Tag: ethnic

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Lead’s International Flavor

By Paul Higbee

Lead has always been home to many cultures, from the hard rock miners who toiled at the Homestake Gold Mine to today’s scientists making groundbreaking discoveries at the Sanford Underground Research Facility.

Spring comes late to Lead due to its mile-high elevation. Then, almost overnight, flowers bloom gloriously in Manuel Brothers Park on Main Street and out-of-town vehicles no longer have snowmobile trailers and ski racks.

Lead is less harried in summer than Deadwood, its”twin city” just a few miles down the hill, but the old mining town still has plenty to offer. There are good restaurants (the Stampmill, Sled Haus, Lewie’s Burgers and Brews, El Jefe’s Fresh-Mex Cantina, and Cheyenne Crossing a few miles out of town in the pines), fine arts at the historic opera house, breweries, museums and the Open Cut, a dramatic remnant of the town’s gold mining era.

Kelly Kirk, director of the architecturally stunning Sanford Homestake Visitor Center that is perched above the Open Cut, interprets”how the past and present collided in Lead” when the storied Homestake Gold Mine segued into the Sanford Underground Research Facility (physics, medical and industrial science) 20 years ago. She sees evolving science and the future of science eventually being examined at the center. Today’s researchers, Kirk says, come to Lead from around the world, but international arrivals are nothing new here; in fact, South Dakota never knew a more cosmopolitan community than Lead. Immigrants flowed into town especially between the 1890s and 1920s, and residents today can still point out old ethnic neighborhoods: Italian, Finnish, Cornish, Irish, Slovak and many others.

Kelly Kirk is director of the Sanford Homestake Visitor Center.

A hundred years ago Gwinn Avenue, running a couple blocks south of Main Street, was known as Slavonian Alley (meaning residents with roots in Austria, Hungary, Slovakia and Yugoslavia) and it was a welcoming place for those from other neighborhoods wanting to experience eastern European traditions. Many of those customs stemmed from Catholic feast days. During the week between Christmas and New Year, homes along Gwinn were open house destinations serving cured ham, fresh breads, apple strudel and wine — always wine.”It was quite a challenge to make a trip through Slavonian Alley,” wrote the neighborhood’s Pearl Krilanovich.”To emerge sober was another thing, as the hospitality of the residents knew no bounds.” Wine was made in eastern European fashion, with great quantities of grapes shipped to town in ice-packed railway cars and then mashed by feet. Not bare feet, Krilanovich stressed; rubber boots were worn.

South Dakota also never knew a more tech-savvy little community than Lead. Homestake Gold Mine, in operation for 125 years and the reason South Dakota ranked first among states in gold production for much of the 20th century, drew most of those immigrants. Sometimes outsiders looked at the mine’s productivity and assumed the founders discovered the richest deposit of precious metal on earth. In fact, ore hoisted from Homestake’s depths wasn’t particularly dense with gold. Rather, Homestake’s international workforce perfected technologies not seen before for extracting quantities of gold, and the company became an American leader in developing hydroelectricity for heavy industrial applications. Lead was rightfully proud of its educated and inventive mining personnel, which numbered nearly 2,000 for decades. They engineered vertical shafts that took miners nearly 2 miles into the earth directly below Lead, and through a network of layered, horizontal passages called drifts that extended 400 miles. What’s more, the workforce applied technology that ventilated the vast subterranean world — in fact, air conditioned it in the deepest regions where temperatures approached 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

Twenty years after Homestake’s closure, there are still hard feelings over the way some outsiders discussed a conversion of the mine to a science lab. Lead residents supported the transition — that wasn’t the issue. But they resented the implication that Lead was being introduced to technology for the first time.

Children peer into the Open Cut from the Sanford Homestake Visitor Center.

Some observers also compared Lead to unlucky northeastern Rust Belt towns, and predicted that with high industrial wages gone, some residents might just walk away from homes and mortgages. Abandon Black Hills real estate? In the 21st century? Not likely. It’s true that some unemployed miners left the area, but their homes sold, often to people who always hoped to own a piece of the Black Hills before they died. Today there’s some controversy over owners of classic, older Lead homes who are tempted to break them into apartments for much-needed workforce housing. Should local government enforce single-family home zoning in some neighborhoods? The concept violates the libertarian spirit that seems to reign supreme among liberals and conservatives alike in the Black Hills.

Controversy is nothing new to Lead. Homestake’s public relations department in the 20th century (perhaps the best ongoing PR campaign ever in South Dakota) was masterful in communicating how well various ethnicities got along in Lead. Usually that was true, but it would be a mistake to think of life here as one blissful stroll down Slavonian Alley, to employ a local metaphor. The darkest time was 1909-1910, when the mine caught wind of employees hoping to unionize. Homestake locked its crews out until everyone signed papers stating that they belonged to no union and would never join one. Homestake, actually a San Francisco corporation, won. Some Lead families were hungry before the mine reopened and paychecks came again, and there were resentments between families that ran deep and sometimes along ethnic lines. It was easy to believe certain nationalities were not astute in American contractual dealings. Not until 1966 did Homestake miners unionize, and sometimes family splits surfaced again when the time to renegotiate collective bargaining agreements rolled around.

Still, it was possible to grow up without much awareness of those matters. Lead was a lively town, full of diversions — youth sports leagues, arguably the best recreation building in South Dakota the first half of the 20th century, nearby hunting and the Midwest’s longest and most challenging ski slope just up the road at Terry Peak.

Bob Phillips was not only a member of the Homestake Mining Company Band, he pulled this bass drum through parades while a bandmate played it from behind. It’s among many artifacts at the Black Hills Mining Museum.

Bob Phillips, a retired Lead teacher, coach and school administrator, has witnessed more than half of Lead’s history. He spent his early childhood living in Slavonian Alley and remembers the open houses.”Our family name didn’t end v-i-c-h,” he notes.”But if you lived in the Alley, neighbors made sure you were part of it.” Phillips remembers some of the 16 or 17 grocery stores Lead once supported (many with ethnic specialties), Cornish pasties (a full meal of meat and vegetables baked in a pastry shell), long hours spent in the Homestake Recreation Building and the knowledge he was guaranteed a summer job as a teenager because his dad worked for Homestake. After college Bob and his wife, Cara Pat, traveled to Africa with the Peace Corps and then taught in Minnesota for a year. But then they were drawn back to Lead,”a culture totally distinct from other South Dakota towns,” Phillips says, and they built careers here.

A turning point for Lead came in April 1984 when fire gutted much of the Homestake Recreation Building, built 70 years earlier by the mine as a lifestyle amenity for employees (and, as it turned out, for pretty much everyone else who lived in Lead). The mammoth structure featured a thousand-seat theater, heated swimming pool, bowling alley, library and billiards hall. After the blaze it was determined that insurance alone couldn’t cover a full rebuild and there were people in town ready to write the building off as a lost relic. But others committed themselves to fundraising and rebuilding through a nonprofit corporation. The”rebuild” sentiment became Lead’s majority view and today the nearly lost structure is known as The Historic Homestake Opera House, focusing on a wide range of performing arts. Recent shows, drawing a Black Hills-wide audience, have included touring performers in An Irish Rambling House, stand-up comedian Jason Salmon, as well as a performance series by pianist Kathryn Farruggia. This summer a children’s theater program will put local kids on the big stage. The Opera House is also a popular wedding venue.

