The current world record is a 58-pound channel taken from a reservoir in South Carolina in 1964, though there are questions about that fish, too, since the largest channel catfish generally weigh in at 30 pounds or a little more.)

ìI think for many people in South Dakota, the real question was, ëHow does a channel cat get to be more than 35 pounds?'” Rasmussen says.”The nature of them is to be a smaller fish. But when you look at the type of fins, the tail fins on a channel cat are a little bit sharper and the fin near the tail is squared off. They say very clearly that it’s not the color of the catfish that makes that determination, but I think at that time they didn’t know better.”

Geno Adams began hearing the questions when he took an administrative position with Game, Fish and Parks in 2009.”Ever since then I’ve gotten emails or calls asking why we wouldn’t turn over that state record because everyone knew that it was not identified correctly,” Adams says.

He shared the photos with fisheries experts at South Dakota State University and other ichthyologists around the country. Their opinions were overwhelming.”It was resounding,” he says.”It didn’t take people long to look at it. They could tell by the anal fin that it was not a channel catfish. When 100 percent of the people are instantly saying it’s not a channel cat, it’s time to do something. I wanted to do this for channel catfishing and channel cat fishermen. It’s a pretty cool thing to have a state record, and to have this category be inactive forever because of a misidentification didn’t seem just.”

Game, Fish and Parks announced in May of 2019 that the channel catfish record would be voided, almost 70 years to the day since Groves pulled his trophy out of the James River. Rasmussen and other family members were initially upset, but given nearly a year to examine the evidence themselves, they’ve come to agree with the decision.”This is not taking away from Roy’s prowess as a cat fisherman,” Adams says.”He was a legitimate catfishing expert, probably one of the best cat fishermen of all time in South Dakota. He was like the godfather of catfishing in South Dakota, and we did not want to take anything away from him or the family.”

The announcement coincided with the launch of Catrush 2019, a campaign designed to generate interest in catfishing. With a new state record up for grabs, anglers responded. On May 20, just three days after the record was voided, the new benchmark was set when Chuck Ewald caught an 8-pound, 3-ounce channel cat at Whitlock Bay. His record lasted only two days. It fell another six times by June 10. Drew Matthews holds the current state record with a 30-pound, 1-ounce channel caught in a farm pond by Murdo.

Though voiding Groves’ long-held record was a difficult decision, perhaps he would have been happy to see fishermen taking the same joy that he did in chasing the elusive cats.”We knew it wouldn’t be the easiest thing or the most well received by those who are involved in that record, but we also knew that the vast majority of people out there were going to be happy with the decision, and that’s the way it’s turned out,” Adams says.”I heard countless stories of people going catfishing who hadn’t gone in 20 years, or they’d never gone before, and they decided they wanted to go try to catch a state record channel cat. From that aspect it was a success in highlighting channel cat fishing in South Dakota.”

Even Rasmussen has gotten in on the fun. He and his wife live along Lake Oahe, where they enjoy fishing for walleye, northerns and catfish, but nothing like the behemoths that his great-grandfather caught. His biggest is a 12-pound channel.”That’s enough of a thrill for an old man like me,” he says.

Still, monstrous fish lurk in the murky waters of South Dakota’s rivers, waiting for someone with the right combination of skill, time, patience and stamina to land them.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the March/April 2020 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Over 700 Years in the Making

Good Earth State Park at Blood Run, South Dakota’s newest state park just southeast of Sioux Falls, is one of the oldest sites of long-term human habitation in the United States. Rebecca Johnson, our special projects coordinator, visited the National Historic Landmark recently to hike the trails. Here are some of her photos.

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On the Quartzite Trail

By John Andrews

There’s a geologic treasure in southeastern South Dakota that has been here longer than our famed petrified forests or the prehistoric fossils painstakingly brushed from the soil. Outcroppings of ultra-hard, 1.6-billion-year-old Sioux quartzite protrude from grassy prairies and riverbanks over 6,000 square miles from the James River eastward into Minnesota and Iowa.

Jim Kersten

People have placed significance upon the unique pink rocks for centuries, but Jim Kersten believes that what he calls”quartzite country” holds even more potential. He’s spent years creating the Sioux Quartzite Outcrop Trail that takes people to 10 primary sites, nine secondary locations and over two dozen historical attractions in South Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa that feature quartzite naturally or architecturally.

Kersten became interested in quartzite while operating a bed and breakfast in Alcester from 1995 to 2005. He often hosted kayaking ventures along the Big Sioux River and bicycle tours through southeastern South Dakota. Quartzite was right under his nose, though he never thought of the region as a destination until he served on the Big Sioux Recreation Council.”I ended up being the historian because I liked it,” says Kersten, who today runs a painting business with his twin brother in Aberdeen.”I decided to inventory some sites along the river from Dell Rapids to Sioux City. I found that a lot of my sites along the river were quartzite sites. I finally figured out that was the common denominator, especially in areas where outcroppings go across the river. I could develop a lot of themes, but the quartzite was the key.”

