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The Characters of Isabel

By Chad Coppess

Ryan Maher provides groceries and supplies for a wide area of the state from the Occidental General Store.

The high school closed in 2009, the local newspaper has merged with nearby Timber Lake and the grocery delivery truck doesn’t make it to town anymore. None of that stops the people of Isabel from keeping this tiny Dewey County community alive.

Isabel was a daughter of a railroad executive when the tracks reached here in 1910.”This was the end of the track,” says local entrepreneur Ryan Maher.”They were going to continue on west, but it never happened.” He said the town of Faith in Meade County is named for Isabel’s sister.

Maher still lives on the Cheyenne River Reservation ranch where his family homesteaded in 1910. He recently completed the town’s latest restoration project of the 1914 Occidental General Store. Along with rebuilding a rotting floor and utilities infrastructure, Maher scavenged cabinets from a school in McLaughlin, the nearby abandoned Firesteel Store and freezers from a store in Gettysburg. Now his former co-op store built by area homesteaders supplies groceries for a large area of West River ranchland residents.

Ashley and Braden Fischknecht run The Branding Iron.

The grocery trucks only go as far as Timber Lake, 20 miles east, so Maher makes the trek with a pickup and trailer to stock his store.”That’s when it’s 120 out or 40 below through snow and sleet.” He’s learned to keep milk and other items in the pickup with him to keep them from freezing on winter trips.

“It’s 150 miles to bigger towns and the closest Walmart is Pierre or Bismarck, but still a store like this shouldn’t exist economically,” Maher says.”The big winner in having this store open is the city’s sales tax.” Along with being a state legislator, Maher is also a city councilor, so he knows where the taxes come from and how they are spent.

In the Post Office next door to the grocery store, you’ll find Maher’s mother and postmistress Marcia.”It’s amazing how people survived,” she says of life on the prairie.”Our characters make our little town unique.”

There are plenty of stories about those characters, like Yank Robinson, an alcoholic blacksmith who, when his arm wouldn’t function to raise a glass, would wrap a towel around it and raise it with the other arm.

In the 1960s or ’70s August Shutz welded a nickel on a bolt driven into the concrete sidewalk just to watch people try to pick it up. Coin collector Hans Gugenschlager chiseled it out. Marcia Maher remembers Gugenschlager as an eccentric bachelor who had money buried in his shack.”He would come into church and warm his hands over the candles in the windows and I realized he didn’t have heat in his shack,” she says.

Then there was Jack Reich, a motel owner, insurance salesman, one-time mayor and artist who overcame numerous physical challenges. In addition to being born breech, which caused nerve damage and limited the use of his arms and hands, he was involved in a car accident in 2002 that killed his wife and left him in a wheelchair. Despite those limitations, he studied art at South Dakota State University after finding that he could draw by holding a pen in his mouth. His oil paintings, many of which can still be found around town, are a tribute to the West River countryside that he loved.

Reich’s nephew, Christian Begeman, has become one of the state’s respected photographers. His Prairie Sanctuaries Facebook page, on which he posts beautiful photos of country churches, has more than 15,000 followers. He credits his upbringing on a farm near Isabel with his passion for capturing those rural scenes.

Begeman graduated from Isabel High School in 1991, where his father, Charles, served as superintendent. His mother, Barb, was the longtime publisher of the Isabel Dakotan. He now lives in Sioux Falls and works for Midco, but memories of small-town Isabel are never far.”When I tell people about learning to water ski, I always recount summer Sundays at Isabel Lake, which is a WPA dam on Firesteel Creek about three miles north of town,” he says.”It was just large enough to pull a water skier, provided you stayed in a never-ending figure eight.”

Postmistress Marcia Maher remembers the characters that helped define life in Isabel.

Isabel’s big annual event happens during the first weekend of August and includes a rodeo, parade and all-school reunion. Locals refer to it simply as”the celebration,” Begeman says.”During the centennial, there was a three-day wagon trail ride which I took part of as the photographer. It wasn’t until I was on that adventure that I realized how the town sits on one of the highest hills in the county. Some things you just don’t see until you look at them from a different angle.”

The Lindskov family has been involved with the rodeo for decades. Posters promoting the 1960s events decorate the walls at the family’s Premier Equipment on the south edge of town.

After founding the family ranch in 1934, Bill Lindskov purchased the Isabel Automotive Company in 1951 and four generations of Lindskovs have worked at what is now Premier Equipment, a New Holland agricultural equipment dealership. They also own dealerships in Mobridge, Eureka, Huron, Bowdle and Sturgis.