Yet 38 years after the fire, the rebuild is not yet complete. The building has a new roof (the original caved in) but marks where flames licked the walls remain visible in the auditorium. For some in the community the scars communicate there’s still work to be done and dollars to be raised.”We have set our sights on the completion of the entire project, raising funds for this massive project,” says opera house Executive Director Thomas Golden. The organization received a National Endowment for the Humanities Challenge Grant and, Golden adds, money”raised as a part of this matching grant will allow us to complete many of the infrastructure related projects such as fire suppression and HVAC.”

Development Director Christine Allen, President Linda Wiley and Executive Director Thomas Golden (left to right) oversee restoration and events at the Homestake Opera House.

Opera House President Linda Wiley says the nonprofit has brought together a community within the community, people”who enjoy the work and also one another.” There can be little doubt, she adds, that the evolving success led to action in preserving other aspects of Lead’s history. Wiley didn’t mention it but people from other Black Hills communities did: long gone is an unfair image that Lead fought for generations about being a company town incapable of tackling initiatives without Homestake’s guidance.

Rapid City actors Kurt and Tina Bauer sometimes lend their talents to the opera house for locally produced shows. Kurt understands what Wiley means about a community within a community.”They treat their actors right,” he says,”and they understand Lead. The opera house is the centerpiece of the community.”

Of Lead overall, Tina adds,”it’s a tight little community,” and one that the couple has explored well, especially after discovering the Town Hall Inn bed-and-breakfast, just steps away from the opera house on Main Street. The Bauers sometimes stay there during runs of their shows. It’s another example of Lead taking care of its past. The little hotel was Lead’s 1912 city hall and jail, with rooms bearing their original names: Mayor’s Office, Judge’s Chamber, and so on.

ìIt was the city hall until the 1930s, when it was replaced by the present one that was built as a WPA project,” says Mark McGrane, the owner along with his wife Jade and his brother Paul. The trio found a perfect use for the old town jail, turning it into a cozy pub called Jailhouse Taps. They brew their own Belgian-style beers.

Blond Alibi and Dungeon Drunkard are locally popular Jailhouse Taps brews. Being a tight-knit community, Lead people are quick to point out another beer producer just up the street — Dakota Shivers Brewing. The affection Lead demonstrates for its beers makes you wonder if they will still be recalled a century from now, much like those legendary Slavonian Alley wines.

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

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Noodles the Czech Way

By Laura Johnson Andrews

Beseda Hall was without kolaches. No dancers could be seen in Sokol Park, and downtown Tabor was devoid of polka music. Lidice Street seemed strangely empty and quiet when we rolled into town.”Are we in the right place?” we wondered.

If you’ve only been to Tabor during Czech Days, you might not recognize the little Bon Homme County town during the 362 days a year when quiet reigns. The silence we found on our Monday morning visit stood in sharp contrast to the bustle inside American Legion Post 183, where a chaotic scene was unfolding.

Members of the Czech Heritage Preservation Society and volunteers were in the Legion kitchen getting ready to start mixing on their annual noodle-making day.”It’s a little disorganized right now. It’ll get better as time goes on,” Ann Beran, one of Czech Days’ official kolache-making demonstrators, told us.

A pattern began to emerge from the clatter of mixers and chatter of 20-some people crowding the kitchen. One woman cracked eggs into ice cream pails — each bucket containing enough for a batch of noodles. Another measured flour. At a third station, eggs, oil and salt were being mixed. Next, a heavy-duty mixer brought the beaten eggs and flour together. Another team kneaded more flour into each batch of noodles, setting their bowls in the Legion’s double sink, a more comfortable height. Others sliced and rolled the dough into smaller portions, which were then fed through the pasta attachments on KitchenAids. A pair of young brothers carried the flattened dough out to a room full of sheet-covered tables, where the yellow ovals would dry slightly before returning to the kitchen to be cut into two sizes of noodles: thick and spaghetti-sizes.”I told that little boy we’re going to fill all these tables. He said, ‘Are you sure?'” Beran said.

Beran was sure. The society makes 20 to 22 batches of noodles every year for Czech Days, selling the noodles in Vancura Park and the Gift and Information Center, located on Lidice Street in the town’s community center. The noodle sales generate funds to help preserve the historic buildings and artifacts in Vancura Park. The park’s mini pioneer village contains an 1873 log schoolhouse, St. John the Baptist Pioneer Chapel, the original Tabor jail, a log house and other buildings that highlight what life was like in the community’s early days.

While Tabor residents have long had a passion for their roots, in recent years, Czech Heritage Preservation Society members have become more aware of the subtle nuances of saving history.”We are finding that some of the things we thought we were preserving aren’t being preserved enough,” said Susan Schroeder, a society member. Thanks to grants and the sale of personalized bricks that create a heritage walk through the Vancura Park village, the society has been able to oil the two log buildings and reroof two other structures. Volunteers are in the process of organizing the museum’s collections and digitizing photographs. The ultimate goal is to open the Czech village to the public three days a week.

Volunteers are also essential to making enough noodles to save a village, especially during the drying phase, when dough is ferried back and forth to the kitchen before cutting.”We need lots of runners because some of us are old and we run with a limp,” laughs Adeline Merkwan. She grew up speaking Czech, and once taught the language in the local school. She’s been one of the Czech Preservation Heritage Society’s stalwarts since noodle-making began about 20 years ago. She recommends using the noodles in soup.”Chicken noodle, beef noodle, anything you put a noodle in. It’s a farm thing.”

While noodles might not be the first thought that comes to mind when you think of Czech cuisine, many of the volunteers were raised in homes where their moms rolled the noodles out in a big circle and then hung them over a chair to dry.

Even with modern technology, it’s still a labor-intensive process. The Legion Hall group was friendly and sociable, but at-home noodle makers sometimes consider the project a good marriage test. Ann Beran said,”If a marriage survives making noodles, sorting hogs and doing plumbing, you’ve got it made.”

Czech Days Noodles

12 eggs

3/4 cup oil

4 teaspoons salt

9 cups flour

With a heavy-duty mixer, combine eggs, oil and salt until the eggs are thoroughly mixed. Switch to a dough hook attachment and slowly spoon in about 4 cups of flour, stopping when you have a pliable, kneadable dough. Knead in more flour by hand until you have a stiff, round ball of dough that is not sticky. You might not use all the flour. Cut the dough into egg-sized pieces and roll them out into a 2 x 5 inch oval, stopping when it’s thin and pliable enough to go through your pasta machine, about 1/8 inch thick.

