Architects, artists, city planners and designers from across South Dakota converged in Yankton April 6-8 for Design:SD, an annual exercise to help the chosen community imagine its possibilities. Photos by Bernie Hunhoff.
Our November/December issue includes a story on the clever characters in Springfield. The Missouri River town has been through more highs and lows than most South Dakota communities, but the overall effect has not squelched the town’s spirit or creativity. South Dakota Magazine sent intern Chloe Kenzy, editor-at-large Bernie Hunhoff and his grandson, Steven, to visit the folks who help give Springfield its unique personality. Here are some of Hunhoff’s photos that didn’t make the magazine.
Our September/October issue includes a story on Vermillion’s downtown restaurants. The college town’s hungry citizens have historically enjoyed little culinary variety. There have always been burger joints, and University of South Dakota students thrive on the chicken wings from Leo’s. But the scene began to change a decade ago, and Vermillion is now home to some of South Dakota’s most popular locally-owned restaurants. Bernie Hunhoff’s photos accompanied the story of Vermillion’s restaurant renaissance. Here are a few that didn’t make the magazine.
As a University of South Dakota alumna, I have many fond memories of Vermillion’s little movie theaters, the Coyote Twin and the Vermillion Theater. My favorite is when my husband — then fiancÈ — and I decided to see a film after a huge blizzard. We first had to clear the driveway to our small trailer, and weren’t sure we’d make the start. Jeremy called the Vermillion Theater.”We’ll wait for you,” the employee assured him. True story.
That’s why I felt so sad when I learned the Vermillion Theater, built in 1918, closed. A leaking roof in the Coyote Twin ruined a projector last summer and Vermillion Theater’s projector was moved down the block to keep the twin screens limping along. Then Jack March, owner of both theaters for over 40 years, put them up for sale with realtor Michelle Maloney. Maloney spoke about the theaters at Yankton’s 1 Million Cups gathering on Aug. 5. Without any real offers, March joked to her that she and her husband should buy them.”We never considered it because we both have our own businesses already and knew it would take a village,” Maloney says.”The Vermillion Downtown Cultural Association (VDCA) formed in the short term to take over the theaters and save a cultural opportunity from going away.”
Maloney is now vice president of the non-profit VDCA. The group took ownership of the theaters in July and the Coyote Twin continues to operate. Through the support of The Vermillion Chamber and Development, USD and other local investors the building got a deep cleaning, new ice machine and a speaker to fix sound that was fuzzy for years. Digital ticketing replaces the former cash or check only policy.”Employees used to make change out of a cigar box,” Maloney told the 1 Million Cups audience with a smile.”They figured sales tax in their head.” Guests will soon purchase tickets on the Vermillion Theaters website and even bigger updates are planned for the future.”We are going to do some very significant physical restoration,” Maloney says. She shared a teaser of the architect’s plans for the Coyote Twin, with a total facelift to the building’s front.
“What we’re trying to do is provide a cinematic opportunity with either classic films, film festivals, documentaries, that type of thing, in the Vermillion Theater and more traditional films in the twin theater,” Maloney explains. The group hosted their inaugural Friday Cult Classic, screening The Princess Bride the weekend of Aug. 7. Another is planned for the weekend of Sept. 11.
Follow the Vermillion Theaters Facebook page and website for events, fundraising and updates on their progress.
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| Rand Williams bought Spearfish High School at auction in 2011. The hometown developer hopes his mountain city’s “world class natural ambiance” will help attract a new tenant to the stately old structure. |
Forty years after his 1971 graduation, Rand Williams generated a real buzz as he walked into Spearfish High School’s all-class reunion in 2011. He had just arranged to buy the old alma mater.
No, he told former classmates that night, he didn’t know exactly what he’d do with the big 1924 brick building two blocks east of downtown. He was open to ideas and, in fact, enjoying hearing from people who offered suggestions.
“I still don’t know where this is going,” he said several weeks later.”Of the ideas I’ve heard, I’ve ruled out only two — minimum security prison and brothel. All other suggestions are still on my list of possibilities.”