Quartzite is easily the oldest feature in eastern South Dakota, and it confounded early European visitors like artist George Catlin and explorer Joseph Nicollet, both of whom visited pipestone quarries in the 1830s.”The single fact of such a table of quartz, in horizontal strata, resting on this elevated plateau, is of itself a very interesting subject for investigation; and one which calls upon the scientific world for a correct theory with regard to this time when and the manner in which this formation was produced,” Catlin wrote.

Kersten says Nicollet and others offered a variety of scenarios to explain quartzite’s origin, including one with Biblical origins. But they had not heard the theory of Swiss geographer Louis Agassiz, who in 1837 became the first scientist to propose that Earth had endured an Ice Age, in which he argued that rocks — including Sioux quartzite — were shaped, transplanted and uncovered by huge, slowly-advancing glaciers.

Today’s impressive river formations began as fine grains of quartz no bigger than half a millimeter. They were deposited on the bottom of a shallow sea that once covered large portions of North America. The particles, rounded by water and compacted by heat and intense pressure, slowly built and hardened over millions of years. Then glaciers swept across the continent, revealing what Kersten considers,”the Black Hills of East River.””The Black Hills are gorgeous, but there’s little rock in the Black Hills as old as this,” he says.”This is as old as rock in the bottom of the Grand Canyon, and there you’re looking at 1.7 billion years of strata going down.”

Kersten’s”Quartzite Country” extends from Redstone, at the junction of the Cottonwood and Minnesota rivers in Minnesota, and runs to the James River near Mitchell. Exposed stone is found between Flandreau and Canton, but quartzite has been discovered during well digging as far west as Stanley and Jones counties in South Dakota, and across the Missouri River into northern Nebraska.

His tour of 10 primary quartzite sites — selected because of the significant outcroppings or association with Indian history — begins in Sioux Falls. The trail loops 370 miles through eastern South Dakota and western Minnesota, and ends at the Dells of the Big Sioux River near Dell Rapids.”The whole picture is bigger than its parts,” he says.”Each one of these sites has its own story, and it’s about much more than the rocks. Prairie is being restored at a number of places, including all the primary outcroppings.”

Take time this summer to explore the Sioux Quartzite Outcrop Trail and see the unique role prehistoric rocks have played in developing the frontier.

Queen Bee Mill & Falls Park, Sioux Falls

Queen Bee Mill and Falls Park. Photo by Greg Latza

Sioux Falls town builders were awed by the powerful torrents of water cascading over the quartzite boulders that comprise the falls of the Big Sioux River. About 7,400 gallons of water drop 100 feet over the course of the falls every second. Richard Pettigrew, a city father, politician and businessman, sought to harness that power in 1878 when he began construction on the seven-story, state-of-the-art Queen Bee Mill.

The new mill was capable of producing 1,200 barrels of flour a day. But soon after it opened in 1881, investors realized that Dakota farmers couldn’t produce enough wheat to keep the mill solvent. By 1883, it was closed.

Entrepreneurs tried various businesses in the old quartzite mill, but each venture failed. The structure became a warehouse in 1929, and much of it was destroyed by fire in 1959. Its upper floors were demolished after the blaze for safety. Its ruins still stand on the riverbank.

Today the city of Sioux Falls has transformed the 123-acre Falls Park into a popular destination for families with a cafe, picnic space and trail system.

Mary Jo Wegner Arboretum and East Sioux Falls Historic Site, Sioux Falls

Arrowhead Park, East Sioux Falls. Photo by Christian Begeman

Construction is finishing on the Mary Jo Wegner Arboretum and East Sioux Falls Historic Site at the junction of Highways 11 and 42. Sioux Falls’ newest park is the brainchild of Mary Jo Wegner, a local environmental advocate who envisioned a natural haven of gardens, plants and wetlands as an escape from the urbanity of South Dakota’s largest city. When completed, the area will include six gardens, interpretive exhibits and an extension of the Sioux Falls Bike Trail.

The 115-acre park sits on land rich in quartzite history. East Sioux Falls was once a thriving community of 600 residents, many of whom relied on local quartzite quarries for their livelihoods. A number of quarries were operating in Sioux Falls by the end of the 1880s, but the largest opened at East Sioux Falls in 1887. By 1890, nearly 500 men toiled there, cutting stone to ship via rail to cities like Omaha, St. Louis and Chicago for street paving.

An economic downturn in 1891 followed by the Panic of 1893 slowed production at the Sioux Falls quarries. As concrete became the building material of choice, workers began to leave East Sioux Falls. The city gave up its charter in 1913.

Jasper Pool, Gitchie Manitou State Preserve, South Dakota/Iowa Border

Jasper Pool. Photo by Christian Begeman

Just across the Big Sioux River in Lyon County, Iowa, the oldest exposed bedrock in that state is preserved at Gitchie Manitou State Preserve. From the 1890s to 1920, a quartzite quarry operated in the northeast corner of the 91-acre preserve. The remains have filled with water, creating the Jasper Pool.

Another feature of Gitchie Manitou is a series of conical mounds near its southern edge. Archaeologists are still determining their significance, but they may be part of a larger complex found at Blood Run, South Dakota’s newest state park along the South Dakota/Iowa border that was home to the Oneota people for 8,500 years.