Lindskov’s LT Ranch is one of West River’s largest, and an annual bull sale attracts buyers from around the world. With around 1,000 Charolais and 600 Angus cattle feeding, the ranch encompasses plenty of prairie habitat for pheasant, sharp-tail grouse and partridge. Lindskov’s Firesteel Creek Lodge provides upland bird hunting on more than a quarter-million acres north of Isabel and has sister lodges in Timber Lake and Utah.

Monte Lindskov, Bill’s son, is proud of the family legacy in Isabel.”You just hope the town is around for a few more generations at least,” he says.

Ninety-four-year-old rancher Paul Stradinger is proud that several generations of his family have made a living in the Isabel area.”My parents homesteaded two miles east of here and I was born there,” he said from his dining room table.”I knew the people that were here, the old cowboys. Now my sons have taken over the ranch.”

Like Maher, Stradinger knows the tiny town is remote.”It’s about 50 miles to the nearest stoplight and if I go to the VA hospital in Sturgis, I’ll only see three stop signs,” he grinned.

Several generations of Paul Stradinger’s family have ranched in the Isabel area.

Stradinger’s grandfather came to the area from what is now Ukraine and homesteaded southeast of Isabel. His mother’s family came from Holland. His parents most likely met at a local barn dance.

“In the ’30s there wasn’t any money,” Stradinger says.”Hamburgers smelled so good, but we didn’t have ten cents to buy one. People are getting sparser, and ranches are getting bigger. But the town is in good hands. They are keeping it alive.”

Ashley and Braden Fischknecht are one of the newest families in Isabel. They purchased the former Sparky’s Bar last fall and renamed it The Branding Iron.”We moved to South Dakota five years ago from Utah,” Braden says.”We just kind of picked a spot on the map.” They owned the cafe in Bison, 60 miles west, before coming to Isabel.

Updates have been made to the cafe and bar, with more planned. The Fischknechts are looking forward to their first summer season, the annual August celebration and the traffic heading to and from the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. They have already discovered that GPS navigation often routes travelers from Minnesota through Isabel on their way to the Black Hills.”Instead of sending them on the interstates, people are wandering through here and need a place to eat,” Braden says.”It works out pretty well for us.”

Isabel was once the end of the track, and even today lies somewhat off the beaten path. But you can still find a hot meal, buy a sack of groceries and maybe hear a story or two about the colorful characters who give it life.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the May/June 2024 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Making Memories

By Christian Begeman

On my way to Selby to watch my nephews play in the high school football playoffs earlier this month, I took a side trip to Swan Creek Recreation Area on the mighty Oahe. That’s what my Uncle Jack used to call it –“The Mighty Oahe.” The last time I was at Swan Creek I was with him, and the water was so low it was one of the few places you could get a boat in on the northern part of the lake. As usual, we didn’t catch a lot of fish that day, but we enjoyed being on the water. Jack loved that lake, or more specifically, he loved catching walleye out of its waters. We didn’t get to go as often as he would have liked, but we did go enough to create many memories of fighting 5-foot swells, tangled lines and snags that seemed to take hours to undo. Every once in a while we’d catch a walleye or two to make it all worthwhile.

In late November of 2011, Uncle Jack passed away. It was the weekend after Thanksgiving. In hindsight, that could be why I took the 8-mile drive west of Akaska to see Swan Creek and the Oahe again. With normal water levels I hardly recognized it. I sat on the lake’s edge and watched a few anglers come into the dock while the sun set behind gathering clouds to the southwest. The slight wind was fresh and clean. I snapped a few photos and then drove on to the game.

November has a way of making me pause and think about those, like my uncle, who have been important in my life. Uncle Jack made his living as an artist. In my college years, I’d come home for the summers to help Dad farm, and it didn’t take long to get the call from town that Jack wanted to get together. When we didn’t go fishing, we’d often go into the Dewey and Ziebach County countrysides to scout scenes for his next painting. He had a nice camera and would often ask me to take photos of things that I normally wouldn’t think twice about — the play of light on the shoulders of a butte, or the deep shadows tucked into the folds of the creeks and waterways. It seems he also had an uncle who inspired him when he was young. I remember him saying a time or two after a particularly beautiful sunset that Uncle Orly painted that one for us in heaven.

Now that I’m older and Dad is retired, we’re the ones taking drives into the countryside when I go home to Isabel. Over the years, I’ve been able to capture some scenes that I think would have inspired Uncle Jack’s paintings. So in honor of him, I wanted to show a few of these images that remind me of him and our times together. Whether it’s the subject, like horses galloping across the prairie, or a classic South Dakota sunset, or various views of the Mighty Oahe, I think Uncle Jack would enjoy these photos, and that makes me feel good. May your Thanksgiving be filled with keeping and creating memories that your family members can cherish for many Novembers to come.