That list includes condos, apartments, office space and hostel. A gymnastics organization is interested in the gym with its wonderful hardwood floor, and Williams has also heard from a women’s roller derby team. The possibility that intrigues him most, what he considers the”highest and best use” in the language of building restorers, would be some type of school.”Maybe a trade school, private college or a seminary,” he says.”It was designed for education and preserving it for that kind of use would be ideal.”
Although Williams has acquired and refurbished other public, commercial and residential buildings over the years, his high school wasn’t in his sights. But he showed up at the auction last June after the school district pronounced the building surplus, and of course anything can happen at an auction.
Now that he’s the owner, he takes that role seriously.”I want it to be a functioning part of the community,” he says.”If it ends up being torn down to make way for something else, I’ll consider that a personal failure.”
If Williams’ 40th school‚Ä® reunion was memorable, so‚Ä® was his 30th.”You always‚Ä® hear people say, ‘I love ‚Ä®Spearfish. I want to live there someday,'” he says.”And my 30th reunion was where I heard a lot of classmates who had left the area for careers say they hoped to move back. In terms of investing in the community, hearing that all the time confirms that your investment is sound. Individual circumstances can change with jobs, but that impulse to live here remains.”
He considers Spearfish a place of”world class natural ambiance.” Anyone who attended Spearfish High School from 1924 until about 1970 will attest that the building showcased natural splendor beautifully. Wide windows in classrooms on the second and third floors framed stunning views of Spearfish Canyon’s mouth to the south, and Crow Peak to the west. Concentrating on algebra problems or a history lecture on soft spring mornings challenged the resolve of even the most serious scholars. A renovation that reduced window sizes, about 1970, didn’t reflect an effort to keep students on task, but rather one to cut heating costs.
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| Spearfish High School later became Creekside Elementary, and housed students for 87 years. Now the building is ready for new life. |
As Williams walks the quiet hallways, memories are triggered by smells, or the way light streams through windows as seasons change.”That’s been an unexpected treat, something I didn’t think of,” he notes.”Something sensory will bring back a memory, vividly. Things I hadn’t thought about in years.”
To sit down with Williams to discuss this latest project is to come away with lots of bonus material. During a single interview over breakfast this fall, he spoke mostly about the high school, yet also touched on comparative economic philosophies of Adam Smith and Milton Friedman and George Gilder, the benefits of reservoirs (including beaver dams), a Japanese adage about stewardship, and Black Hills historical figures.
It would be easy to simply describe Williams as a man of varied interests, but that would be selling him short. He seems to tap all of those interests regularly to drive his business thinking. Rand owns Williams Properties, which acquires and leases both residential and commercial real estate. His wife, Gayla, runs the company’s business office. In the past, he worked as a journalist, served eight years on the Lawrence County Commission, and was longtime president of the Spearfish Area Historical Society. Earlier this fall, at a history celebration in Spearfish, he demonstrated considerable acting skill when he performed a monologue as Deadwood-Spearfish stagecoach driver Harvey Fellows.
“And a lot of people remember me as the town’s grave digger for 39 years,” he adds. He’s not kidding. He dug graves for nearly four decades, beginning at age 15. He can’t even estimate how many graves he did over the years, but it was work that marked the beginning of his entrepreneurial enterprises.
The high school that contributed to Williams’ development and worldview was planned in the early 1920s. The state legislature decided that towns like Spearfish, with state colleges, had to establish their own high schools instead of sending their teenagers to the local college to take coursework for secondary diplomas. Several factors entered into the policy change, including campus overcrowding as higher education institutions drew more college students than ever before. Plus, many of those students were sticking around for four-year degrees, as opposed to two-year certificates. Meanwhile, neighboring towns (in Spearfish’s case Deadwood, Whitewood and Belle Fourche) had complained that they were in effect subsidizing secondary education in college towns through state tax dollars, while simultaneously being taxed locally for their own high schools.
Under the guidance of city supervisor Martin Thompson, Spearfish High School’s construction began in early 1924. The school opened on September 30 of that year. One of the construction workers, J. Howard Kramer, moved on to earn advanced education degrees at the University of South Dakota and University of Iowa, then successfully applied to work as superintendent in the very school he helped build.
