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Accidental Rancher

The view from the north pasture on Eliza Blue’s ranch west of Bison. Photo by Christian Begeman.

South Dakota was supposed to be just another stop on Eliza Blue’s journey through life. The singer/songwriter had lived in Minneapolis, New York City and Portland, Maine. Then, about 10 years ago, she found herself in Perkins County, a self-professed urbanite gaining a small taste of rural life. Where she might have gone next, we’ll never know. She met and married a local rancher, and proceeded to fall in love with the land, the sky and all the joys and sorrows of West River life.

These days, she’s busy raising two children and tending to a menagerie of chickens, goats, sheep, cows and cats on the ranch west of Bison. Still, she manages to find time to contemplate and write about life on the Plains — the devastation of drought, the sense of community, the closeness of death and the wonderment of nature.

South Dakota Magazine collected several of these stories in a book called Accidental Rancher, released one year ago. The glimpses into Blue’s world are poignant and written with the uniquely lyrical perspective of a folk singer turned modern-day homesteader. Readers find themselves with Blue in her laundry room feeding bum lambs, following the antics of a rooster named Fancy Pants or, as in this excerpt called”Pigeons,” teaching her young son, affectionately called the Bean, about the miracle of life.

Pigeons

In the midst of several of our old outbuildings stands a grain bin. Years ago, a spring storm ripped two of the roof panels loose, the rain soaking and spoiling the small amount of grain pellets left inside. Since we run a predominantly grass-fed operation, it wasn’t a great loss, and fixing the roof didn’t rank high on our perennially insurmountable to-do list. So the grain bin, and the few inches of grain inside, have been left untouched by human hands.

Blue with her husband, Max Loughlin, and children Wesley and Emmy Rose, aka “The Bean” and “Roo.”

Who wants an abundant supply of grain, housed in a predator-free location, accessible only from the air? Pigeons, we discovered one day this summer, when my curious son asked to see what was inside the bin. The sound of the creaking door frightened them, and the small flock that now calls the grain bin theirs came exploding through the holes in the roof in a flurry of squawks and beating wings, frightening us as well.

That did not dissuade us from peeking inside, however, where we found, in addition to feathers and poop, several tiny nests, each holding a rosette of gleaming white eggs.

The Bean is an avid bird watcher and also a big fan of hunting for chicken eggs, so for the rest of the summer, we couldn’t pass the grain bin without a request to check on the nests. From time to time I’d humor him, and we’d crack open the metal door for a quick peek. Thus, we got to watch several of the eggs hatch and then transform from nestlings into fledglings.

One day, however, when we peered in, I could tell something was awry. A mother pigeon, thinking herself quite clever, had laid her eggs inside the large plastic bucket used as a scoop when the bin was still in service. The high walls of the scoop had hidden the babies from our view, and now, half-grown and ready to meet the world, they were too big to spread their wings in the cramped circle of the scoop, and were permanently trapped.

I crept in as quietly as I could, and turned the bucket over gently. The birds tumbled out. Two righted themselves and wobbled limply away from me, their panic evident, but the third, its muscles too atrophied to carry its own weight, couldn’t walk at all, and lay fluttering weakly with fear.

“Babies,” said the Bean.”Big babies.”

“Yes,” I replied,”but we better leave them be. They are so scared.”

The next day, the Bean asked to see them again, and I had to admit, I wanted to see them, too. I feared the worst, however. Indeed, one of the babies was dead, never having moved from where we’d last seen it. The other two were huddled against the tin wall of the bin, pressed hard against each other. Their terror was plain, and the Bean made no protest as I closed the door, saying,”They are still too scared.”

This continued for a few days. Each day I grew more certain we would find the two remaining babies dead, but each day, they looked about the same; hunched and miserable, not moving much. I considered trying to borrow a birdcage and taking them out of the bin, but I worried it would be too much for the poor creatures. It seemed it wasn’t just their muscles, but their spirits that were stunted. They were living in pigeon heaven, but they were slowly dying because they didn’t know how to do anything else.

