Tag: cars

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Fast, Loud and Proud

Story and photos by Chad Coppess

Late model stock cars work the high banks of Wagner Speedway.

My love for photography and race cars came from the same place — my father. When I was around 13 years old, Dad took me to Thunder Valley Dragways near Marion and brought along a borrowed 35mm camera. I was fascinated with his ability to take photos that looked as good as those I saw in racing magazines. A few years later he purchased a camera for me, and my own photographic journey began. Every summer I attend as many races as I can, camera in hand, across South Dakota. If it’s fast, loud and brightly painted, from super-accelerating dragsters to wide-sliding sprint cars, I love the spectacle. Here are some of the state’s racers and places where you can see them.

A photo by my father, David Coppess, got me started in photography. Two”wheel standers” were flying down the quarter-mile track at Thunder Valley Dragways in Marion when we were there in 1976. The Rapp family had started the drag strip 10 years earlier, and it’s still a big attraction today in Turner County. Thunder Valley is one of just two drag strips in South Dakota. The other is Sturgis Dragway, east of Sturgis.

Drag racing seems easier to understand than many sports. Two cars line up for a straight shot of 1/8th or 1/4th mile. The first to cross the finish line wins. However, there are subtleties, like the tire-smoking”burnout” that prepares tires for a quick launch down the drag strip.

Dale Garber, a drag racer from Pierre, has had success, but he says it comes and goes.”One year I couldn’t lose and the next I never went further than the first round of eliminations, but I love the adrenaline rush.” At right, Joe Wolf of Pierre leaves a smoke trail as he does a burnout in his flame-painted dragster at Sturgis Dragway.

Friday nights have been rip-roaring fun in Aberdeen for a century, thanks in large part to the Brown County Speedway at the county fairgrounds. The one-third mile track is busy from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Racers come from the Dakotas, Minnesota and even Canada to compete. The family atmosphere allows kids to visit the pits after races and win matching trophies with their heroes.

Tori Wendell has been racing since age 13.

The South Dakota Mud Racers hold eight weekend events every summer at tracks in Mitchell, Canova, Tripp, Canistota, Platte, Woonsocket and Fulton. The variety of classes — ATV, Street, Sportsman, Super Stock, Pro and Pro Modified — is part of the fun for the mudders and fans. Kevin Hohn remembers his first race in 1999:”I drove my street-legal Jeep and placed second. I had a blast and won some money, so I decided to build for the sportsman class. That started a 22-year career in mud drags with my daughter racing with me in her Jeep for several years.”

John Otte of Ravinia led a pack of winged sprint cars out of Turn Two at Wagner Speedway in a race last summer. Sprint cars attain high speeds due to their low weight, high horsepower and large wings that keep them connected to the track.

Tori Wendell has been racing stock cars on dirt ovals since she was 13 and is only the second female to win at Wagner Speedway near her hometown of Fairfax. Wagner Speedway is a 3/8ths mile dirt oval that draws big crowds on Friday nights, thanks partly to a reputation for hosting community benefits and special events. Many South Dakota racetracks generously assist local groups with fundraisers.

Wendell also won at nearby Stuart, Nebraska, last summer, and then her boyfriend Kyle Moos proposed to her in victory lane.

“I had two wins and a marriage proposal in three days,” smiled the young manager of Wagner’s NAPA auto parts store.

However, auto racing hasn’t always been so kind. She had a bad crash in 2021, rolling her car and sustaining a concussion and broken nose. Why does she continue to race?

“The thrill,” she laughed.”Nothing compares to it.”

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the July/August 2022 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Abandoned

By Michael Heintz

Dad came home to Harrold from the South Pacific in 1946 when I was 4 and bought a 1929 Model A Ford that had been converted from a sedan to a pickup. I can still smell the interior and feel the big steering wheel. He let me sit on his lap and try to drive.

Baseball was the thing in those post-war summers. Dad would load a calf tank in the Model A and we’d go out to Beckett’s icehouse for straw-covered chunks of winter-cut ice. We’d fill the tank with water and pop and go to the ballpark before the game. I sold a lot of pop for the VFW from the back of that Ford.

