Tag: doland

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Staying Humble in Doland

By Chad Coppess

Doland, in Spink County, is home to 150 hearty souls.

Despite being the boyhood home of a vice president and hometown of twin Olympic wrestlers and twin Air Force generals, Doland stays humble.

In his 1960 biography of U.S. Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, Michael Amrine described Doland’s main street as”a dog asleep and a few dragonflies that are only pretending to be busy.” A recent Wednesday morning didn’t seem much different when city leaders stood in the middle of Humphrey Drive to have a photo taken. No one worried about traffic interruptions.

Former mayor Craig Schroeder is a founder and 20-year board member of the rural economic development group called Basec. The organization was formed in 1994 with federal funds that most towns used in a one-time application. Doland looked at the bigger picture and utilized the money in a longer-term program.”We were challenged to think outside the box, but when we suggested creating a revolving loan fund to continue long-term, we were told that would have to go all the way to the president for approval,” Schroeder says. Tackling the challenge led a Doland delegation to Washington, D.C., where they enjoyed dinner on the White House lawn, a meeting with Vice President Al Gore and shook hands with President Bill Clinton.

Since then, Basec has provided small business loans, home mortgages and funding for community improvement projects, a testament to the forward-thinking of those town leaders in the 1990s.”Everybody worked hard and believed that we didn’t want the town to die,” Schroeder says.”Why would you not want to make the place you live better?”

Hundreds of home loans have been provided through Basec, a splash pad is on the way, and the city-owned daycare has a staff of seven employees and averages 25 children per day.”I’m extremely fortunate to have the daycare available,” said Basec Executive Assistant Samantha Noethlich.”And it’s really rewarding to see how it helps people in other jobs around town.”

Doland Mayor Stuart Bell, Finance Officer Kam DesLauries, Basec Executive Assistant Samantha Noethlich and former mayor Craig Schroeder are proud of their town and the area’s economic growth.

When the Riley Opera House/Twin Kiss Theatre building that housed the Doland Post Office was determined to contain asbestos, it shut down the post office for a short time. Avoiding what might have been the town’s death knell, the city renovated the former library building to make sure postal service stayed in town.

Other businesses in town include two bars, Mayor Stuart Bell’s auto body shop, Full Circle Ag, a convenience store, an insurance office and Jamie and Glenda McNutt’s Just Beecuz Floral and Trophy of a Lifetime Taxidermy.

Glenda McNutt is a Doland native. Though the couple moved away for several years, they found themselves drawn closer to family.”Our oldest son went to school for acting and was chasing his dream, so Glenda wanted to chase her dream of owning a flower shop,” Jamie says. They also purchased the Bottoms Up bar when it became available.”We work our butts off and still don’t make much money at the end of the month,” he says with a laugh.

About 150 mounted animals come out of the taxidermy shop each year. Deer heads, fish and birds mounted by youngest son Dalton are the typical fare. Jamie has done longhorn cattle mounts and once did an armadillo laying on his back drinking a can of beer.”It keeps me from getting a real job,” he quips.

McNutt sees Doland’s location at the corner of highways 37 and 212 as a factor in the continued prosperity of the tiny town. Mayor Bell and Schroeder agree that having a school and post office have been big advantages.”That and people are really giving,” Schroeder says.”We have small town values and people really care.”

A 1983 centennial celebration brought enough people to town that it sparked an every-five-years festival called”Back to Doland” with a big car show and street dance. The most recent”Back to Doland” happened in 2015, but the 2020 celebration was cancelled due to COVID, so residents are looking forward to 2025.

Former resident Hubert H. Humphrey will be celebrated along with former South Dakota governor and Spink County native Harvey Wollman, who passed away in October of 2022. Doland’s famous twins — Dennis and Duane Koslowski, who wrestled in the 1988 and 1992 Olympics, and Air Force Generals Marvin and Melvin McNickle — will also be honored.

That will be enough to wake Main Street’s dogs and dragonflies.

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

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Farmhouse Refuge

By Bob Glanzer

The 1966 blizzard that froze eastern South Dakota is still ranked as one of the top 100 storms of the century. This storm that took place on March 2-5, 1966 took the lives of at least 18 people, and over 100,000 sheep, cattle and hogs. Winds blew with gusts up to 70 mph, causing zero visibility for 11 hours and less than a quarter mile visibility for another 19 hours.