Let the flattened dough dry, turning once, until the dough feels slightly leatherlike but is still flexible enough to be cut. Do not let the dough become too dry or it will become brittle. Using a knife or a pasta machine, cut the dough into strips. Lay noodles over a tablecloth for a day or two, tossing gently about two times a day, until they are completely dry.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the July/August 2015 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Artists with Ax and Saw

Our November/December issue includes a story on the Juso Brothers, sons of a Finnish immigrant who brought western European log construction skills to South Dakota. We gathered several photos for the story on the family’s craft. Here are some that didn’t make the magazine. Color photos by Stephen Gassman. Black and white photos courtesy of June Nusz.

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The Legend of Springerle

The Benson family of Brookings likes their Christmas cookies picture perfect. Every year, Leah Benson rolls out an embossed cookie called springerle, which means”little knight” or”jumping horse,” using a special rolling pin carved with pictures.

Springerle originated in southwestern Germany.”The legend is that back then, the peasants were so poor that they could not afford to give gifts. To celebrate the winter solstice they would carve the gift they wanted to give into a piece of dough, let it dry, bake it and give it to their loved one. Most carvings were things of nature because they worshipped Mother Earth,” says Benson, who has researched the ancient cookie and teaches classes about it at medieval re-enactment fairs.”The dough was leavened with hartshorn, which is a powder that comes from inside a deer’s antler. Today we use baking powder.”

Benson learned about springerle from her grandmother.”She always made these cookies with a special rolling pin that was handed down through the generations. I started collecting these rolling pins when I was 40,” Benson says. Rolling the dough with a springerle pin or pressing it with a carved mold creates pictures on the cookies — some more intricate than others.”Most of the modern rolling pins have simple nature designs, although I do have one very expensive one with the life of Christ carved into its 24 panels,” Benson says.

Her grandmother’s recipe creates thick, mixer-challenging dough. Benson recommends draping a kitchen towel over the back of the mixer to avoid spraying flour and powdered sugar. After mixing and rolling, the unbaked cookies must dry for 24 hours to preserve the pictures through baking. The cookies bake at a low temperature, resulting in hard, pale-colored treats perfect for dunking in coffee.

Many families bake springerle at Thanksgiving and save them until Christmas to allow the flavor to develop, but Benson’s family eats them right away because they prefer a softer texture. Rolling thicker cookies or baking for less time results in a softer cookie as well, but beware of rolling them too thick. You’ll get cookies that are”humped up and cracked and kind of ugly,” Benson says.

Springerle is a German tradition that became a staple of Christmas for many South Dakota families.

Springerle

4 medium eggs, separated

1 pound powdered sugar

3 cups flour with 1/4 teaspoon baking powder added

1/8 teaspoon anise oil extract, or flavoring of your choice

Using an electric mixer, beat egg whites in a large bowl until stiff peaks form. In a separate bowl, beat egg yolks for five minutes until light and lemon-colored. Add beaten yolks to egg whites and whip for three minutes. Gradually sift powdered sugar into egg mixture and add anise oil. Slowly add flour and baking powder until dough is stiff, smooth and velvety. You may need to knead in the last of the flour by hand.

Divide the dough into 3 or 4 pieces. On a well-floured surface, roll out each piece 3/8-inch thick using a regular rolling pin. Using a springerle pin, roll across the dough to create imprints. Cut cookies apart and place onto ungreased cookie sheets close together but not touching. Cover with a light kitchen towel. Allow them to dry for 12 hours, then flip to let the undersides dry for another 12 hours.

Flip cookies right side up and bake at 250 degrees for 45 minutes. They may turn tan on the bottom, but should not brown.

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

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Taking a Bite Out of McPherson County

By John Andrews

McPherson County may be the tastiest county I’ve visited in my time at South Dakota Magazine.

The editor sent me there several years ago to write a story about the region’s German heritage and culinary traditions. Not realizing my fondness for German food and my stomach capacity, he probably had second thoughts upon seeing the reimbursement receipts. Nevertheless, it was a fascinating couple of days learning about how these South Dakotans have preserved their culture through food.

Several Civil War veterans initially settled the county, which seems fitting for a place named after Civil War general James McPherson, who was killed in 1864 at the Battle of Atlanta. Captain Samuel Prescott Howell was among the first, coming in the fall of 1882 and later becoming a county commissioner. Veteran Bela Dexter staked a claim near the North Dakota border. Captain E.D. Haynes was among the founders of Leola, named for his daughter.

Lake Eureka is a peaceful summertime recreation spot.

Another early homesteader was literary great Hamlin Garland. A monument to Garland stands near his later home in rural Brown County, but the writer claimed a spot about 9 miles south of Leola in 1885. It is said that he scribbled notes about his homesteading experience all over the interior walls of his shack.

Although immigrants from several countries in Northern Europe settled McPherson County after its creation, the vast majority were Germans from Russia. In 2000 (the last year the federal government asked about ethnic heritage), more than 80 percent of people in Eureka claimed a German background.

Many of the Germans who came to Dakota Territory had spent decades in Ukraine, living under favorable condition offered by Catherine the Great, who wanted to turn the region into Europe’s breadbasket. When Czar Alexander II came to power in 1871, Germans began to leave.

It’s no wonder, then, that the predominantly German town of Eureka became the greatest primary wheat market in the world. By 1897, two-thirds of the world’s wheat crop was shipped from Eureka, a rail point that served farms within a 75 mile radius. On some days, as much as 30,000 bushels left town by rail. But the heady times were gone nearly as quickly as they had arrived. Advancing railroads meant farmers could ship from points closer to their homes, and the Eureka wheat boom slowly abated.

Rhubarb, native to the Volga River area of Russia, does well in Leola, the world’s Rhubarb Capital.

Nevertheless, the town of Eureka grew into McPherson County’s largest city, boasting about 850 people today. In a twist common in many developing counties, the smaller city of Leola (pop. 457) became the county seat. Much of the credit for that is given to Charles Herreid, another early homesteader who became McPherson County’s first clerk, register of deeds and later governor from 1901 to 1903.

Leola has also proudly proclaimed itself the Rhubarb Capital of the World. The town’s rhubarb celebration began in 1971 as a simple baking contest, but grew to include parades, contests, music, rhubarb royalty and, of course, as many rhubarb concoctions as you can imagine. The next Rhubarb Festival is set for June 2017.

Food is important to the people of McPherson County, especially the ethnic German staples they ate while growing up. I visited Kauk’s Meat Market in Eureka, where Larry Kauk prepares German fry sausage that he sells in markets around eastern South Dakota and ships to McPherson County natives from coast to coast.”I’m sorry if you’re here looking for some big secret,” I remember him saying.”Because there isn’t one.”

Vicki Lapka is known for her strudels, served with sausage and carrots on German meal day at the Lyric Lanes in Eureka.

The key is sticking to tradition, and preparing sausage the way his family did near the town of Artas. People from California to New York know you can’t find it in a package labeled Oscar Meyer, which is why they turn to the hometown butcher.