I also wasn’t sure if they had any source of hydration. Presumably their mother was in charge of that, but these two were nearly full-grown, and I wondered if the period of depending on the flock for sustenance had expired.

Just in case, the next time we visited, I brought them a little fresh water in a plastic dish. As I laid it inside, they scuttled away from me, the first movement we’d seen since I’d freed them. I closed the door, and thought,”Well, it’s progress.” And I finally had an idea of how to help them.

Wesley reads to his sister and an injured lam that is recovering indoors.

When we returned the following morning, I brought water and a large stick. The day after, more water and another stick. I didn’t really have a plan, but I figured seeing new things might wake up their brains a little. The Bean would wait at the door, guarding against barn cats and dogs, while I followed the babies around for a few minutes, forcing them to explore the new objects we’d brought. They grew stronger and more agile with every visit, until, four days in, one of the birds hopped, wings fluttering, onto the crook of a branch. She perched there for a moment, teetering slightly. I looked back at the Bean, who was peeking through the crack in the open door. He smiled wide, and neither of us made a sound while the pigeon wrapped her tiny toes around the branch, testing for the first time how it felt to leave the ground.

And then one day when I entered the bin, instead of simply hopping, both birds spread their wings, and slowly, so slowly they seemed to be defying physics, they both pulled themselves into the air. One landed a few seconds later with a bounce, but the other drifted for a moment, circling my head in slow motion, reaching and pulling, reaching and pulling, until she was at the hole in the roof, and then outside it.

I rushed out, picking up the Bean as I scurried past.”Did you see her? Did you see her?” I asked him.

“Baby bird flying!” He shouted in reply. We circled the grain bin, looking for the baby. I was scared she had fallen into the grass, easy prey for cats, but instead she was perched on the circular rim of the bin, head cocked, scanning the horizon.

She peered up for a few more seconds, the whole world a giant bowl over her head, before ducking down and diving back into the safety of the bin. The Bean, his eyes as blue as the sky, turned to me, and said,”Baby bird, not a baby anymore.”

I often fear I am a foolish woman. Sometimes I know that I am. Like when I am climbing into a stinky, old grain bin to chase sensory-deprived baby pigeons around. But every once in awhile my foolishness pays off. How else would I have gotten to see the look that appears on a small boy’s face when he sees a fledgling bird fly for the first time? The look of surprised delight as he falls a little more in love with the world and all its wonders.

For my part, I value the reminder that small kindnesses are rarely small and learning to fly comes in many forms.

Editor’s Note: Accidental Rancher is available for $14.95 plus shipping and handling. This excerpt is revised from the May/June 2020 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Writers on Wind

By Katie Hunhoff

Wind is an omnipresent force in South Dakota. We notice the rare absence of wind almost as much as strong gusts that ruin a summer picnic or dangerously carry snow during blizzards. Our state is consistently ranked as the fifth windiest by the National Weather Service.

Throughout South Dakota’s history writers have written about our wind, trying to capture the sound, the bite and relentlessness of prairie gales. There are rumors, which may be exaggerated, of pioneers going insane from the constant wind. More likely it was a mix of loneliness, poverty, harsh weather and extreme hardships that most settlers faced.

Kathleen Norris wrote a passage in her book Dakota: A Spiritual Geography that gives a glimpse into how wind can affect the psyche:

“In open country, far from any trees, the wind beats against you, as insistent as an ocean current. You tire from walking against it just as you would from swimming against an undertow. Working outdoors on such a day leaves you dizzy, and your ears will still be ringing at night, long after you have drawn the shelter of four walls around you.

The wind can be a welcome companion on a hot day, but even die-hard Dakotans grow tired when the sky howls and roars at forty miles an hour for a day or more. The wind is so loud you have to shout at the person next to you, and you can’t hear yourself think at all. You begin to wonder if you have a self.”

Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Hamlin Garland was not a stranger to midwest winds. He was born in Wisconsin but the winds he experienced on the prairie stood out. “It was like all the roarings of all the lions of Africa, the hissing of a wilderness of serpents, the lashing of great trees. It benumbed his thinking, it appalled his heart, beyond every other force he had ever known.”

Sheepherder Archer Gilfillan touched on wind in a more lighthearted manner in his nationally acclaimed 1929 book Sheep (which was more about his Harding County neighbors than about sheep). Gilfillan wrote that the “force, not to say violence of the wind may be judged by the fact that when it is due east or west the transcontinental trains frequently blow through our towns as much as a day and a half ahead of schedule.”

South Dakota Magazine contributing editor Paul Higbee reflected on prairie wind for the May/June 2008 edition. In Lakota culture, he wrote, wind is a benevolent spirit Tate (tah-tae). “Tate is the father of the four directions and the epitome of what a good husband and father should be: strong and gentle, masculine yet unafraid of being nurturing and mother-like.”

And Black Elk, Oglala Lakota holy man, wrote that wind is part of the great circle. “Everything the Power of the World does is done in a circle. The sky is round, and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball, and so are all the stars. The wind, in its greatest power, whirls. Birds make their nest in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours. Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were. The life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves.”

Wind is as natural as our prairie grass, hills and flowing rivers. It is a part of the circle of life of which Black Elk speaks. Although we can’t see it, its force affects everything around us, our actions and even our thoughts.

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The Golden Oldies

By John Andrews

Donus Roberts, pictured in his Watertown bookstore, coached speech and debate for 39 years at Watertown High School.

Search online for books about South Dakota and Barnes and Noble yields nearly 3,000 results. Amazon returns 30,000. Google produces 30 million. With so many books to read about your favorite state, how do you select the titles that best explain South Dakota and its people?

We’ve narrowed your choices down to about a dozen with help from Watertown bibliophile Donus Roberts. Roberts retired in 1999 from Watertown High School, where he spent 39 years as an English teacher and became one of the most highly decorated debate coaches in the nation. He is a man who loves words and ideas. He’s also an avid book collector, amassing over 15,000 titles in his personal collection and offering another 18,000 for sale at his shop in the East Point Plaza on Highway 81 and online.

Do not feel limited by Roberts’ list. Hundreds of authors have told South Dakota’s story in their own way, and their books are worth reading, but Roberts calls these”the golden oldies.” Some titles are available in bookstores or online, but others are out of print. Check each book’s availability at your local library.

Robert Karolevitz

Challenge: The South Dakota Story

Robert Karolevitz was one of South Dakota’s most prolific authors. He wrote 37 books and thousands of magazine articles and newspapers columns from his home at Mission Hill, northeast of Yankton. He enjoyed poking fun at himself, and was known for his sense of humor (evidenced in books called Everything’s Green But My Thumb, and Toulouse the Goose, a collection of off-the-wall columns). But Karolevitz also wrote histories of Yankton, the Catholic church in South Dakota, newspapering, Douglas County and a biography of Harvey Dunn. Roberts believes Karolevitz’s most lasting contribution is Challenge: The South Dakota Story.

“There are no comprehensive histories of the state that have been written in recent times,” Roberts says.”All of our histories were written some time ago. I think it’s one of the best interpretations of a state because it’s not sequential. It’s more thematic.”

Challenge, published in 1975, is one of the few histories written by a native South Dakotan. Karolevitz was born at Yankton in 1922 and lived all but 15 years of his life in Yankton County. His book describes 10 challenges people faced in settling and living here: conflicting cultures, the Missouri River, gold, Wounded Knee and the Dirty Thirties are among them.