Queen Rock, Palisades State Park, Garretson

King and Queen Rock, Palisades State Park.

South of Garretson, quartzite cliffs and rock formations rise 50 to 60 feet along the banks of Split Rock Creek. Among the most unique formations are two spires called King and Queen Rock.

At just over 150 acres, Palisades is South Dakota’s second smallest state park. Still, it boasts a campground, a lodge and four hiking trails, including the King and Queen Rock Trail. The 0.2-mile route passes the King and Queen and the rest of the park’s most impressive quartzite formations. The trail also winds past the site of Palisades, a small town formed in 1870 after homesteaders built a large flourmill along the creek. But A.S. Garretson, an entrepreneur from Sioux City, made sure a railroad junction was placed two miles north on land he owned, spawning the town named for him and facilitating Palisades’ demise.

Adventurers come to Palisades for kayaking and rock climbing, which poses special challenges. The surface of the quartzite ranges from gritty to slippery smooth, the result of glacial weathering.

Devil’s Falls, Devil’s Gulch Park, Garretson

Devil’s Gulch. Photo by Christian Begeman

Outlaws Frank and Jesse James robbed a bank in Northfield, Minn., in 1876 and rode west. Legend says that as they eluded a posse, Jesse spurred his horse and jumped a 20-foot chasm across Split Rock Creek on the edge of Garretson.

If it’s true, Jesse probably didn’t have time to appreciate the quartzite-lined gulch or the nearby waterfall. Some geologists speculate that an ancient earthquake split the quartzite and created the fissure. Today an iron footbridge spans the gap where Jesse is said to have leapt. A hiking trail leads to the falls and other quartzite features, such as Devil’s Kitchen and Devil’s Stairway.

Touch the Sky Prairie, Rock County, Minnesota

Here the trail turns east into Minnesota and stops near Luverne at Touch the Sky Prairie, site of a major prairie restoration project. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Brandenburg Prairie Foundation, led by local photographer and filmmaker Jim Brandenburg, have purchased 1,000 acres of land northwest of Luverne. Fences and old farmstead buildings have been removed to make room for native plants and animals. The acreage also features a mile-long quartzite ridgeline that served as a buffalo rub. Some of the outcroppings have surfaces as smooth as glass, the result of centuries of rubbing.

Blue Mound State Park, Luverne, Minnesota

Homesteaders traveling west across the prairie noticed a strange mound with a blue tint as they neared South Dakota. They soon discovered the”blue mound” was a 100-foot tall outcropping of Sioux quartzite, one of many at Blue Mound State Park, an 1,800-acre oasis of prairie grasses and flowers north of Luverne.

Local historians believe Plains Indians first utilized the mound as a buffalo jump because of the large number of bones recovered at the outcropping’s base.

Pipestone National Monument, Pipestone, Minnesota

The pipestone quarries near Pipestone, Minn., just across the state line east of Flandreau, have been sacred to Plains Indians for centuries. A Brule legend told by Lame Deer in the 1960s relates their importance in the creation of the Lakota people. It began with a flood that inundated all the land except a hill next to the sacred quarries. People clamored to the hilltop, but rising waters killed everyone except a young girl saved by a bald eagle that flew her to safety in the Black Hills. The Lakota people were descended from that union. Meanwhile, the blood of the flood victims turned to pipestone and created the vast quarries.

Indians have journeyed to the quarries for at least 800 years to extract pipestone from the layers of Sioux quartzite that jut from the Earth at the Pipestone National Monument. The monument was created in 1937 to ensure Indians of all federally recognized tribes had access to pipestone, used in making ceremonial pipes. A feature of the monument is a quartzite outcropping that forms a 10- to 15-foot cliff line that runs north to south along the entire length of the 301-acre site.

Jeffers Petroglyphs, Comfrey, Minnesota

Flat slabs of quartzite dot the prairie at the Jeffers Petroglyphs Historic Site near Comfrey, Minn. Here, Plains Indians — including the Lakota and Dakota — scratched over 4,000 images into the hard stone. The oldest drawings could be 9,000 years old, while the newest were done within the last two centuries. They tell of important events, sacred ceremonies, legends and stories of hunting and other daily activities. The age of the drawings indicates that Jeffers is among the oldest continually used sacred sites in the world.

Dells of the Big Sioux, Dell Rapids

Little Dells. Photo by Christian Begeman

The trail concludes at the Dells of the Big Sioux River, south of Dell Rapids in Minnehaha County. Quartzite was key to Dell Rapids’ development. Many of the 39 buildings in the downtown business district were constructed using locally quarried quartzite. Even the high school mascot is a”quarrier.”

At the peaceful dells, the river flows between 40-foot quartzite walls sprinkled with lush trees and prairie grasses.

Along the Way …

Kersten has identified nine secondary outcroppings along his quartzite trail. The first is Arrowhead Park in Sioux Falls. The 131-acre park features two quarry ponds that were once part of the bustling East Sioux Falls quarry scene. Dale Weir donated the land to the city of Sioux Falls for development as a park. Ducks and geese frequent the ponds, which are connected by a walking trail that also passes an 1888 barn designed by Sioux Falls architect Wallace Dow.