Unfortunately, some of that tradition is in danger of being lost. I stopped at the Lyric Lanes, which serves a weekly traditional German meal thanks to Vicki Lapka. She is known around the region for strudels.

Lapka, a fifth-generation descendant of Germans from Russia, learned strudels and other German delicacies from her grandmother while growing up around Mound City. But after high school she and her husband moved to the Twin Cities, and those German recipes lay dormant for 15 years. In January 1992 they moved back to Eureka, bought the Lyric, and inherited its Saturday night German buffet. Lapka’s mother helped her relearn German cooking, and the weekly German meal (moved to Tuesday afternoons) remained a tradition.

Three electric skillets sat atop her counter when I arrived. She added water, lard, onions and potatoes, then set strudels on top and closed the lid.”If you open them while they’re cooking they just drop,” Lapka explained.”You’ll have flat dumplings and flat strudels. My kids learned the hard way. If I was making dumplings or strudels, they stayed out of the kitchen.”

Strudels are temperamental. If the water is just a few degrees too cool or too hot, the yeast won’t react correctly. And they must remain covered. Since Lapka can’t see them cook, she tips the pan after 30 minutes of cooking and listens to see if they are frying inside. If there’s no sizzle, she knows they need more time. Before I left, Lapka showed me freezers packed with 150 pounds of strudels to fill orders from townspeople.

Kuchen, a fruit-filled pastry, is a traditional German sweet and South Dakota’s official state dessert.

But she worries that traditional recipes will be lost if younger chefs don’t take time to learn.”They’ll come in and ask for a pan full of strudels. They could make them, but they don’t know how. It’s so easy to just come buy the strudels, go home and cook them, but they don’t want to do that. If we don’t keep this going, we’re going to lose it all.”

One German food that may stand the test of time is kuchen, South Dakota’s official state dessert thanks to the efforts of several McPherson County bakers who lobbied the legislature in 1999. They traveled to Pierre during session and presented a skit that conveyed the importance of kuchen in the lives of early pioneers. They dressed in period costumes and even brought samples. The governor said he’d sign the bill, but it was defeated in the House.

The bill was reintroduced in 2000. This time, Eurekans sent letters to towns around the state seeking support for kuchen’s candidacy. Seventeen cities replied, and the letters were brought to Pierre as evidence that kuchen enjoyed statewide support. This time, the legislature agreed.

Travelers can find kuchen in supermarkets throughout north central South Dakota, and the Eureka Kuchen Factory specializes in a variety of flavors. If I ever head north again, I’m bringing a cooler. Just don’t tell the editors.

Editor’s Note: This is the 27th installment in an ongoing series featuring South Dakota’s 66 counties. Click here for previous articles.

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From Guadalajara to Ciudad del Agua

By Michael Zimny

The Vega family includes (from left) Carlos Jr., Carlos, Pepe and Donny.

Carlos Vega named the three restaurants he owns in eastern South Dakota after the city of his birth — Guadalajara, in the state of Jalisco, Mexico. But the feeling you get when you walk into a Guadalajara on a blustery spring day in South Dakota — of having stumbled into a tropical, sunshiny alternate world — is all Tonal·.

The Guadalajaran suburb of Tonal· (pop. 374,000) is a mecca for artists and artisans. Home to the Museo Nacional de la Cer·mica, the city is renowned for its pottery, and has been a center of ceramic arts since pre-Hispanic times. At Thursday and Sunday art markets, visitors can shop for traditional bruÒido, bandera, petatillo and canelo style pottery and other handicrafts.

Over the years, Carlos’ wife Esther has made innumerable trips to Tonal· to curate the unmistakable ambience of a South Dakota Guadalajara — shipping back ornately carved tables, benches and chairs, metal sculpture, pottery and decorative art by the truckload. Almost every object has the cheery gleam of a burnished (bruÒido) urn. To open the door to a Guadalajara is to unleash a Nahuatl sunbeam, which can be a welcome respite from the beige of a long winter. The place hums with an ebullient energy. Even in summer, when the Glacial Lakes glisten and the prairie is a verdant green, Guadalajara just might be the wellspring of color where the cormorants score the emerald in their eyes.

So how does a working class guy from Guadalajara end up a restaurateur in eastern South Dakota? Carlos migrated to Seattle in the late 1980s to work with his brother Pepe at a restaurant owned by Pepe’s father-in-law.

“He started from the bottom,” Pepe (who recently moved from Seattle to manage the Brookings restaurant) says of Carlos, a man of few words. “He worked as a dishwasher…”

Carlos:”Dishwasher, cook, busboy, waiter, manager…”

Pepe:”He went up and up every position. He worked really hard to get to where he is right now.”

Mexican art is everywhere inside the Brookings Guadalajara’s, from the walls to the chairs.

In the early 1990s, Carlos became intrigued by talk of a land of lakes to the east.”Some customers of Pepe’s had moved to Watertown and they said that it was a nice town for business,” he says.

“They told me, ‘Come to Watertown, they don’t have any Mexican businesses there,'” Pepe adds.

In 1995, Carlos left Seattle to address that situation. The brothers’ hunch about Watertown turned out to be right, at first. The opening year was good. But the winter of 1996 put a deep freeze on many business aspirations throughout the Dakotas and Minnesota, and almost ended Guadalajara.

“Those were really hard years with the snow,” Carlos says.

“The winter was really hard, when you hardly have enough to pay your employees,” Pepe says.”It was very difficult.”

Then the return of American pelicans to Watertown from their wintering grounds — perhaps on the Lago de Chapala — heralded spring. Carlos figured growth could be the antidote to snow. Guadalajara expanded to Madison, where it failed, but then found a footing in Brookings, where a couple of generations of college students have studied the extensive menu. He opened a store, El Tapatio, specializing in Mexican groceries next to the Brookings restaurant. Four years ago, the burgeoning Guadalajara mini-chain expanded to Sioux Falls.

With each new restaurant, Esther’s holistic, straight-from-Tonal· approach to the Guadalajara experience endears a new corps of loyal customers.

So, how’s the food? Your correspondent is not a food critic with the expertise to dive into culinary minutiae, so suffice it to say it’s plentiful and delicious. My finicky 8-month old daughter loved the lengua (so did I), which is all the endorsement I need.

Carlos’ sons, Carlos Jr., and Donny, are both involved in the business now, and the restaurants are established enough to allow Carlos Sr., and Esther to visit Guadalajara three or four times a year, giving Esther plenty of opportunities to scour the art markets. Carlos Jr., says he can see Guadalajara making further inroads into South Dakota in the future. Where? That’s a family secret for now.”Somewhere close to home,” he says.

Michael Zimny is the social media engagement specialist for South Dakota Public Broadcasting in Vermillion. He blogs for SDPB and contributes arts columns to the South Dakota Magazine website.

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Noodles & Strudels for the Soul

By John Andrews

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the November/December 2012 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

A man sporting a thick salt and pepper beard eyed me suspiciously from his slowly passing pickup as I approached the back door of the Dakota Cafe. It was shortly after 10 a.m. on a Monday morning, and we both knew the cafe hadn’t yet opened, but owner Cris Mayer had assured me I would find the key in the door.