Karolevitz struggled to identify his audience and the book’s organization. Challenge was originally intended for use as a junior high level textbook, but he adapted it for all ages. He also selected a topical rather than chronological approach”to emphasize and expand the why as well as the what of the unfolding saga,” Karolevitz wrote in the book’s introduction.”This labor of love is offered with the hope that it will generate native pride in The Challenge State and provide a realistic textbook for studying the heritage of a bountiful land — where the bounty is seldom attained without a struggle.”

Ole R¯lvaag

Giants in the Earth

Ole R¯lvaag’s classic Giants in the Earth, an enduring tale of Norwegian immigrants trying to conquer the Plains, follows Per Hansa and his wife Beret as they homestead in eastern South Dakota in the 1870s. They encounter drought, grasshoppers and blinding blizzards that bring tragedy.”It’s not only one of the great frontier novels,” Roberts says.”It belongs in the top rank of novels written in America. If you want to be well read about the Upper Midwest, Giants in the Earth is a must read.”

But had R¯lvaag listened to his father, Giants in the Earth, published in 1927, may have remained a seed in his imagination. R¯lvaag was born in 1876 on a small island of the northern coast of Norway. He walked 14 miles round trip over rocks and moors to attend school, but he was forced to stop at age 14.”His father finally told him he was not worth educating,” wrote Lincoln Colcord, R¯lvaag’s colleague who helped translate the novel from Norwegian to English.

R¯lvaag embarked on a life of fishing, but he became a voracious reader. He spent two days traveling by foot to a nearby village just to get a copy of Ivanhoe. He dreamt of writing a novel as early as age 11, but never seriously embarked on a project until he attended school in South Dakota 15 years later.

Rather than spend his life as a fisherman, R¯lvaag asked an uncle living in South Dakota for help getting to America. One day a ticket arrived, and R¯lvaag spent three years farming near Elk Point. Friends urged him to attend school, but his father’s admonition still rang clearly in his head. Still, R¯lvaag wanted a life of farming even less than fishing, so in 1899 he enrolled at Augustana Academy in Canton.

He quickly discovered that he felt most comfortable in school. After graduation he attended St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn., and eventually became the school’s professor of Norwegian studies. His sequel to Giants in the Earth, called Peder Victorious, appeared in 1929. He died in 1931.

Doane Robinson

Brief History of South Dakota

Plenty of histories have been written since Doane Robinson’s Brief History of South Dakota was published in 1905, but that doesn’t mean you should discount his volume.”It’s still very much worth reading because so much of the history written in that period of time was fairly slanted when it came to the Native Americans and whites,” Roberts says.”But Robinson was more objective than most writing at the time.”

The history of a place grows with each passing day. By modern standards, the majority of our state’s history occurred after Robinson’s book appeared. But that may be the secret to its appeal. Robinson’s book focuses heavily on the region’s early history: Lewis and Clark’s expedition up the Missouri River, the rise of the fur trade, the gold boom in the Black Hills and the quest for statehood. Robinson also devoted full chapters to Sam Brown, who rode 150 miles on horseback through a blizzard to avert a battle with Indians, and the horrid winter of 1880-81.

Robinson was born in Sparta, Wisc., in 1856. He farmed in Minnesota, then moved to Watertown to practice law. He developed a strong interest in state history and became secretary of the state historical society. In addition to his Brief History, Robinson was a poet and also founded the Monthly South Dakotan, the first magazine to explore the history and culture of the state.

If Robinson’s literary legacy lies in his Brief History, his greatest overall contribution was growing the idea of Mount Rushmore. Inspired by Gutzon Borglum’s sculpture of Confederate soldiers at Stone Mountain, Georgia, Robinson originally envisioned figured carved into the Needles, but eventually settled on the heads of four famous leaders chiseled into the granite of Mount Rushmore.

After retiring as secretary of the state historical society, Robinson returned to farming near Pierre. He died in 1946 at age 90.