At Split Rock Creek City Park in Garretson, and Split Rock Creek State Park in Ihlen, Minn., quartzite walls tower over the placid stream. Kayakers enjoy paddling the stretch through the Garretson park, which includes a dam, bridges, a rock wall and a bathhouse built in 1936 as a Works Progress Administration project. All the structures are made of quartzite.

Rockport Hutterite Colony.

The Red Rock Falls and Red Rock Dells in Cottonwood County, Minn., feature more quartzite outcroppings. A 0.34-mile trail skirts the edge of some boulders and through a gorge to the small waterfall. Keep heading east toward Redstone, the eastern edge of quartzite county near New Ulm, Minn. An active quarry on the eastern edge of town has been operational since 1861.

Kersten’s trail re-enters South Dakota at the Three Sisters quartzite formation in the Big Sioux River near Dell Rapids and two sites of early construction: the Dell Rapids Mill and Saint Olaf Roller Mill and Power Dam in Baltic.”There are 20 mills in a pretty tight radius of Sioux Falls,” Kersten says.”Every town had a mill. My next project could be on the grist mills of southeastern South Dakota.”

The final stop is Rockport Hutterite Colony along the James River south of Alexandria. It marks the western edge of significantly exposed quartzite. Huge slabs lie between the colony buildings and the lazy river, along with quartzite foundations of buildings that comprised Fort James, built in 1865 to maintain peace between homesteaders and Indians. Soldiers occupied Fort James — one of the only stone cavalry forts in the West — for a year before it closed in 1866.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the September/October 2013 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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A Week at the Dells

By Christian Begeman

Six evenings and a day. That’s the time I set aside in the month of May to search out and photograph springtime ornaments at one of my favorite places found within 20 miles of my home. Six evenings and a day… and I wish I could have gone more. The place? The Dells of the Big Sioux River just south of Dell Rapids. The reason? To search for pretty little things to photograph. Things like wildflowers and warblers. The terrain is unique with steep cliffs, natural stairs and stony perches that help to get to eye level with our feathered friends. And to be honest, that’s really how I first came to think of the Dells as more than just a neat place where the river had cut through 40 feet of Sioux quartzite, carving an impressive canyon in the middle of the eastern South Dakota prairie.

A couple years ago, I stumbled upon the warbler migration that travels through our state in May right there at the Dells. As I was sitting on a stony perch watching for Baltimore Orioles and Northern Cardinals, I noticed a variety of birds deftly catching winged insects in the trees at my feet and eye level. These birds were new to me. I took their portraits as best I could, and discovered later that I had seen birds with names like the Magnolia Warbler, Wilson’s Warbler and Palm Warbler. I was hooked on warblers after that. This year, I saw a Blackpoll Warbler on his way from South America to Canada at the Dells, as well as a Blue-headed Vireo.

Ruby-throated hummingbirds are residents at the Dells as well. Five out of my seven times, I spotted a handsome male perched on a high branch surveying his kingdom of blooming honeysuckle and other wildflowers. The first day, he flew very near me and began to fly vigorously in a tight”u” shape while making noises with his wings. Later, I read it was his way of impressing the ladies. Turns out, there must have been one hiding in the leaves and branches and I actually spotted her a couple days later and almost on cue, the male did his”u” dance in the air again.

There are also big birds that call the Dells home. On the full day that I spent there, about mid-afternoon a Great Horned Owl started hooting from the other side of the cliffs. It wasn’t long until it flew out and perched on a branch to see what the commotion was (me). I’m sorry if I woke him from an afternoon snooze, but I’m grateful he decided to let me snap a couple photos.

Birds aren’t the only attraction for photography at the Dells. The cliffs themselves are incredible, and full of unique plants like fragile prickly pear cactus. If you have a macro lens, you could spend hours photographing the close-up details. I know because I did. I also saw three different kayakers and canoers plying the waters below, and someday would like to join them to see the view from the river level.

Six evenings and a day in May at the Dells. Not a bad way to experience spring in southeast South Dakota. I wish I could have gone more.

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

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Rocks, Rolls and Rivers

By John Andrews

If you took a road trip around South Dakota with the goal of seeing one — and only one — thing in each of South Dakota’s 66 counties, where would the intrepid editors of South Dakota Magazine send you in Moody County?

We asked ourselves that very question in the summer of 2011, when we wrote an extensive travel feature based on the idea of seeing one unique spot in every county. There were some fascinating places: 19th century cabins and churches, wildlife refuges, public art displays and beautiful sections of the Missouri River known only to locals.

And what did we select for Moody County?

A rock.

Yes, a rock. But it’s a really big rock with a story that’s 1.8 million years old. Lone Rock is one of millions of stones deposited by glaciers as they scraped across present-day South Dakota, but this one stands out. The boulder is 25 feet high and is estimated to weigh 100 tons — and that’s just the part you can see. Locals think another 50 to 75 tons remain buried beneath the prairie. Lone Rock became a travelers’ landmark and a favorite picnic spot for locals since the late 1880s. If you want to see the king of glacial erratics, Lone Rock lies in a pasture near the corner of 487th Avenue and 235th Street, southeast of Flandreau and less than a mile from the Minnesota border.