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

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A Slideshow of Christmas Memories

By Christian Begeman

The Christmas season is special to me for a lot of reasons. One reason is the memories. As I’ve grown older, I’ve found that this time of year brings about a mood of deep reflection. Maybe it’s the songs, maybe it’s the snow, or maybe it is simply the reminder of another year gone that gets me strolling down memory lane.

One of my favorite activities of Christmas past was when Dad would get out the slide projector and set it up downstairs. Mom would pop the popcorn on the stove and top it with real butter (one of the benefits of running a small dairy farm). If we were really lucky, she would also make her patented chocolate malts. I’ve yet to encounter any malt at any restaurant that can top hers. With goodies in hand, we’d all gather around the wood-burning stove while Dad started showing us photos of places and times long gone.

One of the best presents from my folks was a $100-plus Bogen tripod that I received as a poor college student in the early ’90s. It was at this time that I discovered my interest in actually taking photos instead of just looking at them. The folks had helped me buy a used Minolta Maxxum film camera the year before in conjunction with my birthday. It was a pretty expensive gift and I still remember Dad looking me in the eye and saying,”You better use this now. Don’t let it be a wasted gift.” Or something along those lines. Nothing like a wise father’s words to add some motivation, right?

Back to the tripod: I had asked for this as a gift because I wanted to learn to shoot photos in low light situations without a flash. My first attempts with the new tripod were shots of our Christmas tree and decorations. It was magical to capture the scene as I saw it in real life and not blasted out by a flash. Those photos are still special to me — not just because of the gift but because it allowed me to capture the Christmas setting of my childhood home and keep it intact in a photograph for all time. Plus, I still use the tripod to this day.

This year I will see my 40th Christmas, God willing. It will be a new experience as I will be visiting my oldest brother and his family in California. We might get to go whale watching if the weather permits… which I admit, makes me about as excited as a six-year-old on Christmas Eve who knows he has the biggest present under the tree.

Over the years, I have celebrated Christmas with family and I’ve spent a Christmas or two on my own. I’ve celebrated Christmas on the other side of the equator in steamy Africa and experienced the biggest chills ever to run up my spine while singing the Hallelujah Chorus with the Concert Chorale in college. Every year seems to bring new joys just as every year a few familiar faces and loved ones no longer celebrate with us. All these blessings are simply an important reminder to live gratefully. Every good photo I happen to capture is a gift. That is why I love to share them. Every day I get out of bed is another gift. Every breath, every heartbeat… all gifts. It shouldn’t take Christmas to remind me of that, but that is often what does it.

I have heard it said that the holiday season is the season of photography. I guess I don’t totally disagree with that thought. Photos of”old times gone” and new photos of”the happy now” are and will be priceless. However, my hope is that this is truly the season of love, peace and family instead of simply photos and memories. I also hope that this year, the real reason for celebrating Christmas can be remembered. After all, on that one starry night so long ago in Bethlehem, they didn’t have cameras, but they did have the ultimate gift lying in front of them wrapped in swaddling clothes. The wonderful thing is… so do we. Merry Christmas, everyone!

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


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The Isabel Artist

By Katie Hunhoff

South Dakota has artists living in some very rural areas. We’ve met many of them. Too often their talent and accomplishments go unrecognized because they don’t have access to galleries and exhibits like their more urban counterparts. One such artist was Jack Reich from Isabel, who died in November. We featured him in South Dakota Magazine through the years and his story has always stuck with me.

Reich was born without the use of his arms and hands due to nerve damage from a breech birth. Despite that disability, he eventually learned to drive, pushed by his father who told him that he could drive the pickup truck if he could get into the driver’s seat without assistance. “I never got to the point where I could use my hands,” he told us in 2006. “But I got to the point where I could drive a car, drive a tractor and ride a horse.”

And despite the fact that Reich couldn’t use his hands, he became an accomplished artist. After discovering he could paint by holding a paintbrush in his mouth, he studied art at South Dakota State University. He wasn’t surprised by his ability. “To be able to do artwork is a talent that comes from the inside,” he said. “It will find its way out.” He excelled in landscapes of the West.

Reich worked as an insurance salesman. He also was the mayor of Isabel for 18 years and a motel owner. But when he and his wife were in a car accident near Ipswich in 2002, he lost his ability to walk. His wife, Faith, died in the accident. He turned to painting and also wrote novels to fill his days. He published a science fiction novel called From Where the Sun Stands Now, Then Forever Stands. Reich saw similarities between writing and painting. “If you can express yourself with paint, you can do it with words,” he said. “You have to have a vivid imagination — you have to be able to look beyond things and see how they might have been.”