John Milton

South Dakota: A Bicentennial History

When New York publishing giant W.W. Norton embarked upon its States and the Nation Series commemorating the country’s bicentennial in 1976, editors asked John Milton to write South Dakota’s volume. Milton, an English professor at the University of South Dakota since 1963, was quickly gaining a national following for his short stories and fiction, and for establishing and editing South Dakota Review, the state’s literary journal and”a massive contribution,” Roberts says. Milton expressed reservations about writing a history of South Dakota, but colleagues”gave me a strong nudge when I was reluctant to take on this project,” he writes in the book’s preface. His 200-page volume became one of the state’s classic histories.”I know it was considered to be one of the best in that entire series,” Roberts says.”You don’t find him in it. It’s very factual, though he tends to stay away from the cultural issues that have divided us over the course of time.”

Milton’s background as a storyteller aided his treatment of South Dakota. His book is organized topically and reads like a novel. And his approach differed from other historians.”My concern is with the portrait, with the spirit of the place and of the people, who either visited it or settled down on it, making this particular place their home,” Milton wrote.

Herbert Krause

Wind Without Water, The Thresher and The Oxcart Trail

Herbert Krause penned just three novels during his 32-year career as a teacher and writer in residence at Augustana College, but Roberts includes all of them among his must reads for South Dakotans. Wind Without Water, The Thresher and The Oxcart Trail all describe the trials of farming the Plains 100 years ago.

“There’s no more realistic treatment of the way it was out here in the early 20th century,” Roberts says.”The frustrating part is that Krause just isn’t read today. Nobody reprints the trilogy. He became a more modern version of Hamlin Garland. No one has ever written farming like he did. People from this state are missing something if they don’t search him out.”

Krause was raised north of Fergus Falls, Minn. He developed a love of the written word at a young age, much to the chagrin of his blacksmith father. When young Krause begged for, and finally received, an issue of Cosmopolitan magazine, his father told him,”Well, son, you’d have done better getting a pair of socks.”

Krause’s admiration for Ole Rolvaag led to his enrollment at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn., although they never met because Professor Rolvaag died shortly after Krause arrived on campus. Krause longed to write of German homesteaders as Rolvaag had written about Norwegians. When Wind Without Rain appeared in 1939, critics immediately compared Krause to Rolvaag and eventually declared him to have surpassed his idol in Plains literature.

Newspapers in New York and Chicago heralded Wind Without Rain as national bestsellers. The book follows the Vildvogel family struggling to survive on the land of western Minnesota. The Thresher (1946) tells the story of Johnny Black, who hides personal pain behind his dominant steam-threshing rig in North and South Dakota. The Oxcart Trail (1954) is a love story rich with historical detail set along the trails that ran from northern Minnesota across the Dakotas to the Pacific Northwest in the 1850s and 1860s.

Krause was also a prolific poet and wrote articles about the customs of the Upper Midwest and ornithology. In 1970, he founded the Center for Western Studies. Krause died in 1976.

Mary Crow Dog

Lakota Woman

Roberts selected Lakota Woman by Mary Crow Dog because, he says,”It’s got some of the great lines I’ve ever seen in a book.” And you don’t have to read far into the book to find an example.”I am Mary Brave Bird,” she writes in the book’s opening chapter.”After I had my baby during the siege of Wounded Knee they gave me a special name ñ Ohitika Kin, Brave Woman, and fastened an eagle plume in my hair, singing brave-heart songs for me. I am a woman of the Red Nation, a Sioux woman. That is not easy.

“I had my first baby during a firefight, with the bullets crashing through one wall and coming out through the other. When my newborn was only a day old and the marshals really opened up on us, I wrapped him up in a blanket and ran for it. We had to hit the dirt a couple of times, I shielding the baby with my body, praying, ëIt’s all right if I die, but please let him live.'”

“That’s one hell of an opening,” Roberts says.

Lakota Woman was published in 1991 and immediately became a national bestseller. It won the 1991 American Book Award and became a television movie produced by TNT and Jane Fonda in 1994.