Lone Rock has been a landmark in southeastern Moody County for centuries.

Who knows if Gideon Moody ever saw Lone Rock, or how much time he actually spent in the county that was created and named for him in 1873? Moody was one of several territorial politicians for whom counties were named, but he was probably the only one who narrowly avoided a knife fight with a colleague. It happened while Moody served in the Indiana legislature in 1861. The body was debating states’ rights, an especially controversial pre-Civil War issue. One legislator attacked the governor and Moody came to his defense so vociferously that he was challenged to a duel using bowie knives. They crossed the border into Kentucky to consummate the challenge and were promptly arrested and fined $500 each. The bowie knives remained in their sheaths.

Gideon Moody.

Moody’s fighting spirit (at least in the physical sense) abated when he came to Dakota Territory with his family in 1864 to supervise construction of the Sioux City to Fort Randall military road. When he discovered the road could be built for far less than the money already appropriated, he paid the farmers he had recruited to work on it double the money originally intended. It raised the ire of the federal government, but he earned the respect of thousands of South Dakotans.

Moody served in the House of Representatives, was a judge in Deadwood and became one of our first U.S. Senators in 1889. He cultivated an unparalleled reputation for honesty. During one court case in Deadwood, litigants worried over the trial’s probable outcome against them tried to find someone who would bribe Judge Moody. They found an old law partner of Moody’s from North Dakota and brought him to town. When he heard their plan, he shouted,”My God, men! Do you expect me to tackle that man on any such proposition? Why, I should be in the penitentiary in 48 hours. If that is what you got me here for, I might as well leave for home on the coach tomorrow.” And he did.

Grace (seated) and Gabby Flute Player enjoy a front yard decorated with pipestone in Flandreau. Their father, Rick Flute Player, uses the stone quarried from the Pipestone National Monument in Minnesota, to create ceremonial pipes.

When he faced defeat in his bid for re-election to the Senate in 1891, several legislators suggested supporting Moody in exchange for certain privileges.”He told them that if one dollar were used in buying a vote for him he would refuse to qualify for the office or accept it, and more, that he would assist in prosecuting both the man offering the money and the man accepting it,” wrote state historian Doane Robinson.

Moody ultimately lost the election. He practiced law before moving to California in 1900. He died four years later.

Today about 6,500 people call Moody County home. Its biggest city is Flandreau, where the citizenry is a mix of the descendants of European homesteaders and the Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe. After the Dakota Uprising in Minnesota in 1862, several Santee Sioux were relegated to the Santee Agency in Nebraska. Seven years later, a delegation of them left and decided to settle on a bend in the Big Sioux River.

Flandreau boasts both public and Indian schools, and the Royal River Casino and Hotel draws people from hundreds of miles. If you are passing through, don’t miss the Long John’s at the Flandreau Bakery or the large paintings inside the auditorium by Brookings artist Dorothy Lyford, who was commissioned to illustrate the city’s history. The historic St. Vincent Hotel has also been restored. It’s where John Dillinger stayed while planning his robbery of the Sioux Falls Security National Bank in 1934.

The Big Sioux River’s shallow depths make it an easier river to kayak. Photo by Greg Latza.

Take advantage of the outdoors by paddling the lazy Big Sioux River, which snakes through Moody County. Kayaking enthusiast Jarrett Bies told us the river is perfect for paddlers of all skill levels.”The Big Sioux is a pretty easy river to paddle, because if you have a mistake or you tip over, your number one strategy is to just stand up because you’re probably in knee-deep or waist-deep water,” Bies says.”If you tipped on the Missouri, you’d face a much more complex rescue.”

One of his favorite stretches follows the big horseshoe bend. Start at the access point at the pow wow grounds about a mile north of Flandreau on Highway 13. The river flows east toward Minnesota before curving south and west, past the Flandreau city park to a low-head dam in town.”It’s a five minute drive from the pow wow grounds to the dam, but you get a three-hour paddle on 12 to 14 miles of river,” Bies says.

Jim and Joan Lacey’s Little Village Farm is an eclectic collection of farm equipment and memorabilia.

You can also portage around the dam and continue south for another three-hour paddle to Egan. Stop at the access point in the city park, or continue south to Dell Rapids. This course features farmland, abundant wildlife, woodland areas and rugged red quartzite canyons.

Outdoorsmen like to stay at the River of the Double Bend Campground and Outfitters near Trent. Owner Morris Kirkegaard is a life-long Big Sioux River rat, full of stories about his experiences.

Another unique destination just outside of Trent is Jim and Joan Lacey’s Little Village Farm. The Laceys have moved several large barns onto their property to house the enormous collection they’ve amassed over the years — tractors, windmills, cream separators, lightning rods and other farm equipment.

A day in Moody County might begin with rolls at the Flandreau Bakery, then a round of golf at Sunrise Ridge Golf Course on the south edge of Colman. Spend a quiet afternoon at the city park in Egan and have a thick, juicy steak at the Feather’s Nest in Ward. Finish it off with a float on the Big Sioux or a campfire with the Kirkegaards.

And if you see any other rocks you think we ought to know about, give us a call.