The Dakota Cafe in Hosmer was my first stop on a journey exploring South Dakota’s rich heritage of German cuisine. In two days of eating my way through McPherson and Edmunds counties — two of the most German-rich counties in South Dakota — I’d consumed German noodles, cheese buttons, strudels, dumplings, kuchen and sausage that is fried in kitchens from coast to coast. Had my trip simply been about discovering delicious ethnic food, it was a resounding success. But it also became a fascinating journey through hundreds of years of American and European history, tracing how Germans from Russia were forced to cut ties with their homeland twice, and how the food served in several South Dakota restaurants helps descendants retain their cultural identity.

Miranda Brower (left) and Sarah Aman prepare German noodles at the Dakota Cafe in Hosmer.

Hosmer and Eureka are decidedly German communities in a predominantly German state. The federal government stopped asking census respondents about their ethnic heritage in 2010, but in 2000 over 40 percent of South Dakotans claimed a German background, the largest ethnicity reported. Out of 208 people surveyed in Hosmer, 141 (78.8 percent) indicated German heritage and 51 (28.5 percent) marked Russian. In Eureka, 706 of its 868 residents claimed German lineage and 207 said Russian. Listen closely and you’ll still hear a slight German brogue among locals.

So it might have been easy for Dan and Cris Mayer to feel out of place when they moved to Hosmer in 2000. The Mayers had earned a living revamping restaurants in Scandinavian-rich Minnesota and sought a change of scenery. They attended an auction in North Dakota and learned the following day that their $1,000 bid had purchased a house in Hosmer.”We didn’t know what we bid on,” Cris Mayer says.”It was a huge leap of faith.”

A higher power may indeed have been involved. The city of Hosmer had built a restaurant in 1994, but it lacked consistent ownership. The Mayers, with their extensive restaurant background, bought the business and have been making meals ever since.

The Mayers are admittedly comfortable cooking standard restaurant fare, but the town’s German citizenry had grown accustomed to eating a traditional ethnic meal once a week. German cooking was a foreign concept, so they turned to Ruth Schumacher, a Hosmer native who grew up on a farm learning recipes for strudels, dumplings, cheese buttons and hot potato salad from her mother.

“I enjoyed helping my mother any chance I could,” Schumacher says. She discovered as a child how seriously her mother treated cooking.

“My mother was very particular about when her bread rose, and when it was time to go into the oven,” she recalls.”My brother was mischievous anyway. The bread was ready to put in oven and he pinched it and it flopped down. Mother happened to come in the kitchen. My brother was fast, but mother caught me and I got a spanking. I always said it wasn’t my fault, and I blamed my brother until his dying day.”

Schumacher taught at a rural school and in Hosmer for 43 years, all while retaining the German recipes she had learned. When her granddaughter began waitressing for the Mayers, she bragged about the German food Schumacher made. The cafe owners invited her to help on Tuesdays. Now she helps plan the weekly meal and keeps track of what is served.

Ruth Schumacher (left) and Cris Mayer prepare a traditional German meal weekly at the Dakota Cafe.

Schumacher was busily preparing batches of cheese buttons on the day I visited.”You can boil them or you can fry them, just a couple of minutes,” she says, carefully placing a spoonful of dry cottage cheese mixture onto the dough, and folding it into a tiny pocket.

On the east side of the restaurant, box fans on full blast were busily drying piles of German noodles produced by M.A.’s Noodla, Hosmer’s noodle company. Long, flat pieces of dough are run through a machine that produces strings of noodles that can be cooked in soups and dozens of other German dishes. M.A.’s makes 19 varieties that are sold in nearly 30 grocery stores.

Hosmer’s Noodle Company had been in business since 1987 when the Mayers and Hosmer resident Sarah Aman bought it in July and moved its operations to the cafe. A portion of the restaurant is blocked off once a week so the noodlers can work.”Noodling was big for the Germans of this area,” Mayer says.”They noodled when they first arrived here as pioneers. They’d cut them out and lay them over their cupboards to dry.”

Dough foods like noodles, strudels and dumplings are staples of the German diet. They require years to perfect, as I discovered when I met the strudel queen of McPherson County. Vicki Lapka makes a variety of German foods, but she’s the person everyone in Eureka seeks when looking for strudels. We visited her restaurant, the Lyric Lanes, on a Tuesday morning as she prepared her weekly German meal.

Lapka, a fifth-generation descendant of Germans from Russia, learned strudels and other German delicacies from her grandmother while growing up around Mound City. But after high school she and her husband moved to the Twin Cities, and those German recipes lay dormant for 15 years. In January 1992 they moved back to Eureka, bought the Lyric, and inherited its Saturday night German buffet. Lapka’s mother helped her relearn German cooking, and the weekly German meal, now on Tuesday afternoons, has remained a tradition.

Meals include sausage, dumplings, pigs in a blanket or knoepfle soup, but Lapka’s specialty is strudels. It was one of the first recipes she learned, and years of practice have made her an expert. Three electric skillets sat atop her counter when I arrived. She added water, lard, onions and potatoes, then set strudels on top and closed the lid.”If you open them while they’re cooking they just drop,” Lapka explained.”You’ll have flat dumplings and flat strudels. My kids learned the hard way. If I was making dumplings or strudels, they stayed out of the kitchen.”

Strudels are a temperamental food. If the water is just a few degrees too cool or too hot, the yeast won’t react correctly. And of course they must remain covered. Since Lapka can’t see them cook, she tips the pan after 30 minutes of cooking and listens to see if they are frying inside. If there’s no sizzle, she knows they need more time. Before I left, Lapka showed me freezers packed with 150 pounds of strudels to fill orders from townspeople.

Strudels are a local staple and can be served with sausage and carrots at Vicki Lapka’s weekly German meal.

The foods I sampled in Hosmer and Eureka have been staples of the German diet for centuries, and became part of the South Dakota culinary scene because of events that began unfolding in Europe nearly 250 years ago. Eighteenth century Germany was embroiled in near constant war and home to a state religion that all citizens were required to practice. In 1763, German-born Russian empress Catherine the Great extended an olive branch to her people: she offered freedom from military service and 162 acres of land near the Black and Caspian seas.

Nearly 40,000 Germans relocated over the next century, settling in the Volga River valley and the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains. They lived in tightly knit pockets, practicing their own religion, making their food and observing other social customs. Their successful farming practices transformed southern Russia into the region’s breadbasket. But in 1871, Czar Alexander II revoked Catherine’s edict. Once again, the Germans sought a new homeland.

At the same time, promoters in Dakota Territory were busily recruiting homesteaders to settle the land many Americans derisively called the Great American Desert. Land agents, aware of the Germans’ plight, sent literature to the Russian steppes, hoping to lure the farmers across the ocean. The Germans were intrigued by the Dakota proposition and sent five men to Yankton in 1873 to scout settlement locations.