Grandpa had two big tractors with steel wheels and a threshing machine. He wore a striped engineer cap on weekdays and a white Stetson on Sundays. He had a 1934 Ford coupe and he liked to drive fast. I wanted that car so bad and hoped to buy it someday, but he traded it for a blue 1949 Buick Roadmaster. Grandpa took me along when he tested the Buick. He ran it up to 90 mph and then without as much as a grin said,”that’ll do.”

A rancher bought the coupe and nearly wrecked it chasing jackrabbits and coyotes. I bought it for $35 when I was 12 and pulled it into town. That worried Dad. He was a horse guy. The idea of me having a car scared him, so he went into collusion with the Ford mechanic and made sure I got some bad advice so I couldn’t get it to run. I didn’t hear about that until years later.

The first car I got that would run was a’46 Mercury. It was a two-door sedan, Navy blue with a Flat-head Eight. I drove it four or five years all through high school at Harrold, where I graduated in 1961.

Then I studied at Northern State in Aberdeen from 1962 to 1967 and took every art class they offered. I went to California to be an art teacher. I used to dream of its beautiful beaches, girls, hot rods and motorcycles. Forty years later I’ve seen them all.

I became sad and sentimental as I watched the old cars and trucks of my youth slow down and finally stop to languish behind a barn or a grove of trees. Then, like the old-timers who drove them, one day they are gone. I missed them, so I bought a camera and began the journey of photographing abandoned vehicles in a romantic way. I was a painter with a camera. I laughed when my photography teacher said it would be my life’s work. Someday I intend to turn the series, which I title”Abandoned,” into a book. The first image in the book will be a family photograph of me and my mom and dad and my next-oldest brother, taken in 1947 in front of our first family car. I found that very vehicle some 50 years later. It was north of Harrold on an old farm with a collection of other stuff. And in 2008, when I came home, it was gone. I didn’t think it would ever move, but some guy in Highmore bought it for parts.

The picture of our family is special to me because it says something about that post-war period. My dad went through an awful part of the war and made it home, and there he is with his family.

My images are about the West — the dreams, the struggles and finally the rust. All of them have a mystery. They are about a different time when things were easier to understand and easier to love. It has been a wonderful adventure. I’ve crossed from Minnesota to California and Montana to Mexico, mostly in my’62 Ford truck,”Buster,” my best pal.

When I’m back in South Dakota, I drive dad’s’71 Ford pickup. We bought it new from Pioneer Garage in Highmore and when he passed away it was mine. I’ve driven it a lot, and my friends in Harrold store it for me when I’m gone.

I come back to South Dakota every year. I still have the farm, Dad’s pickup truck, family and friends. Maybe someday I’ll come back to stay.

Editor’s Note: Michael Heintz lives in Dana Point, Calif., where he designs and creates jewelry. This story is revised from the November/December 2009 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Cool Classics

Over 600 classic and customized cars rolled into Deadwood last Thursday for Kool Deadwood Nights. The 20th annual event featured a car show, sock hop, car auction, parades and free concerts including a performance by Gary Lewis & the Playboys. A storm struck town late Friday afternoon, bringing wind, heavy rain and an intense pounding of quarter-sized hail. Some owners were able to find protection under a parking ramp, but dozens of cars were damaged. Heavy metal used in the construction of older cars helped to reduce destruction. Photos by John Mitchell.

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Into the Badlands

By Mike Heintz

Editor’s Note: The March/April 2016 issue of South Dakota Magazine features a story on an old World War II era bombing range in a portion of the Badlands. Mike Heintz, a South Dakota native now living in southern California, photographed the area in October of 2000. This is the story of his journey.

Heading out of Rapid City into the Badlands on Highway 44 can put you into another dimension. It starts when you drop down into the Cheyenne River Valley with its great stands of old cottonwoods. You might be lucky enough to catch them after the first frost when the leaves have turned. The wind won’t let them stay for long. From there, you approach the Badlands, a maze of eroded cliffs and spires carved in prehistoric times. They are aptly named for their inhospitable reality, stark beauty and threatening nature. Little has changed since the beginning. These canyons have produced a colorful and foreboding history.

Dozens of old cars litter a remote portion of the Badlands that was once used as a bombing range during World War II.