Editor’s Note: This is the sixth†installment in an ongoing series featuring South Dakota’s 66 counties. Click here for previous articles.

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Can We Save The Big Sioux?

By John Andrews

There’s beauty all along the 420-mile Big Sioux River, but it is consistently among the most imperiled rivers in the country. Photo by Greg Latza.

YOU NEED NOT talk long with Morris Kirkegaard to understand his passion for the Big Sioux River. He and his wife, Diane, have operated the River of the Double Bend Campground and Canoe Outfitters along the river in the small Moody County town of Trent for a dozen years. But Kirkegaard has spent much of his 64 years a stone’s throw away from the Big Sioux.”In high school my friends and I spent days on the river,” he recalls.”We made a boat every summer. Then we’d forget about it during the winter and lose it in the spring flood. For me, it was the perfect place to grow up. And I want my grandson to experience some of that.”

He and his grandson share a passion for collecting fossils. Last summer, they excavated the bones of a giant ancient lizard from the Big Sioux’s muddy banks. The temperatures were below zero when we spoke in January, but there was pride in his voice when he said,”It’s winter now, so it’s very clear. You can see straight down to the bottom.”

Then, his voice trailing, he added,”But it turns like chocolate milk every spring.”

That’s a far cry from the upbeat entry that Frenchman Joseph Nicollet, exploring for the U.S. government, recorded when he first laid eyes upon the Big Sioux in July 1838. Modern-day river rats might scoff at Nicollet’s summertime description of a”stream of clear, swift-running water meandering across an immense prairie whose vegetation is better supplied and more varied and where the land seems disposed to provide all the agricultural needs for a civilized society.” Nicollet clearly observed the river’s pebbly bottom, and abundant fresh-water clams and mollusks. If any clams clung to the bottom today, they would be obscured by murky brown water or perhaps dislodged by the scrap iron that volunteers regularly fish out of the river.

Nearly 200 years of settling the Great Plains has changed the Big Sioux from the picturesque brook of Nicollet’s day into a river that advocacy group Environment America declared the 13th dirtiest river in America in 2012. But there are armies of South Dakotans who live along the Big Sioux, who use it for recreation, or who simply want to make it cleaner for their grandchildren, that are trying to fix it. The biggest question they face is whether or not their efforts are in vain. If they are, it may be time for South Dakotans to re-evaluate the ways they use the river.

South Dakota’s largest city rose around the falls of the Big Sioux River, which first attracted town-builders in the 1850s. Photo by Greg Latza.

The Big Sioux River begins at a pond in Roberts County, about a mile and a half north of Summit, and flows 419 miles south, through nine counties, emptying into the Missouri River at Sioux City. The river snakes through three of our five largest cities — Watertown, Brookings and Sioux Falls — making it the most heavily populated river basin in South Dakota. But most of the 5,382 square miles it drains in South Dakota, plus another 3,000 in Iowa, is agricultural land. The state Department of Environment and Natural Resources, in its biannual water quality reports, says the primary pollutants in the Big Sioux are agricultural runoff — waste from livestock grazing too closely to the river and herbicides and pesticides that trickle across the rolling East River farmland directly into the river –wildlife and wet weather discharges from small towns.

“The river we have today is a reflection of how we use the land in eastern South Dakota,” says Jay Gilbertson, manager of the East Dakota Water Development District headquartered in Brookings.”We live in an agricultural state. Sioux Falls is there, but the rest of South Dakota, and huge parts of the Big Sioux river basin, are farm ground, ranches and pasture.”

Agriculture as we know it did not exist in the Upper Plains when European explorers first established contact with the Big Sioux over 300 years ago. A map published in Paris in 1701 is one of the earliest documents to mention the Big Sioux. It shows a fur trader’s trail from the falls of the Big Sioux River to Prairie du Chien on the Mississippi River. The area was a rendezvous for Indians and French fur traders. Jean Baptiste Trudeau passed the river’s mouth in 1794 before building Pawnee House, the first trading post on the Upper Missouri, near modern day Fort Randall. Nicollet first encountered the river a few miles west of present day Brookings late on the afternoon of July 7, 1838 and followed it to its source, noting the clarity of lakes Oakwood, John, Albert and Poinsett.

The Homestead Act of 1862 brought thousands of settlers to Dakota. Through the early 1900s, they introduced domestic livestock to roam the once wild prairie and transformed other sections into a patchwork of row crops. As farming operations grew, Gilbertson says government offices and colleges encouraged farmers to build feedlots on hillsides so that spring rains would wash waste downstream to a destination out-of-sight and out-of-mind. Citizens in new towns along the river shared that mentality for their own sewage.”The assumption was that there was always going to be enough water,” Gilbertson says.”At some point, there’s no longer enough fresh water in the river to dilute the effluent that is going into it. I think people were concerned, but it wasn’t at the top of the list.”

Then the environmental movement gained traction in the 1950s, and people paid closer attention to the health of their waterways. In 1972 Congress passed the Clean Water Act, which sought to control pollution in the nation’s rivers and streams. To comply with its provisions the Big Sioux is divided into 17 segments, each with a set of prescribed uses. Pollutant levels are monitored in each section, and the state compiles a biannual report to determine the river’s compliancy with federal requirements in each segment.