Most everyone called the place”the high school,” but in fact it was both Spearfish’s high school and junior high. Back when most students walked to school and Spearfish’s streets hadn’t been paved yet, keeping the building mud-free was a constant struggle. Still the school held up well. The 1942 yearbook noted,”Few realize by taking a look at the building that it is as old as it is.” The high school was 18 years old that year and, keep in mind, the student writer was probably 17.
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| Williams has also revamped Spearfish’s old City Hall, in use from 1939 to 1995. His grandfather, Jack Williams, planted three spruce trees on the grounds shortly after its completion. |
Through most of the 1930s,’40s and’50s, Spearfish graduated classes of about 50 every year. The board of education knew that would change, though, as the big post-World War II baby boom generation appeared on the scene. In 1961 a low-slung junior high annex building (not included in Williams’ purchase) took form and was attached to the older school by a breezeway. It was that bright new portion of the structure that played host to smiling”First Teenager” Luci Johnson in 1964, as she stumped the Black Hills for her father, President Lyndon Johnson.
About the same time, Spearfish’s people realized it wasn’t only the baby boom generation that was pushing enrollment upward, but the fact that the community’s overall population was soaring with no end in sight. The class of 1968 numbered 108, more than double what the school district long considered standard. In the 1970s committees went to work planning a replacement high school on the town’s north side. The last”old Spearfish High School” class graduated in May of 1979. Students and community volunteers showed up over the next Christmas break with pickups and moved furniture, books, and files to the spanking new building.
As it turned out, the old school still had 31 years of service to public education in it. Somewhat forgotten as alumni recounted old Spearfish High School memories at last summer’s reunion was the fact that, from 1980 until 2011, thousands of students and their teachers and parents knew the school as East Elementary. Finally, with the opening of Creekside Elementary in 2011, the old school’s hallways were silent for the first time in 87 years.
Williams knows and deeply appreciates all that history.”But I don’t confuse the artifacts of history with history itself,” he says.”When the artifact is a building, that confusion can lead to bad results, because people start thinking old buildings can only be museum pieces. I like to see buildings remain functioning parts of the community, and functioning within what’s economically feasible.”‚Ä®
Williams traces his belief in free enterprise’s potential for making good things happen in communities to a book that deeply influenced him 30 years ago: Wealth and Poverty by George Gilder. After excelling in debate at Black Hills State University, he considered becoming an attorney. But Gilder’s book told him,”it was time to get off the sidelines” and follow his instincts as an entrepreneur. As it turned out, he developed into an entrepreneur who helps other entrepreneurs realize their business goals.
“When you have a building, the ideal situation is fitting a tenant’s needs to what you have,” he says.
This isn’t the first time Williams has come to own a prominent public building in Spearfish. After officials moved to a new City Hall in 1995, he acquired the beautiful native stone City Hall of 1939. He transformed it into a center with private sector offices, shops and services. Spearfish people were surprised to one day find a little stream flowing through old City Hall’s front lawn. Williams knew that one of Spearfish’s irrigation channels, moving water from Spearfish Creek through residential neighborhoods and on to outlying agricultural lands, passed through the old City Hall property. He found it 4 feet underground, opened it up and landscaped the lawn with terraces descending to the water.
Williams is leery of regulations often attached to historic properties that make creative renovation difficult.”If not able to be fully utilized, a building can be virtually a liability,” he says.”If you’re involved in building projects, you realize that sometimes mistakes are made in the original design. To say that those mistakes can’t be corrected because the building is historic is incredibly detrimental to future owners.”
It would be easy for outsiders to look at a small city like Spearfish, consider the buildings and employees and opinions Williams has, and assume he’s prominent in all aspects of local life. In fact, he and Gayla value a low-key lifestyle, immersed in business and church activities. They have no use for late-model cars or other status symbols. Community newcomers who say they’ve never met him perhaps have — dressed for a day of labor and driving a pickup full of tools.