Thus began the great German migration, which coincided with the Dakota Boom years of 1878 to 1887. In 1880, there were 81,781 people in Dakota Territory. By 1890 the population had swelled to 328,808. Many Schwartzmeerdeutsche, or Black Sea Germans, settled in what became known as the German Russian Triangle of southeastern North Dakota and northeastern South Dakota, especially McPherson County. Another pocket emerged around Freeman and Menno in Hutchinson County.”We were the original draft dodgers,” explained Sally Roesch Wagner’s uncle John in Wagner’s Daughters of Dakota series.

Wagner’s ancestors left their home in Glueckstahl for a new life in America. Like other German families who endured similar relocations, one comforting constant was food. Wagner wrote that her grandmother’s life remained centered around German cuisine.”Grandma cooked like she had in the old country,” Wagner wrote.”Halupsi, or pigs in a blanket as we called the rice, hamburger, cream and tomato wrapped in a cabbage leaf she made for us.” Other German dishes included hot potato salad, a deep red beet soup called borscht, wine soup, kuechla and kuchen,”the bread dough with a fruit and custard filling that some call a cake and others a pie.”

Gerard Heier and his brother David make pepper sticks, sausage and brats at their Hosmer meat market.

Food has remained a constant comfort for South Dakota’s Germans in a way that’s unmatched among descendants of other European homesteaders.”Nationalities still are associated with cuisines, but the interest in preserving these associations by eating specific foods everyday may vary widely,” wrote Gregory Mader in his master’s thesis on ethnic food in the Upper Midwest. Norwegians continue their traditional lutefisk feeds during winter months. Danes make pancake balls called aebleskiver every summer at Viborg’s Danish Days. And the Dalesburg Midsommar Festival features a Scandinavian smorgasbord annually on the summer solstice. But you can find a traditional German meal in cafes across South Dakota every week throughout the year.

The tiny town of Tolstoy in Potter County was without a cafe until Brad and Joletta Naef arrived in 2009. The Naefs had careers in California, but they retired to the town of 36 people and opened Dakota Jo’s Cafe in the old post office. On Thursdays the Naefs serve a German buffet with dishes Joletta learned to make while growing up on a farm five miles northeast of Tolstoy. Favorites include halupii (a cabbage roll with rice, hamburger and tomato), cheese buttons, spaetzle with German sausage, fleisch kuchle and a pumpkin-filled pastry called plachinda.”And there’s a group of ladies who leave sad if we’ve run out of knoepfle soup,” Naef says.

The Main Street Cafe in Bowdle serves German food on Thursdays and stages a grand German buffet the first Sunday of the month. Farther south, Rita Hoff responded to the demands of Menno’s citizenry and began serving German food on Tuesdays. Another delicacy with German origins is chislic, a local favorite served anytime at Papa’s in Freeman or Meridian Corner, at the junction of highways 18 and 81 halfway between Freeman and Yankton. The skewered mutton arrived in Hutchinson County with John Hoellwarth, a German immigrant from Russia. Papa’s serves 3, 6, 9 or 12 sticks either deep fat fried or grilled with lemon pepper, garlic pepper, barbeque or plain. Meridian Corner offers chislic with garlic salt or a special Greek seasoning.

All the German food served in cafes is homemade, including the sausage, which most likely comes from the local meat market. Gerard Heier and Larry Kauk may not realize it, but they are among the most respected members of the German food culture hierarchy.”Germans developed butchering and sausage making into a fine art,” wrote Rose Marie Gueldner in her book, German Food and Folkways.”Even after the wane of farm butchering in the last half of the 1900s, the reputation of the German Metzger and Wurstmeister was carried on by individuals doing custom butchering and small town grocers making and selling sausage. During settlement and succeeding decades most country people had no reason to patronize the town’s meat market except to occasionally buy several rings, sticks or links of sausage from a butcher so esteemed in the craft that his name and products were spoken with a certain reverence.”

Eureka butchers Larry Kauk (left) and his son Tim ship their authentic German fry sausage from coast to coast.

Meat is king in German cuisine, and pork is the star. German families chose to butcher hogs because cows produced milk and far more meat than a family could consume before spoilage. With hogs, families could”use everything but the squeal,” Gueldner wrote. Butchers carved hams, roasts, bacon and sausage. Hog fat became lard, and the intestines provided perfect casings for specialty sausages.

Heier and Kauk both come from butchering families. Heier’s ancestors followed the Germany-to-Russia-to-South Dakota route, disembarking the train in Hosmer and homesteading six miles northwest of town. His father, Joseph, opened Heier’s Meat Market one block off Hosmer’s main street in 1966 using his grandfather’s locally famous sausage recipe.

Heier began working in the locker at age 10, but he left Hosmer to work as a computer technician in Rapid City. He returned in 1981 to take over the meat market after his father died. He and his brother, David, have tinkered with the family recipe, and their sausage remains so popular that they make 100,000 pounds every year.”We’ll sell the spices, but we won’t give out the recipe,” Heier says.”We’ve had a lot of calls from people who want to know, but we won’t give it out.”

Other wurstmeisters follow the tenets of sausage secrecy, but not Larry Kauk. Both of Kauk’s grandfathers were butchers, and he learned the trade on the family farm near Artas. In 1982 he built a huge locker and processing facility on the north side of Eureka along Highway 47. Kauk’s meat market produces hams, steaks, brats, but their signature item is fry sausage. They ship hundreds of pounds of fry sausage to McPherson County expatriates from coast to coast.

“There’s no secret to it,” Kauk says, matter-of-factly.”We make it the way the old Germans did in the old days. You take good, fresh pork meat and add salt, pepper and garlic. I’m sorry if you were looking for some big surprise. The people who used to make it years ago are all in the grave, so that’s why I keep doing it. That’s what I hear all the time. ëDad used to make that and now we can’t find it anymore.’ So we’re not doing anything different.”

Still, people can’t seem to replicate Kauk’s fry sausage. That’s evident in the 2,000 pounds he and his cadre of butchers make every week.

Traditional German cuisine remains popular around the state.”You should have bought me some liver sausage,” one relative said after he’d learned I had visited Kauk’s. The butchers and chefs I met are artisans, guardians of a food culture that dates back hundreds of years and across three continents. But I noticed a lack of youth in the places I visited. Perhaps they are steering clear of the heavy German food, especially when so much attention is directed toward obesity. Foods cooked in lard don’t necessarily subscribe to any nutritionist’s plan for healthy eating. Many German recipes have stood the test of time, but some small town chefs worry that eventually no one will remember how to prepare them.

“That’s really sad,” Lapka says.”They’ll come in and ask for a pan full of strudels. Well they could cook them, but they don’t know how. It’s so easy to just come buy the strudels, go home and cook them, but they don’t want to do that. Once I get up there to where I can’t really do it anymore, my kids have never really learned it. My daughter can do knoepfle, but she hasn’t mastered strudels yet. I hope to teach them. If we don’t keep this going, we’re going to lose it all.”