Paddlers encounter farmland, wooded areas and rugged red quartzite canyons. Photo by Greg Latza.

The river above Sioux Falls received good marks in the 2012 report. Only two stretches — one near Lake Kampeska and another between Willow Creek and Stray Horse Creek in Codington and Hamlin counties — exceeded the maximum levels of E. coli and fecal coliform allowed under federal standards. But the river from Sioux Falls to Sioux City contains such high levels of E. coli, fecal coliform and total suspended solids that portions aren’t safe for fish or limited human contact, and swimming is prohibited along the entire route. The outlook is not sunny.”I have not seen anything in our ability to affect the kind of change that will be necessary to get within that total immersion standard,” Gilbertson says.

South Dakota is chiefly an agricultural state, but farmers should not be viewed as the lone villains behind the Big Sioux’s plight.”No one of us is responsible for a big problem, but collectively we bear the burden,” Gilbertson says.”We would all like to see a riparian corridor along the river.”

Lisa Richardson, executive director of the South Dakota Corn Growers Association, argues that farmers depend upon clean water perhaps more than anyone because it directly affects their livelihood. She says technological advances like variable rate technology, which uses satellites to map cropland, allows farmers to apply fertilizer and other chemicals more conservatively. The association had planned to hire a water quality consultant in 2012, but the prolonged drought negatively affected the organization’s budget, which relies on yields,”Water quality and water management affects every farmer out there, so we’ll continue to emphasize that,” Richardson says.

And then there’s Sioux Falls, South Dakota’s largest city, with 160,000 people. The city has had a turbulent relationship with its namesake river since being founded in 1856. Homesteaders were drawn to its signature falls, where every second 7,400 gallons of water gush down 100 feet of Sioux quartzite thought to be billions of years old. City founder Richard Pettigrew sought to harness that immense power in a flourmill, the remnants of which can still be seen at Falls Park. He also led a group of investors who established a stockyard and meat packing plant that became one of the first industrial polluters of the river when they dumped its waste directly into the water.

Members of the South Dakota Canoe and Kayak Association focus their summertime cleanups on the Big Sioux River.

According to Gary Olson’s history of Sioux Falls, by 1920 businesses and many homes were connected to city sewer lines that fed waste into the Big Sioux. In especially dry summers, the amount of sewage from residences, business and the John Morrell meatpacking plant, which opened in 1909, equaled or exceeded the amount of water available to carry it away.

The city addressed that problem by building a sewage treatment plant in 1927. Still, when researchers collected river samples in 1972 for a national study, they found bacteria levels thousands of times greater than acceptable standards. The treatment plant and Morrell’s shouldered the blame.

Sioux Falls has made strides to embrace the river through its River Greenway Project in the 1970s and more recent improvements around Falls Park. But in 2010 the city was forced to dump 65 million gallons of raw and partially treated sewage into the river when heavy spring rains overwhelmed the sewer systems. And in 2011 Morrell’s was cited for three years of waste discharge violations. The city paid $10,877 in fines, and has spent millions since on sewer system upgrades. Morrell’s paid $44,079.

The Big Sioux’s pollution problems have been well known for decades, particularly to members of the South Dakota Canoe and Kayak Association. The club began in Sioux Falls in the late 1980s, but canoeists favored regular trips to West River waterways over the river running through their own territory.”It was considered a mess,” says Jarett Bies, the association’s president.”Part of the reason they went to the Cheyenne or the Grand was because it was cleaner, and there wasn’t as much agricultural runoff.”

The diminished water quality does not preclude club members today from cruising any portions of the Big Sioux, but they do take precautions.”If it’s a hot day, we don’t stop at some point and have everyone take a swim,” Bies says.”That’s something fun you can do on the Missouri River, but that’s part of the knowledge base among locals. You can use it for recreation, but I don’t think they would swim in it.”

Rather than avoid the problems, members host regular cleanups in the Big Sioux. They’ve discovered that the water is not just dirty chemically. It’s also full of garbage. Men and women walk portions of the river, pulling debris-filled canoes in their wake.”Last fall when we were working on Skunk Creek (a tributary that flows through Sioux Falls), we fished out bicycles, old air conditioners, tires, lots of metal debris,” Bies says.

The Big Sioux flows through Good Earth State Park at Blood Run, where naturalist Ed Raventon leads tours.

So what’s the solution behind this decades-old problem? Millions of dollars have been spent on upgrades to water treatment facilities and waste management systems to little avail. Some might wonder if it’s worth the effort since we’ll never have the same river Nicollet found in 1838.”If your standard is pristine waters, you’re never going to get there,” Gilbertson says.”Things that we are doing now that we expect to do on a regular basis would have to stop. That kind of an expectation isn’t terribly realistic. We need to find a balance between making use of the land in ways that we feel is appropriate while minimizing the adverse impacts on other things that we would prefer to preserve.”