Just before I entered the park I drove through the little town of Scenic. The Longhorn Bar survived there from 1906 until just a few years ago. It may well have been the most infamous bar in South Dakota. I can’t imagine the characters that sat on those bar stools made from iron tractor seats bolted to the angle iron. The bullet holes in the walls are real. Now, the skulls hung over the porch roof are melting away and falling off the board rack to which they were tied. A piece of plywood is nailed over the front door, which has become a place to note your feelings. The old sign reads:

Long Horn Saloon

1906 Scenic So Dak 1906

Whiskey Beer Wine Soda

Tobacco Lunch Dancing

Indians Allowed Lakota Iyos Nina Upo

You can sense the Pine Ridge. It lies across the White River just south of town. It’s a huge piece of land as large as the state of Connecticut. Much of it looks as it did 200 years ago, and much has happened there since. It was created as a place to contain some of the last of the warrior tribes. This can be a lonesome road because it’s little used except by the people who live out there, or by the occasional traveler wanting to see the wilder side of South Dakota. The highway gets bumpy as it crosses into the Badlands. It’s the gumbo soil on which the road is built. It’s always changing. I passed a big prairie dog town. There has been a real effort to kill them off, but with only limited success. Most drivers in that country are on a point A to B mission. Everything in between is wasted time. To me it’s a movie that’s different every time I drive it. The landscape changes with the seasons and light.

Another 20 miles and you come to the town on Interior. A survivor of its own history, these little towns next to the rez have always been a result of the collision of culture. It’s a rough and tumble place that still buys groceries at the old Badlands Store and socializes at either the Horseshoe or Wagon Wheel Bar. They have both seen wild times. The owner of the Wagon Wheel had a pet bull named Radar that he kept out back. Many a patron found out the hard way that old Radar wasn’t an easy ride. There is a gas pump across the street in a vacant lot. You can pay for gas at the bar — a good thing to know if you’re caught on Highway 44 after dark. It’s probably the only place to get gas between Kadoka and Rapid City.

It was there that my mother and I met Ansel Woodenknife at his cafe. We were the only visitors, and as usual I struck up a conversation while trying some of his special fry bread. He mixes and packages it behind the cafe. The ingredients are based on his grandmother’s recipe. He markets Woodenknife Fry Bread Mix all around the country.

Old car bodies were arranged in a circle with a cross through the middle as targets for B-17 pilots and machine gunners from the nearby Rapid City Army Air Base.

I have been finding and photographing old abandoned vehicles all over the West for many years. I’ve felt compelled to do so out of a sense of art and history, and to do it before it’s too late. When I told Ansel about my project, he said,”I know where there are some old cars.” He said that in 1942 the then Army Air Corps seized a big piece of the Pine Ridge and turned it into a bombing range. Much of the property was confiscated and the people living there were forced to leave.

Sometime around then, many old cars were gathered and hauled out to several remote places. They were arranged in the shape of a circle with a line crossing itself in the center — a giant bull’s eye to be practice bombed. Mostly the pilots used dummy bombs filed with sand. As Ansel told the story my imagination grew.”Yes,” he said.”Those cars are still there.” We agreed that maybe someday we could go out there and find them.

The years passed by, and almost every fall when I came home from Southern California, I’d ask him about the cars. Finally, after about seven years, he said,”Let’s go tomorrow.” I met him that morning and we headed west with our pickups to get into the rez. We had to ford the White River, aptly named for the sediment it carries out of the Badlands. We drove down a little dirt road to the riverbank and he said,”Water’s too deep.” We’d have to try another time.

Three more years passed and I was visiting a friend near Silver City. I called Ansel and he said,”I’ll meet you at the station in the morning.” He had his friend Leroy with him, a very gentle older Indian who helped Ansel around the place. I first met Leroy on an earlier visit when he was loading boxes of fry bread mix into Ansel’s truck.

Most of the cars are pre-World War II models, though some have been identified as late 1940s.

I hadn’t even had a chance to get coffee before I raced out of the Hills and across the Badlands to Interior. By that time I was getting hungry and had no idea when I might get something to eat. The Badlands Standard had two gas pumps and sold a little bit of everything. We gassed up, I got my coffee and had a cheese sandwich that was frozen solid as a rock. Then we headed off to the White River.