For Spearfish old timers who can’t place the quiet but creative developer, rest assured. Your old school is in good hands.
Editor’s Note: Since this story appeared in our November/December 2011 issue, Williams has also purchased the 6,000-seat amphitheater where the Black Hills Passion Play was performed for 70 years. The school building and its grounds remain well tended, but no development has begun to date. To order a copy of this issue or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.
Every South Dakota town we visit is looking for ways to attract new families. Well, there was that one mayor in the town of Cottonwood (pop. 12) on Highway 14 that didn’t want necessarily want people poking around, thinking it was a ghost town. But generally every other town is trying something — from painting storefronts to offering free lots or building event centers — to rejuvenate their communities.
Yankton is trying something different. We are holding a 100-day search for a big idea that has the potential to change Yankton for generations. The person with the winning idea will receive $10,000. But the hope is that everyone in Yankton will be a winner if we can have a conversation about Yankton’s future, and also find a project the whole community can rally behind. The search is dubbed Onward Yankton and you can follow along or submit ideas on the website. The Onward Yankton group hopes submissions come from not just Yankton but across the state and country.
Larry Ness, a local banker and a founder of Onward Yankton, says the old river city is just one of many places struggling in today’s fast-changing world. “We think a community-wide exercise to decide Yankton’s next step will have a lot of value in itself. But once we select an idea, a bunch of us are committed to seeing if we can’t make it happen.”
Carmen Schramm, the executive director of the Yankton Chamber, says Yankton has always been a town of big ideas — starting with its designation as the territorial capitol in 1861. “As a city, we’ve started colleges, built one of the first bridges across the Missouri and our residents even built a dam and a lake in the 1950s — not to mention schools, hospitals and serving as an agricultural center.
“We’re proud of all we’ve accomplished,” she said. “But cities our size can’t rest on their laurels. We have to keep adapting and looking for the next challenge that will keep us as an exciting place where young people want to live and work.”
The May/June issue of South Dakota Magazine includes a feature article that talks directly to young South Dakotans, specifically to May graduates. Yes, they already receive advice from parents, teachers and mentors. But we found 18 interesting (and wise) South Dakotans to provide a unique and heartfelt perspective. One of my favorite submissions came from our poet laureate, retired SDSU Professor David Allan Evans. He begins with an anecdote from about 20 years ago when he was very earnestly and carefully teaching a writing class at SDSU. He finished the class feeling pleased with himself. But then a student came up to him and told him he had a leaf on his head. The young professor became embarrassed and agitated, and he felt it had ruined his entire lecture. Now, the story has become a lesson on humility and how not to take himself too seriously — “Something that all of us need to learn as we mature with time,” he writes.
I’d like to think the citizens of Yankton are following his advice with our Big Idea contest. We’re not saying we know all the answers — that’s why we are asking for your ideas. And we’re not taking ourselves too seriously. We look forward to a lot of silly and fun discussion over which idea to pick. But we are serious about the future of our town and our youth. I encourage you visit the Onward Yankton website to learn more, and also to read our letters to youth in the May/June issue. Who knows, the letters might spark an idea worth $10,000. Even better, the project might provide Yankton and other rural communities some ideas on how to grow and prosper.
A foreigner visited Yankton last week and made the comment that the historic downtown area seemed rather dilapidated. He was polite. I don’t think that he thought he was saying something we didn’t already know. But do we?
He should have seen the 1903 courthouse when it was being braced by timbers (before we tore it down). He should have seen the empty storefronts that now comprise the successful Riverfront Event Center, a beautiful hotel, eatery and meeting place. He should have seen the Gurney’s property before the preservation work that has been accomplished in the last 24 months.
But maybe we should also take a look through his eyes. Could we do better?
Should it concern us that we don’t practice preservation for preservation’s sake? We are not likely to save a building just because we value it; just because we think a future generation might find it interesting. That’s a gene we might have acquired from the Dust Bowl. Don’t fix up what might just blow away next year.