Gilbertson and other clean water advocates may have discovered a way to do just that. About 10 years ago, the East Dakota Water Development District was monitoring samples from a portion of Bachelor Creek, a tributary of the Big Sioux near Trent in Moody County. Results were mixed for years, but oddly the samples began improving. They discovered the farmer who owned pasture on both sides of the creek had enrolled the land in the Conservation Reserve Program.”Just taking a half-mile of riverbank out of constant use as a pasture led to a pretty dramatic change,” Gilbertson says.”It’s a small stream, but it can happen.”

That led to joint program between East Dakota and the Northern Prairies Land Trust to create buffer zones by enrolling land within 150 feet of the river in 30-year or perpetual easements, removing it from production. Jerry Kiihl was among the first farmers to enroll. He placed 36.5 riverfront acres about a mile south of Castlewood in a permanent easement in December 2007, and now has 75 acres protected.”The quality of the river has improved greatly,” Kiihl says.”This was a good way to protect the river environment forever. Some of the banks had eroded over time. They’ve moved 20 to 25 feet further in than they were 30 years ago.

The native grasses have started to come back. You see more big bluestem. And the grass has helped wildlife habitat. There are more ducks and pheasants.”

Kiihl has become an advocate for easements, and has helped convince several of his Hamlin County neighbors to participate. Jim Madsen, of the Northern Prairies Land Trust’s Watertown office, says 625 riverside acres are protected through easements.”We know we’re making an impact,” Madsen says.”Just how much is hard to say. Honestly, we need to create a buffer up and down the entire Big Sioux River. It’s possible, but so much depends on whether or not the funding is there.”

That’s music to the ears of river advocates like Morris Kirkegaard and Jay Gilbertson.”You can do almost anything on the other side of that buffer, and short of a major catastrophe very little of what happens is going to get into the river,” Gilbertson says.

Kirkegaard has already placed 20 acres of farmland he owns near Trent into an easement program and hopes to have 80 total acres enrolled by the end of 2013. If results further upriver hold true, swimmers might find themselves once again splashing in the Big Sioux’s southern reaches. A cleaner river would benefit the farmers living along it, kayakers who cruise it, and grandfathers and grandsons who hunt its banks for ancient sea creatures.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the March/April 2013 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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When the Governor Decides … And the Levee Breaks

By Cory Allen Heidelberger

Last week, South Dakota’s southeastern goatee faced its second hundred-year flood in three years. The floods came from two different rivers — the Missouri in 2011, the Big Sioux last week — so we haven’t violated any statistical rules yet.

As was the case in 2011, Gov. Dennis Daugaard responded with swift and serious civil engineering. To keep the storm-swollen Big Sioux from sweeping North Sioux City down to Omaha, Gov. Daugaard turned Exit 4 into a levee to divert Big Sioux overflow across Interstate 29 into McCook Lake and down into the Missouri River a couple miles upstream from the usual Big Sioux–Missouri confluence.

When I first heard the plan, I had visions of bulldozers, Guardsmen and inmates heaping dirt under the Exit 4 overpass into a Great Wall of Union County. All we got was a measly-looking line of Hesco baskets filled with dirt and packed in a tight line across the roadway.

While not as visually impressive as I’d imagined, that 4-foot wall showed the Governor’s willingness to accept two major costs. First, building that line meant closing Interstate 29 from Vermillion to North Sioux City. The shortest detour — to Vermillion, across the Missouri, through Ponca and back to Sioux City — adds 35 minutes to a trip. The default detour would have diverted southbound truckers at Sioux Falls east on I-90 to Albert Lea, then down to Des Moines and back to Council Bluffs, adding around four hours. Multiply the lost travel time by the productivity of 11,000 car drivers and 2,500 truckers for each day I-29 would remain closed, and I suspect you’d get a small but significant impact on the economy of the Upper Midwest.

Also on the red side of the emergency response ledger are the 300-some houses around McCook Lake. Plugging Exit 4 meant McCook Lake would bear the full force of the Big Sioux overflow. Officials guesstimated up to a 10-foot increase in the lake’s water level. With less than two days to prepare, McCook Lake residents waited in line for two hours to get 20 sandbags from the National Guard and not much else. However much water was coming, the Exit 4/McCook Lake decision showed that the Governor was willing to sacrifice those few hundred homes to protect the rest of North Sioux City.

That’s a big decision. It’s a gutsy decision. And, luckily for almost everyone, it turned out to be an unnecessary decision. A levee broke upstream, near Akron, flooding some farmland and homes. The Big Sioux spread out, lowering the flood level downstream. The river crested at North Sioux City Friday morning a few hours early and 4 feet below the predicted max. Exit 4 stayed dry, as did the homes at McCook Lake. By noon Friday, one day after we cut off I-29, the Hesco baskets were gone and I-29 was open again.

Emergency response is one of the hardest parts of the Governor’s job. He had to evaluate lots of variables, many of them unpredictable (how much more rain will fall? will every levee hold?), choose priorities and make sacrifices. The Big Sioux was rising. The water had to go somewhere. Gov. Daugaard chose McCook Lake, and nature chose Akron. What would you have chosen?

Cory Allen Heidelberger writes the Madville Times political blog. He grew up on the shores of Lake Herman. He studied math and history at SDSU and information systems at DSU, and has taught math, English, speech, and French at high schools East and West River.