The book chronicles Crow Dog’s life until 1977. She was born in 1953 on the Rosebud Indian Reservation. At age 18, impressed by the teachings of medicine man Leonard Crow Dog, she joined the American Indian Movement. Her book is important because it provides a young Indian woman’s perspective on reservation plight, assimilation and racism in western South Dakota. But Crow Dog’s recollection of the Wounded Knee siege is a highlight.”There are no objective reports [of the Wounded Knee occupation],” Roberts says,”but her cry in the wilderness is very good.”

Crow Dog followed Lakota Woman was a sequel entitled Ohitika Woman in 1994. She died in 2013.

Sally Roesch Wagner

Daughters of Dakota

When Will Robinson served as state historian, he recognized that only half of South Dakota’s history was being told.”We have a shelf full of ponderous tomes, 32 inches in length with over 10,000 biographies of male South Dakotans,” Robinson lamented in the 1960s.”When it comes to the women who worked alongside the men and frequently made it possible for them to accomplish things which gave them a place in our history, little recognition has been given.”

But women’s history was being recorded thanks to Marie Drew, chair of the Pioneer Daughters Department of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs. For 40 years she supervised the gathering of pioneer women’s stories in every state. South Dakota’s intimidating collection of 4,000 to 6,000 stories lay virtually untouched in the state archives until a spring day in 1987, when an archivist persuaded Sally Roesch Wagner to take a break from researching women’s suffrage to peruse the papers.

“My researcher’s eye knew that this was the find of a lifetime,” Wagner later wrote.”Represented was the scope and range of the lives of white women settlers when the land was taken for non-Indian settlement: white and black, rich and poor, native-born and immigrant, representing a spectrum of nationalities, ages, lifestyles and religions.”

Wagner strove to publish a book of stories in time for the South Dakota centenial in 1989. The first volume of Daughters of Dakota appeared that year and was followed by five more through 1994.

“In concentrating upon the women, you also concentrate upon the men, because they had to live this land together, even though it emphasizes the difficulties of women,” Roberts says.”The guys could get out. They’d go down to the river and cut wood, or plant corn and try to grow something. The women were stuck in whatever was the house, and it’s very legitimate to talk about the trials being quite different.”

Frederick Manfred

Lord Grizzly

The first time Frederick Manfred heard the legend of Hugh Glass, he knew he would someday write about it.”Hugh’s great wrestle with the grizzly, his desertion by friends, his fabulous crawl, his vengeful chase after the deserters, and its outcome ñ all these things seized hold of my imagination,” Manfred recalled.”I saw Hugh and his agony. I saw his matted grizzled beard, his flashing grieving eyes, his torn bleeding body, his godlike stubborn manner. I saw all this not with the eye of an historian but with the eye of a novelist.”

Glass was a real mountain man, recruited by fur trader William Ashley in 1822 to travel up the Missouri River to its source and collect furs. Glass’ near fatal encounter with a grizzly bear along the Grand River was real, and so was his 200 mile crawl across West River’s short grass prairie to Fort Kiowa. But Manfred’s Lord Grizzly, published in 1954, is a novel, not a historical account.

For nearly 10 years Manfred immersed himself in the story. His daughter Freya Manfred recalled how her father”researched the novel by crawling around on all fours with one leg bound in a makeshift splint, eating grubs and ants to see how they would have tasted to the book’s hero, old Hugh Glass.”

Manfred was a prolific writer, penning nearly two dozen books inside his tiny writing cabin at his home in Luverne, Minn. He taught briefly at the University of South Dakota and Augustana College and coined the term”Siouxland,” describing the region where South Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa meet.

Lord Grizzly is part of Manfred’s Buckskin Tales series that explores life in the Upper Midwest through the 19th century. It is divided into three parts: the wrestle, the crawl and the showdown. They represent the three components of the Glass story that Manfred found to be the most consistent in various interpretations.