If any 20- or 30-somethings want to learn to make strudels, dumplings or fleish kuechle, they will find many willing teachers. In the meantime, a hot bowl of knoepfle soup or a plate of cheese buttons is never more than a few days away.

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Ruth Schumacher’s Cheese Buttons

Traditional German cheese buttons can be boiled or fried.

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Ingredients

Dough:

3 cups flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 eggs

3/4 cup water

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Filling:

22 ounces cottage cheese

2 eggs

salt and pepper to taste

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Combine ingredients and roll out dough. Cut into 4-inch squares. Put 1 tablespoon of the cheese mixture onto square. Press edges to seal. Boil for 7 to 10 minutes until they float and then drain, or fry in butter at 350 degrees for 2 to 3 minutes on each side. Top with fried breadcrumbs or seasoned salt.

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Kolache Making

By Genevieve Arntz

All my life I have enjoyed kolaches. My mother, an immigrant from Moravia (then Austria-Hungary) made them every Christmas and Easter. As she grew older, she would tell me what ingredients to use and how much and I became adept at making them.

Alas, when she died she took the recipe with her. So I went to my cousin, Mary Palank, who was then living in Aberdeen. Mary was famous for her kolaches. She had learned to make them from her mother, my aunt. “Come,” she said. “We’ll make some in the morning.”

When I came into the kitchen she had everything ready. “See this little blue bowl? I fill it up to here with flour for the sponge.”

I objected. “But Mary, when I get back home I won’t have your little blue bowl.”

So she measured out the ingredients in her time-tried way and I reduced the measurements to standard cups, teaspoons and tablespoons. In the course of the morning I covered two sheets of paper with notes and in the afternoon we visited over oven-warm kolaches and coffee.

When I got home I reduced the notes to one succinct page, which is my standard recipe. I’ve shared the recipe with many friends who have followed it successfully, too.

Kolaches

Recipe from Mary Palank and Genevieve Arntz

Dough

2 packages active dry yeast

1 cup warm water

2 cups warm milk, divided

7-8 cups flour, divided

3/4 cup sugar

3 eggs (room temperature)

2 tablespoons salt

1 cup vegetable oil or shortening

Using a large mixing bowl, dissolve 2 packages of yeast in 1 cup warm water. Add 1 cup warm milk, 2 cups flour, and stir until smooth. Let stand in a warm place until it triples in size.

To this mixture, add 3/4 cup sugar, 3 eggs, salt, 1 cup warm milk and vegetable oil or shortening. Mix well, then gradually add 6-7 cups of flour, until a very soft dough is formed. On a board, knead in flour until dough does not stick to hands. Grease top with vegetable oil and let rise. Punch down and let rise again.

Cottage Cheese Filling

2 pounds low fat, small curd cottage cheese, wrapped in a cloth and squeezed to remove whey, or baker’s cheese

2 egg yolks

1 1/2 cups sugar

2 cups raisins

1 tablespoon butter or margarine

Mix cottage cheese or baker’s cheese with egg yolks, sugar, butter and raisins.

Note: plum or other thick jams also make good fillings.

Streusel

1 cup flour

1 stick margarine

3/4 cup sugar

2 teaspoons cinnamon

Mix all ingredients together.

To form kolaches: Grease hands. Spoon out about 1/4 cup to 1/3 cup of dough, or divide dough into 30-32 portions. Using your hands, roll each piece of dough into a small ball, then flatten it. Place about 1 tablespoon of filling in the center of the dough; draw the sides of the dough up over the filling, overlapping. Place on greased baking tin and pat flat. Oil top with salad oil. Place about 1 teaspoon of streusel topping on each oiled bun.

Let kolaches rise until doubled in bulk. Preheat oven to 400 degrees and bake for about 20 minutes. Oil the sides of the bun and the topping with salad oil and cool. Store in cool place.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the March/April 1993 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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The Delicate Rosette

Rachel Roe is a Norwegian in training. Growing up in Cincinnati, Roe never had krumkake, rosettes, kringla and other holiday treats beloved by South Dakota’s Scandinavians. After she moved to Brookings in 2004, her husband Jay’s family brought her up to speed.”The rosettes and the krumkake, I loved right off the bat. Krumkake reminds me a lot of Italian pizzelles, which I’ve had before. I had not ever heard of the rosettes, but was impressed by how flaky and delicate they are,” Roe says.

She hopes to someday teach her young son, Lex, about the food traditions from both sides of his family. To achieve that goal, Roe, who also writes a blog called Trampling Rose, is learning to make rosettes from her mother-in-law, Mary.”They are as fussy as I imagined,” Roe says. It’s not easy to master heating the rosette iron, dipping it in the thin batter and prying off the fragile cooked rosette with a fork, but the fuss is worth it.”You can’t go wrong with fried batter covered in sugar,” she says.

Rosettes

2 eggs

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup flour

1 teaspoon sugar

1 cup milk

Combine all ingredients and blend until smooth. Pour batter into a bread pan or other high-sided dish.

Pour 3 inches of vegetable oil in a Dutch oven or electric wok and heat to 350-400 degrees. Place rosette iron in to heat.

Remove iron when thoroughly heated, letting extra oil drain before dipping it into the batter. (The batter should sizzle and bubble.) Do not let batter cover the top of the iron. Place batter-covered iron back into the oil and cook until the rosette is crisp and golden brown. Remove rosette from iron and drain on newsprint or paper towels. Roll cooled rosettes in vanilla sugar before serving.

Editor’s Note: This is revised from a larger feature on holiday food traditions that appeared in the November/December 2013 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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South Dakota’s Little Finland

Story and Photos by Bernie Hunhoff

Small town citizens bleed time and money to keep their communities alive. South Dakota’s best example might be Frederick (pop. 250), one of our northernmost cities. Farmers can still buy and sell corn in town. Neighbors share cups of coffee, stock up on groceries, dine on authentic Mexican specialties and meet for beers — but only because Frederick residents showed their stubborn Scandinavian streak when faced with adversity.

Teresa and Scott Campbell are fifth generation bankers in Frederick, a Brown County town where history and traditions are becoming a routine part of community life and economic development.

The stubbornness started in the mid 1980s when the grocery store was about to close. Several dozen people pooled their money and bought the store; then they elected a board of seven to oversee the place. The Community Store now grosses $250,000 a year and has become the town’s daytime hub. Men meet there for coffee even before the lights come on.

“We don’t open until 8, but I’m usually here early so I just leave the front door open, and there might be a dozen guys here by 7:30,” says Jim Ulmer, the store manager.”They don’t always stay long unless it’s raining, and then they’ll hang around until 10.” Women gather for coffee at 10:30, and depending on the weather the men might reconvene in the late afternoon from 4:30 to 6.

Frederick’s farmers did the same a decade later when South Dakota Wheatgrowers Cooperative no longer wanted to operate the old, wood-frame grain elevator on the west side of town. Several dozen farmers pooled their resources to keep it open as a place to trade grain and purchase livestock feed. Since then, they’ve added a million bushels of grain storage and a modern truck loading system.