Playing in the Region 4 basketball tournament on Thursday, March 3, 1966, Doland lost their playoff chance to Bryant 57-54. After the game, about 250 Doland fans, players and students left the Huron Arena determined to make it back to Doland. As the buses and cars drove north on Highway 37, they faced worsening blizzard conditions. Three bus loads and several cars made it to Pheasant City, a country gas station at the intersection of highways 28 and 37 about 18 miles north of Huron. Eighty-five people jammed themselves into the small grocery store inside the gas station. Twenty-one people made it 6 miles east of Pheasant City and waited out the storm at Bloomfield.

Linda (Hofer) Loewen was a high school junior at the time. She and her family lived on the highway 2 miles north of Pheasant City. Loewen remembers her father saying,”This looks like a bad storm. I’ll turn the yard light on. It might save someone’s life. Someone might see it and we can help them out.”

Little did her father know that a few hours later, after driving several miles with a fan watching the side of the road from the open front door of the school bus, that two bus loads of students and five car loads of Doland fans would drive into their farm yard.”It was very late, and I was ready for bed,” Loewen recalls.”People just kept coming through the front door. I thought the line would never stop.” In all, 88 people packed into that country farmhouse, destined to spend the next 2 1/2 days waiting for the blizzard to blow over. Every room was full of people. There were not enough beds, not enough seats and only one bathroom.

Loewen says they did everything possible to make everyone comfortable.”We spent the days and nights watching the clocks. They were copying Mom’s recipes, and on Friday afternoon, Mom showed the ladies how to make homemade noodles.” The Hofers had several milk cows, several hundred chickens and a deep freeze full of baked goods and meat.”They would tie a string of twine around Dad and he would go to the barn to milk the cows and gather the eggs,” Loewen recalls.”Mom boiled dozens of eggs and they drank gallons and gallons of milk.” To celebrate a couple of birthdays during those two days, the ladies baked a birthday cake.

About noon on Saturday, March 5, the wind let up and the snow stopped. There were 8 to 10 foot drifts everywhere, but slowly the stranded guests and school buses left those warm homes and continued on to Doland.

The deep freeze was empty, the house was a mess and over 30 dozen eggs were gone.”As the people left they were leaving money on the kitchen table for Mom,” Loewen recalls.”Mom said, ‘They sure didn’t have to do that. I’m so glad we could save some lives.'”

About the Author: Bob Glanzer is a retired educator and banker and spent 26 years helping organize the South Dakota State Fair. He lives in Huron.

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Of Birds and Baseball

By John Andrews

What comes to mind when you’re asked to think about South Dakota? Two images rise to the top of my list: the iconic ring-necked pheasant and amateur baseball on a summer night, and it seems that no where in South Dakota are these more ingrained in the local culture than in Spink County.

Many other cities in South Dakota call themselves”The Pheasant Capitol of the World,” but Redfield has claimed the title since June of 1908. That’s when a group of city leaders acquired three pairs of pheasants from Grants Pass, Oregon, and released them in Hagmann’s Grove, just north of Redfield. The newcomers seemed to do well in Spink County, and in 1919 the first one-day open season on roosters was held. Pheasants have since become the state bird and have transformed the state’s outdoor tourism industry. Thousands of resident and non-resident hunters will roam the fields when pheasant season opens on the third Saturday of October.

The national pastime has also been an important part of life in Spink County, and affects those who are only tangentially connected to the area. ESPN.com writer David Schoenfield wrote a tribute to baseball in Redfield that appeared in our May/June issue. Schoenfield’s father grew up in Redfield, and later brought his wife and children back to his hometown. Among the memories that still stand out for Schoenfield are baseball games on Redfield’s emerald green diamond.

Pheasants were introduced near Redfield in 1908. Now they come in fiberglass.

His article prompted a reader to share the memories he has of watching Redfield win the state amateur baseball championship on its home turf in 1954. Redfield had amassed an early 10-0 lead, but Aberdeen slowly chipped away until it was 10-9 in the ninth inning. Aberdeen had the bases loaded with their most feared hitter, Blackie Engelhart, coming to bat. With one out, Engelhart crushed a ball that seemed destined to be a grand slam, but Redfield’s center fielder leaped and caught it before it sailed over the fence. Then he wheeled around and fired the ball to the second baseman for a double play (the runners had been certain Engelhart would at least have a base hit, and took off running as the ball soared into the outfield).

Redfield is the hub of activity in Spink County.

Spink County was also the site of a unique baseball battle in 1920. Redfield had secured a professional team, but because the Congregational church owned the field and grandstand, no games were allowed on Sundays. Ten miles south in Tulare, Mike Anderson, editor of the town newspaper and manager of the Tulare baseball team, invited the Redfield squad to play its games there, provided Redfield would finance the cost of a new grandstand.