“This book reads extremely well today,” Roberts says.”It’s not at all dated. The adventure is incredible. The crawl is incredible. The entire story of revenge is incredible. He probably deserves more recognition for that than he’s ever gotten. He was very frustrated because he felt that he had done a lot of good work for literature of this region, and mostly people just sort of waved him away.”

O.W. Coursey

Pioneering in Dakota

O.W. Coursey may be the most prolific author that no one remembers. The title page of his short autobiography Pioneering in Dakota lists him as the author of”eight volumes of Biography, four of History, three on Biblical Characters, two of fiction, two on Literature, two of Short Stories, two of Winning Orations (Compiled), one on School Law and one on Ethics.”

Coursey, a writer, teacher and lecturer who operated the Educator Supply Company in Mitchell, chronicled the lives of many early South Dakotans, including Senator Alfred Kittredge and General William Henry Harrison Beadle, but it’s his unique first-hand account of homesteading in South Dakota that’s most worth reading, Roberts says.

“It’s not a comprehensive history. It’s a pioneering history, what it’s like to come to this country and settle,” Roberts says.”He wrote about the pioneer experience, including the first really comprehensive story about the Blizzard of 1888. On his total work, he should be remembered, and Pioneering in South Dakota is probably the best of his work.”

Pioneering in Dakota covers 14 years of Coursey’s life, beginning with his family’s train trip from Illinois to Huron in 1883. Along with his first-person account of the Blizzard of 1888, in which he was trapped in school, his chapters on filing and claiming a homestead, building a sod house, the coming of the railroad (and the fate of towns along the track) and his stories of surviving a tornado and a prairie wildfire provide a unique perspective of life in the late 19th century.

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

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Our Statewide Reading Club

By Katie Hunhoff

At South Dakota Magazine we love telling stories about South Dakota, and we also love to tell about our great storytellers. Good literature brings us together as a people and helps us identify what life on the prairie is all about. C.S. Lewis described it best when he said, “We read to know we are not alone.”

In that spirit, what could be better than having all South Dakotans read and reflect on the same book? For 14 years the South Dakota Center for the Book (a part of the Humanities Council) has been selecting a book for the state to enjoy together. The choice is usually relevant to life in South Dakota.

Jane Smiley, a 1992 Pulitzer Prize winner, is the author of this year’s One Book South Dakota. Some Luck is the first of her trilogy that follows an Iowa family, the Langdons, through several generations.

The book takes the reader from 1920 to 1953, beginning as Rosanna and Walter Langdon welcome their firstborn son, Frank. The novel follows the Langdons through important historical events, the Depression and World War II, and highlights how changes on the farm impact family dynamics.

The Humanities Council encourages libraries and book clubs to host One Book discussions. Copies of Some Luck are available on loan for groups, and Humanities Council approved scholars often attend the gatherings to guide conversation.

The highlight of this year’s One Book discussion will come this fall at the Festival of Books when Jane Smiley discusses her story with festivalgoers. This year the event will be held in Brookings for the first time (Sept. 22-26). Smiley will be one of many writers who attend to connect with readers. The festival focuses on many subjects, including poetry, fiction, non-fiction, history, children and tribal writing. My personal favorites are the writer’s support presentation for writers by writers. Our South Dakota Magazine staffers attend the festival each fall and we’re always entertained and surprised by the speakers.

Until then, One Book is a great way to get involved. The concept of a community reading and discussing the very same book was launched in 1998 by Nancy Pearl, a Seattle librarian who believed that having people within a geographic area reflecting on the same book might create connections and enrich the reading experience. Now there are One Book programs across the United States and the world. I wish our magazine staff would have thought of the idea, but we’re happy Nancy did.

Groups interested in hosting a discussion group on Some Luck can apply through the South Dakota Humanities Council.

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The West and the Universe

By Katie Hunhoff

Badger Clark lived and wrote at the Badger Hole, a cabin in Custer State Park.

Badger Clark would be packing his bags for a return home to Deadwood if the old poet were alive today, because that’s where this year’s South Dakota Festival of Books will be celebrated Sept. 24-27.