Another potential setback came in the late 1990s when Frederick’s restaurant and bar burned to the ground, leaving citizens without an all-important watering hole (the town hosts a wife-carrying race every June, so perhaps a drinking establishment is essential for the victory celebration). A group of people raised money and built a new building owned by the Frederick Development Corporation. Nicholas White and his sister, Bonnie, lease the bar, opening at 3 every afternoon. The Whites hired Marco Rangel, a Hispanic chef who treats the town to Mexican specialties made from scratch on Friday nights.

Brown County is a wildlife paradise, and an opportune setting for taxidermists Mark Wooledge (left) and Lance Burns. Their shop is on Frederick’s main street.

A belief in collective ownership (some might call it modified socialism) may be engrained in the genes of many residents who date their ancestry to Finns who settled northern Brown County at the suggestion of a railroad official in the 1880s. Many of the settlers came from the forested province of Savo in Finland, and today some of their descendants still live and farm in Savo Township, and worship Sunday mornings at Savo Lutheran Church.

Others rest in the North and South Savo cemeteries. Their memory is honored every June with a Finn Fest that includes the aforementioned wife-carrying competition and a boot-throwing contest. World championships for those events are held in small farming towns in Savo province, which is not far from the Arctic Circle.

Frederick’s locale — 26 miles north of Aberdeen along Highway 281, just shy of the North Dakota border — is tropical by comparison. Only 250 people live within the city limits, but the town’s high school keeps rural families involved for miles around. The school, a handsome old brick structure at the east end of Main Street, educates about 200 students in 12 grades.

Main Street also has businesses that survive without collective ownership, most notably First National Bank, run by the Campbell family since 1914. Scott Campbell swept floors there as a teen, and eventually was promoted to teller. Today he is the fifth-generation bank president, making loans in the same stone building where his great-grandfather worked. Pictures of First National’s past presidents are framed on the east wall. Banking may be more profitable in other places, but Scott and his wife, Teresa, a former teacher who also works in the bank, say Frederick is where they want to be.

“I grew up here, I like the small-town atmosphere and I love dealing with the customers,” said Scott.

“And you love to hunt and fish,” said Teresa with a grin.

Frederick noted its 125th year in 2007 by starting a museum in an old saloon and by building a sod house.

Pheasant, waterfowl and deer are everywhere in Brown County, which is home to the sprawling 21,000-acre Sand Lake National Wildlife Refuge. The maze of lakes, cattails, grasslands and trees has 266 species of birds and is considered one of America’s best bird-watching sites.

The area’s bounty of wildlife helps to account for another Frederick business, Lone Wolf Tanning & Burns Taxidermy, just up the street from the bank. Lance Burns and Mark Wooledge practice their art under the stolid eyes of whitetail, walleye and other critters.”We’ll do close to a hundred deer this year,” Burns said,”along with 20 buffalo heads. And we’ll tan a lot of buffalo hide and do a lot of fish.” One of their next projects is a nine-foot grizzly shot in Alaska by a North Dakota outfitter.

Frederick hadn’t had a gas station for several years, so you can imagine the enthusiasm when Jim Dumire re-opened the old Coop Service Station a year ago. But the town is getting much more than unleaded gas and free air. Dumire and his wife, Kay, returned to their hometown with a wealth of ideas and enthusiasm.

The Dumires, lifelong historians and collectors, located an antique store in the station’s repair shop, and soon will open an old-time ice cream parlor near the curved-glass window in the lobby.”The place wasn’t all that bad,” Jim said.”It just needed some TLC.”

They are also active in the museum, located down the street from the station.”We have two schoolhouses to move there to refurbish,” Jim says.”A bunch of us are trying to resurrect Main Street. That’s what we’re doing. We’ve got a half-dozen younger folks who are really energetic and some old-timers like me. It takes all kinds to make things work.”

Dumire apologized for being hard to find on the day we visited town. He was attending a grant-writing seminar in Fargo, hoping to learn tricks on how to raise money for the museum and other town projects.”We’d also like to fix the old city auditorium,” he says. The roof caved in on the grand, concrete structure a few years ago, and it now sits vacant.

One of Frederick’s alleys is beautifully landscaped thanks to Mel Glarum.

But the rear of the auditorium is attractive, thanks to 88-year-old Mel Glarum. She came to town in 1945 with her husband to run the pharmacy, which was just east of the auditorium. The Glarums lived in an apartment in the back, and that’s where we met Mel — tending to flowers and bushes in the back alley. Her landscaping extends to the back of the auditorium as well as to another century-old building to the west. The blend of greenery, flowers and old architecture give Mel’s back alley a European flavor. You get the feeling that if she were a few years younger she’d extend the look on down the street.”I guess I could move anywhere if I wanted to,” she said. Her three daughters have all left the state.”But the town is quite special to me.”

The pharmacy closed when her husband died in the 1960s. Today a community library is located in her building. A post office, senior center and the museum are other notable stops on Main Street, plus a 1916 jailhouse, once featured in Smithsonian magazine, that still seems sturdy enough for one-night sentences.

The senior center hosts pancake breakfasts every Saturday morning during hunting season as a fundraiser for Finn Fest. Volunteers fry traditional pancakes, and they also bake platter-size Finnish pancakes topped with syrups made from local berries.

The museum is a new organization fittingly housed in one of the town’s most historic structures, a social hall where Masons met and school events were held. Later it became a saloon. Near the museum is a new sod house, built in 2007 as a project for the town’s 125th birthday party, which was the genesis for today’s Finn Fest.

Midsummer celebrations were held years ago at Savo Hall, northeast of town. Services at Savo Church across the road were still spoken in Finnish in the 1940s and 1950s. Today’s members pray and sing in English, but many can still speak their ancestors’ language, and several families keep in contact with their overseas cousins.

Germans settled on the farms north of Frederick. Norwegians and Swedes also helped start the town. But they all join gaily in the new Finn Fest, and much of the fun centers around the boot-throwing and wife-carrying contests. Quite specific rules are established for both competitions. Boots must be thrown underhanded, for example. And while the wife-carrying contest doesn’t require a marriage certificate or even a ring, the female does have to weigh at least 108 pounds. And it’s not a simple race: the”wife” must be carried 780 feet, past water hazards, logs, bushes, low-hanging branches and other obstacles.

The festival also features a juhannuskokko, or midsummer bonfire, an observance that dates to pre-Christian times in Finland when evil spirits were warded off by bonfires on the lakes. Frederick residents try their best to authenticate the event. Dale Groop, a local farmer and jack-of-all-trades, builds a raft that is floated onto the Maple River in Simmons Park. Finn Fest leaders hoped to light the structure with a flaming arrow shot from shore, but that proved to be harder than it looks in old Viking movies. One of the festival promoters learned that sparklers tied to a tampon stay lit in the air, but that hardly sounds like a real Finnish solution. For now, Groop rows out in a canoe and ignites the ceremonial raft with a barbecue lighter.

Some ways are better in the New Country.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the November/December 2010 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.