Reich’s last novel was 46,000 words long, typed on his Dell computer using his mouth and a pointer to move the keys. His desk was in a trailer house in Isabel, a small town in northwest South Dakota. “You do what you have to do and you don’t worry about what’s wrong with you,” he said. “What’s wrong with you is not important. That’s the underlying truth.”

His life is a South Dakota testimonial to the adage that what matters most is our abilities, not our disabilities.

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Black and White Magic

By Christian Begeman

Our visual reality is in living color. Vivid tones are everywhere and are used to attract our attention, warn us and even sell us things we do not need. Knowing this, a good photograph needs to have rich, true colors to catch one’s eye to make the image work… or does it? Do you remember the first time you really noticed one of Ansel Adams’ iconic black and white images? Maybe it was a shot of Yosemite or the Grand Tetons and the monochromatic image took you right into the scene and held you in awe. There is definitely magic in a well composed black and white photo. A sense of timelessness somehow accompanies all those shades of gray. Seeing the scene in a simpler, more basic way also appeals to our mind’s eye — it is almost as if a black and white photo magically renders an everyday scene into a piece of abstract art. Whatever it is, I’ve always enjoyed good black and white photography. In fact, that is how I first learned to really admire photography in general, by learning how to process black and white images in a dark room.

The good news is that modern day technology seems to have brought creating good black and white images back in vogue. In fact, I’ve noticed a resurgence of stunning black and white photography recently online and in photography magazines. I think it is due to all the new types of plug-ins and software available that gives a photographer the ability to edit images on a computer as if they were doing old school black and white photography. I’m all in. So what to photograph?

In early August, my hometown of Isabel celebrated its centennial. As part of the festivities, a three day wagon train commemorating the days of the pioneers took place. I was asked to be the photographer. Because the wagon train hearkens back to a historical time, I wanted to produce some of the images in black and white, images that look like they could be from the days of 1911. The images you see accompanying this article are some of my best results.

One of my favorite images of the whole wagon train experience is of an outrider who rode up a hill behind me to view the wagons stretched out on the prairie. His horse stood statue still facing the early morning sun as the cowboy surveyed the scene and clicked away with his disposable camera. The grass was tall and the sky was blue with wispy clouds that added a dramatic backdrop. A scene from 100 years ago? Sure, except that I’m fairly certain cowboys didn’t carry disposable cameras back in those days. If you are interested in seeing more images of the wagon train experience in color, feel free to visit my photo blog at cbegeman.blogspot.com.

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On the Road

Christian Begeman’s photos are regularly featured in our magazine and on our website. They are also a fan favorite on our Facebook page. He is now one of our photo columnists and will be discussing his favorite South Dakota shooting locations and techniques. The slideshow on this page gives a glimpse into his photographic style. See more of his photos on his blog www.cbegeman.blogspot.com.

Begeman’s first column is an introduction to his South Dakota upbringing and his passion for photography.

By Christian Begeman

Hello, my name is Christian Begeman. I live in Sioux Falls, South Dakota and grew up south of a small West River town called Isabel. If you live (or have lived) in South Dakota for any length of time you know well that amazing scenes can suddenly appear before you at any given time while traveling through the state. Whether a poetic sunset, a massive thunderstorm or the simple beauty of the rolling plains, South Dakota has a lot to offer a photographer of any skill level.

My interest in photography began when I was in high school. My dad had an Argus film camera with one lens. I remember taking it out to shoot some fall color photos in a creek near the Moreau River to fill out a roll of film. The results drew high praise from my mom, aunt and grandma, plus it was fun, so I was pretty much hooked after that. While in college, my folks helped me buy a used Minolta film camera with a couple lenses and flash and the following year I got a tripod for Christmas. Over the years, this hobby turned into more of a passion and lately I’ve found myself more out on the road than home when not working at my day job with Midcontinent Communications.

I can’t claim to be a professional photographer as I’ve only had a couple classes in college. Most of what I learned has been trial and error, or finding images I like from other photographers and then using tutorials on the internet or magazines to learn how the images were created. The digital camera revolution has made this kind of learning much easier (as well as less expensive). Now one can see and correct errors immediately after taking a photo rather than spending money to process a roll of film and forget how or why you took the picture in the first place. Needless to say, my digital camera has accelerated my learning and passion for photography by leaps and bounds.