This time he thought we could get across. I was apprehensive. The river was wide and so cloudy you couldn’t see the bottom. I watched them go first. The water was up to the bumper. I let them get clear across before I drove in. No way was I going to lose my truck”Butch” to that white water.

We set out across the raw prairie, occasionally coming to a fence that we had to follow until we found a gate. We climbed into the back of Ansel’s truck and Leroy pointed south to a distant set of hills.”See that pine tree on that hill way over there? The second hill to the right is where I saw the planes fly over when I was a kid,” he said. We headed that way. The grass was grazed down close to the ground, so we left no track. There aren’t many roads across that land and we weren’t even close to one. We drove a long way and never even saw a cow.

Then, as we crested a little hill, there they were. I didn’t really know what to expect, but I wasn’t quite prepared for what I saw. There must have been 50 or 60 cars out there, mostly in a circle about 40 feet apart. They were rusty brown with the burnt gold grass up to their hips. They were mostly of a 1930s vintage with a couple of ’40s. Some had roofs caved in, but most of them were intact. The engines were gone, so they were just shells.

Both Native and non-Native farmers were moved off their land to make way for the bombing range.

After all these years I was finally there. After a bit, Ansel said,”We’re going to go now.” It had never occurred to me that they were going to leave me out there on my own. Could I even find my way back out? Soon the boys were gone, and I was left alone in that haunted cemetery of old cars. The grass was tall and leaning over in the wind. The cars creaked and the loneliness of that place settled into my bones. It reminded me of a little graveyard.

Shooting with film is becoming a lost art. All of my work has been on Kodachrome and most of it with a hand held camera. I like my old Nikon because it’s heavy and you can hold it still. You have to wait for a moment when the wind dies down and hold your breath for each shot. A couple of hours of that can be exhausting. I knew that I was a rare visitor, and that carried a responsibility to do my best. Sometimes you know that you were chosen for a moment in time, and I think that’s what happened on that day. Some of the cars had”OST” spray-painted on them in orange. Ansel told me that meant”Oglala Sioux Tribe.”

The days grow short in late October and I knew it would soon be time to go. I didn’t know how long it would take to find my way back. I think we had come about 14 miles, and things look different when you are going the other direction. I had to find the same spot to cross the river, maybe spend the night in the truck and continue the next day. I was lucky and got back across before dark. By that time the frozen sandwich seemed like a long time ago. I stopped at the only cafe (the Woodenknife had long since closed). The girl was curious about what I was doing out there. When I told her she said,”Oh, you’re the one. Ansel called my husband this morning and asked if he knew where those cars were?”

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Hermosa Mud Bog

Remember when you were a kid and mom yelled when you played in the mud? Well, at the Hermosa Mud Bog it’s the parents who get down and dirty … with some pretty big toys.

The Mud Bog Races were held August 24 on Highway 79, just north of Hermosa. 27 racers competed in four categories — modified, super stock, rancher and powder puff.

Club member Dan Holsworth says the sport is growing in popularity. Drivers are gravitating to established mud bog courses as more public lands are being closed to motorized vehicles. The Hermosa Mud Bog is a family event run by volunteers. All proceeds go to various charities.

Photos by Jack Siebold, editor of MyTown.

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McMaster’s Gas War

South Dakota’s tenth governor, William Henry McMaster, took on Standard Oil in the 1920s.

By Paul Higbee


South Dakota’s tenth governor, William McMaster, generated headlines in the 1920s when he fired the first shot in a Midwestern gas pricing war.

McMaster never related exactly what was going through his mind as he watched President Warren G. Harding’s casket carried up the steps of the U.S. Capitol in August 1923. Certainly the governor could be forgiven if his thoughts drifted once or twice from the eulogies of the day to the strategies of coming days. For as soon as Harding’s casket was placed aboard a train bound for Ohio and burial, McMaster would board another bound for Chicago and a fight.

Back home in South Dakota, with harvest approaching, gas was retailing as high as 26.6 cents a gallon. To put that into some perspective, South Dakota’s annual per capita income stood at about $400, and a new Ford Model T touring car cost $295. South Dakotans owned 121,149 cars and 10,554 trucks; while tourism by automobile was just in its infancy, everyone knew that gas prices farmers paid to haul goods to market profoundly affected farm profits and the state’s overall economy.