Despite that practical prairie approach, we’ve seen towns across South Dakota accomplish some laudable historic development. Our largest cities have led the way, not surprisingly. Rapid City and Sioux Falls have downtown districts that could rival any comparable city in America. Europeans might even find them interesting. As for smaller towns, Deadwood and Mobridge have accomplished much. Deadwood’s gambling revenues have made its progress possible, but Mobridge made it happen the old-fashioned way. Or is gambling the old way?
As for Yankton, this town has looked far worse at times. Beautification efforts and architectural improvements have been considerable. Bars and restaurants seem to thrive downtown. Retail isn’t as strong as we would like, but our downtown is still blessed with furniture stores, a fine hardware establishment, two pharmacies and several other smaller but vitally important speciality shops. And the downtown is a media center for the entire region — featuring two newspapers and two of the city’s three radio stations.
City taxpayers have invested several million dollars in improvements. The riverfront area has been transformed as a park. It’s hard to find any existing critic of the expensive conversion of the Meridian Bridge to pedestrian and bike traffic.
As we write this, city leaders are making plans to better connect the walking bridge to the downtown business district. The Masonic Temple is getting a facelift. The historic old Elks Lodge, vacant for many years, is about to be auctioned. Governor Daugaard got $6 million from the legislature to restore a few old buildings on the state hospital campus and then raze a number of others.
We’ve had successes and failures. A city of 14,000 can only do so much.
Should we expect more of our towns and our cities and ourselves in South Dakota? Or is the exercise world’s slogan “use it or lose it” good enough to double as our policy for historic preservation?
I want to believe in small towns. The free market does not.
Right after blogging about how our state economic development efforts may be accelerating our rural population drain by promoting jobs in “urban” counties that are already growing, I read the depressing news that after 85 years, Chester Hardware is closing its doors. Owner Denny Benson (grandson of founder Emil Benson) understood all the good his store did for his small town. But he had to give in to economics:
“…operating a hardware store in a small town just isn’t feasible anymore. My accountant has been urging me to get out of the business for six years or more. I would have liked to continue the hardware store, but the overhead in operating such a business just doesn’t make sense in these times [Denny Benson, quoted by Gale Pifer, “Chester Hardware Closes Its Doors,” Madison Daily Leader, 2013.04.01].
A friend tells me Hogen’s Hardware in Kadoka is for sale and may close. Another connects the draining of rural population with the shift to Monsanto-based industrial agriculture–more chemicals, bigger machines, and giant farms mean too few people to sustain a vibrant local economy. A third says the decline of our small towns may be the market’s correction of “rural sprawl.”
South Dakota’s small towns grew around small farms. The market has almost eliminated small farms. If there is no longer an extensive local agrarian base to whom small towns supply hardware, groceries, entertainment, and public services, then on what new basis can formerly agrarian small towns survive and thrive?
I want to believe we can telecommute and microenterprise our way to small-town revival, with help from the occasional big beef jerky factory. But telecommuters don’t spend their whole lives online. Small business owners want to take their kids to dance classes and museums less than 50 miles away. And healthy communities need wealth and power distributed among numerous property holders (ah, Jeffersonian agrarian democracy!) rather than concentrated in the pockets of one big employer on whom the vitality of the local economy critically depends.
Until and unless a revolution achieves Wendell Berry’s dream of resettling America with small independent farms selling their goods to local eaters, many South Dakota small towns will look like grim re-enactments of Children of Men. Most of the kids will leave to increase their economic opportunities; most of the residents who stay will hang on to houses that won’t sell.
38 of South Dakota’s 66 counties have lost population since 1980. I’m still struggling to figure out the minimum threshold of population and proximity necessary for a sustainable community. But if the free market judges small towns unsustainable, how should we fight that harsh judgment? And should we fight it?
Editor’s Note: Cory Heidelberger is our political columnist from the left. For a right-wing perspective on politics, please look for columns by Dr. Ken Blanchard every other Monday on this site.
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 is currently teaching French at Spearfish High School. A longtime country dweller, Cory is enjoying “urban” living with his family in Spearfish.
South Dakota’s newest hotel is also one of our oldest.