Landscape and wildlife photography has always been my first and foremost love. Often you’ll find me driving the back roads of South Dakota with my camera”at the ready” in the passenger seat. Lately I have begun to learn and love night photography as well as macro photography. I hope to post more on those two topics in some of the future columns. Until then, enjoy the South Dakota scenery!

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Life in Isabel

By Bernie Hunhoff

Even without a school, life will go on in Isabel, South Dakota.

Other South Dakota towns have heard the last bell, seen the last yellow school bus and cheered the last touchdown. But life goes on; the latest example is Isabel in northern West River. Isabel’s school closed in May of 2009 when five teens received diplomas, but this is still a town.

Isabel remains a commercial center in Dewey County, with two farm implement dealers and a grain elevator, a weekly newspaper, medical clinic, grocery, hardware store and other establishments. Isabel may also have the state’s senior barber: Marvin Bertsch has been trimming hair for more than 50 years. Ryan Maher, a young Republican state senator, runs Sparky’s Bar and Grill. He decorated the walls with blow-ups of historic Isabel pictures. Sparky’s has a full menu and the town’s favorite dessert — caramel nut apple pie.

Artist and writer Jack Reich still paints and creates novels from his wheelchair in a modest mobile home on the north side of town. Born without the use of his arms, he learned to drive and earned his way as a salesman until he fell asleep while driving near Ipswich and hit a tree. His wife, Faith, was killed in the accident and he spent a year in a hospital. Now he can stand again but he can’t walk, so he spends his days writing western novels on a Dell computer and painting — all by using his mouth and a pointer to move the keys, and a mouth-held brush to paint. His last novel was 46,000 words.

“You do what you have to do and you don’t worry about what’s wrong with you,” Reich explains.”What’s wrong with you is not important. That’s the underlying truth. You do what you have to do.”

He learned that lesson while growing up on a ranch south of town by the Moreau River. He studied art at South Dakota State University in Brookings and then drifted back to Isabel. He would have ranched despite his arms but the place”wasn’t big enough to support dad” so he made a living as a salesman and painted Old West scenes as a sideline. He also served as the town’s mayor for 18 years.

“There are not a lot of young families, and that’s why the school had to close,” he says. But the writer says the lack of a school mustn’t detract from Isabel’s other redeeming qualities.”There isn’t anybody in town who hasn’t lived here a year or more who doesn’t know everybody. And everybody helps everybody. The guy across the street repairs small engines. That’s how it works in a small town; there’s a sharing of human resources.”

Isabel also maximizes its architectural resources. The town of 200 people uses a handsome stucco city hall built in the 1930s by WPA workers. It is a relic of the Great Depression both inside and out, but a new handicap ramp is evidence that city officials aren’t ready to abandon it. Violet Rost runs a library in an even older community hall.

Les and Marcia Lindskov and their four sons have also restored and converted an old ranch house into a historic hunting lodge. The Lindskovs operate a Case-IH farm dealership and a ranch, but they still find time for the new enterprise. The Veal family built the house in 1916 at an old stagecoach stop — a noteworthy fact in a region that values western history. The Veals bought lumber from New York when the house was created, and it became one of the grandest homes in Corson County. However, it was unoccupied for 25 years before the Lindskovs put it on wheels and moved it to their ranch just north of Isabel.

Now known as Firesteel Creek Lodge, the camp draws hunters, wedding parties and family reunions throughout the year. Pheasant hunters pay $2,695 for full-service, three-day hunts.”Yes, we were busy enough already,” says Les,”but we’re meeting the nicest people you’d ever find. And we’re creating some employment.” Guests come to hunt, but many find it just as enjoyable to hang around the lodge and enjoy the clean air, the quiet atmosphere and the views of Firesteel Creek.”We’ve had some who’ll hunt a day or two and then just hang around the lodge.”

Barb Begeman, publisher of the weekly Isabel Dakotan, wants hunters and other visitors to understand that the school closed because of quantity rather than quality.”You must know that Isabel had a good school with good teachers. We simply didn’t have the number of students. One class had two students. Other classes had four. How can you run sports, which parents thrive on, with those kinds of numbers?”

A school closing is an emotional and practical setback. Some teachers move away. Businesses lose sales. Much of the town’s entertainment and culture disappears. And there is one less reason for people to live there.

“Who is going to want to move to a town with no school?” asks Begeman.”Most women like curb and gutter and a Wal-mart a couple of blocks away. And they surely want a school.”

On the other hand, few towns can attract people who will pay $2,695 for three days of prairie solitude.

EDITOR’S NOTE — This story is revised from the Nov/Dec 2009 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order this back issue or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.