Both towns agreed, the grandstand was constructed in record time and games began. That’s when the Methodists of Tulare began to suspect something might be amiss. They thought the charging of admission on Sunday might violate one of South Dakota’s”blue laws.”

Six Methodist church members agreed to attend a Sunday game. Once they had purchased tickets, they filed a statement at the courthouse in Redfield. The judge ultimately ruled that Sunday baseball could continue, and admission could be charged, provided a separate area was maintained for those who wished to watch the games for free.

Chief Drifting Goose was a thorn in the side to Spink County’s early settlers.

Spink County has even produced a Major League Baseball player. Deacon Phillippe grew up learning to play baseball in the small town of Athol. As a member of the Pittsburgh Pirates, Phillippe defeated Cy Young in the first World Series game ever played in 1903. He won 189 games in a 13-year career that began when he was 27.

Long before the days of pheasants and baseball, the settlers who trickled into Spink County as early as the 1850s had to contend with the notorious Chief Drifting Goose. His Hunkpati band of Yanktonai was headquartered at Armadale, an island in the James River four miles northeast of Mellette. He’s remembered as a peace-loving leader who preferred pranking homesteaders to violence. Legend says he once stole the clothes from a settler and then made him run back to his sod shanty naked. When railroad surveyors marked a line through his encampment, he moved the stakes. Eventually the rail was routed through Northville, a more respectful 10 miles west of Drifting Goose’s camp.

Locals tell Drifting Goose stories with a chuckle, but they also respect the leader who never signed a treaty and, in his mind, never ceded any land. Historians have named a bridge that spans the James River on Highway 20 after Drifting Goose.

Redfield’s Carnegie Library is the oldest of its kind in South Dakota that has been continually used as a library.

Of course, the colorful leader’s tricks couldn’t stop the eventual settlement and organization of Spink County, created by the territorial legislature in 1873. The area was named for Solomon Lewis Spink, a New York native who worked in law and journalism before President Abraham Lincoln appointed him secretary of Dakota Territory in 1864. He also served in Congress and practiced law in Yankton until his death in 1881.

Several towns emerged along rail lines that passed through Spink County. The largest is Redfield (pop. 2,385), where the state legislature placed the Northern Hospital for the Insane in 1902. Called the South Dakota Developmental Center, the facility still cares for roughly 145 people with disabilities. Redfield is also home to the state’s oldest continually used Carnegie Library. Built in 1902, the red brick building with a sandstone foundation and domed cupola stands at 5 E. Fifth Ave.

Hubert Humphrey as a boy in Doland.

Fisher Grove State Park, east of Redfield near Frankfort, straddles the James River. It’s where the old Watertown-Pierre stage line crossed for the first time using a traditional rock crossing used by Native Americans. Further east on Highway 212 you’ll find Doland, the hometown of Hubert Humphrey, vice president of the United States under Lyndon Johnson from 1965 to 1969.

Follow Highway 37 north of Doland to Turton, (pop. 49) home of the Frogs. The tiny town still holds a Frogtown Festival every June, even though the Jim River is 15 miles away and the closest stream is called Dry Run. The pillar of Turton is the St. Joseph Catholic Church, where St. John the Baptist’s birthday is celebrated in June. The tradition dates to 1899, making it one of the nation’s oldest birthday parties for a saint (besides St. Patrick and St. Nick).

Five generations of Glenn Overby’s family have grown wheat in Spink County.

Spink County covers 1,500 square miles, and much of it is ideal wheat growing country. Farms are plentiful and elevators dot the horizon, especially along Highway 20 through Conde, Brentford, Mellette and Northville in the northern third of the county. The South Dakota Wheatgrowers’ Co-op at Mellette can store 5.5 million bushels, but chances are good you’ll see the overflow of this year’s harvest piled outdoors.

Several years ago we visited the Glenn Overby farm near Mellette. Glenn’s father, John, was a self-taught agronomist who developed his own varieties of wheat: Marvel Wheat and Spinkcota. You can see an exhibit about John Overby and his other inventions at the South Dakota Agricultural Heritage Museum in Brookings.

Wheat farming requires long hours, but we noticed this summer while attending the state amateur baseball tournament in Mitchell that the Northville team’s roster included A.J. Overby, the fifth generation of Overbys to work the Spink County land. That means there’s still time for baseball, and probably pheasants in October, too.

Editor’s Note: This is the 10th installment in an ongoing series featuring South Dakota’s 66 counties. Click here for previous articles.