McMaster, a Republican who was a Yankton banker and financier by profession, knew all about profits. He was for farmers making profits, as well as oil companies, he said. But he had deep concerns about the extent of oil companies’ profits.

The governor checked into Chicago’s Hotel Morrison and told reporters he would meet with Standard Oil officials and say, by his calculations, they could reduce prices by ten cents a gallon and still make a healthy profit.

At the meeting he lowered the boom. If Standard Oil didn’t sell at 16 cents a gallon, the State of South Dakota would begin selling 60,000 gallons at that rate, filling private cars and 50-gallon tanks on farms.

No, he said, the state wasn’t supplying gas at cost, which would be unfair competition. Sixteen cents represented two cents more per gallon than South Dakota was paying for its bulk supply.

“They (Standard Oil) said they will lose money,” McMaster told reporters. “My answer to the Standard Oil is 16 cent gas for South Dakota. 1 am calling upon surrounding states to join in the fight which will be waged to the bitter end.”

What would happen when South Dakota’s initial 160,000 gallons were exhausted? “A new order for half a million gallons will be on the way,” McMaster promised, “provided we don’t get some assurance by that time that a permanent price cut will be made.”

North Dakota was the first state to take McMaster’s challenge and join the fight. Governor R.A. Nestos announced his state, too, would sell gas “until dealers cease their exorbitant charges.”

A day after the McMaster meeting, Standard Oil agreed to drop prices to 16 cents. But it grumbled to the press, issuing a statement: “This company asserts such price is below the cost of manufacture and distribution. However, Standard Oil has always stood upon the principle that the customers who purchased its goods should never be compelled to pay a higher price than that maintained by any competitor… “

The fact that this particular competitor was a state had some legal experts scratching their heads. Nebraska Governor Charles Bryan said he needed time to study legalities before endorsing state sales there. That prompted residents in Omaha to push for an amendment to their city charter, allowing Omaha to sell gas just as it sold coal. In Iowa, Governor N. E. Kendall said he was conferring with his attorney general and added, “1 have requested Governor McMaster to furnish me the basis for his action.”

Regardless of what their governors did or didn’t do, all heartland states saw gas prices plummet. After all, a company like Standard Oil couldn’t expect the public to accept a wide price disparity between, say, Sioux City and Sioux Falls. That fall it was possible to buy 3 cent gas in Des Moines. Oklahoma briefly saw five cent gas.

Nobody watched the situation in South Dakota more closely than leaders of the nation’s 300 automobile clubs. Those clubs claimed enough members to wield real political clout. But members were divided; some said clubs should lobby for more federal regulation of gas pricing, while others argued that action would hurt small independent dealers and ultimately allow big companies to charge still more.

Now it wasn’t the federal government, but South Dakota’s that was doing something about pricing. Was the strategy putting a squeeze on independents?

No, said L. V. Nicholas, speaking for independents as National Petroleum Marketers president. He believed Standard Oil wished to “crush independent dealers” but that McMaster’s plan leveled the playing field by sparking a price war on South Dakota’s terms and timetable, not Standard’s.

“Governor McMaster’s plan is bound to accomplish good, constructive results,” Nicholas said. F. G. Allen, president of South Dakota independent dealers, agreed.

The state stopped selling after major oil companies agreed that 16 cents would be the South Dakota base price. Gas mostly retailed at 15 or 16 cents through harvest, but in early November the price unexpectedly jumped two cents. If prices didn’t fall back to 16 cents by November 19, McMaster said, the state would sell gas again, this time at 14 cents. The prices dropped, but not until state gas had been pumped.

For two years, the state was tested now and then by big oil companies. Each time the state started selling. There were calls for a special legislative session to set a policy, and in 1925 state lawmakers in regular session gave the Highway Department authority to sell petroleum products when the governor or other officials deemed it necessary.

Then in October 1925 the state Supreme Court ruled state sales unconstitutional. By that time McMaster was a U.S. senator. During his single term in Washington McMaster often banded with other rural legislators to fight what they considered abuses by big business.

Unconstitutional or not, McMaster told colleagues he figured he saved midwesterners $150,000 in 1923.


Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the March/April 1995 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.