Our state’s annual book festival combines some of Badger’s favorite things — writers, readers and the fresh Black Hills air. It’s a special weekend in which local writers, readers and thinkers gather together to discuss and reflect from a regional point of view. This is already the 13th annual festival. The event has been alternating between Deadwood and Sioux Falls. Both are wonderful sites, but the northern Black Hills are especially tantalizing as the aspen and birch change color.

Badger Clark, South Dakota’s first poet laureate, had a special connection to Deadwood. He moved there in 1898 with his parents when he was 15 years old. His father, a Methodist minister, hoped the altitude would benefit Mrs. Clark’s tuberculosis. Deadwood was then a wild frontier town. But it was also an exciting place, rich with culture and home to a variety of people with interesting life stories. Clark attended school, loved to read and came to love nature. He was also able to spend time on his uncle’s Wyoming ranch, the beginning of his cowboy career.

Unfortunately the mountain air did not revive his mother’s health and she passed away shortly after they arrived. Three years later, the Rev. Clark remarried Rachel Anna Morris. She was a drama teacher from Iowa, and also a poet and magazine writer. No doubt her presence greatly shaped Clark’s life as a writer and thinker.

Clark graduated from Deadwood High School in 1902 and found himself at a crossroads. He eventually enrolled at Dakota Wesleyan University for one year. Then, either for adventure or money, he signed up to help with a colonizing effort in Cuba following the Spanish-American war. He was employed on a plantation that bred razorback hogs and he worked as a ranch hand and stevedore. He ended up in jail after his boss shot another plantation owner. A scrapbook of Clark’s Cuban adventures can be seen at the DWU library. While in the Cuban prison his imagination was sparked by the personalities of fellow prisoners. You’ll find some of Clark’s earliest poems in that Cuban scrapbook.

He continued his cowboy adventure near the Mexican border, where he took up drawing and started playing guitar. He began to write in earnest; inspired by the many people he met passing through the border country. In 1910 he returned to the Black Hills, first living in Hot Springs to take care of his aging parents. After they died, he moved to Custer State Park where he lived in the Badger Hole, a log cabin, until he died in 1957.

Clark was named South Dakota’s poet laureate in 1939, an honor he held for life. Someone once said that Clark’s talent was his ability to “tie the West to the Universe.” That’s a good way to describe what the book festival attendees and presenters do each year when they gather in September. We hope to see you there.

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Give These a Read

By John Andrews

The South Dakota Festival of Books is coming up this weekend in downtown Sioux Falls, so I’m thinking even more this week about reading and writing. A few years ago we asked Donus Roberts to recommend 10 books that all South Dakotans should read. Roberts was a longtime speech and debate coach at Watertown High School and boasts one of the great book collections in the Glacial Lakes. His list was varied and included several Dakota classics that are all worth reading.

That led me to think about the books I’ve read over the years. Several times people have asked me to recommend books by South Dakotans or about South Dakota, so I came up with a short list of five. There are hundreds more titles from which to choose, but these stand out to me. They are all well written and hold your attention and full of information and insights into our culture.

Challenge: The South Dakota Story, by Bob Karolevitz

Challenge was the first general history of South Dakota I ever owned. I got it for Christmas about 10 years ago, and today the poor paperback is in tatters. There are Post-It notes on almost every other page to mark something I found interesting. Hardly a day goes by that I don’t turn to it for information or to answer a question.

Challenge is where I first learned the details of the Battle of Bonesteel and saw so many photos from South Dakota’s earliest days for the first time. Perhaps the most memorable is a poster from the fight for the state capital in which it’s claimed that”Huron is sick,” and Pierre believes South Dakota is”a lusty yearling baby.” Below, it promotes the”well watered” lands west of the Missouri River,”suitable for agriculture or stock raising. … Stop and think what this country of 37,000 square miles will be twenty years hence, and sit down on all idiots who tell you that South Dakota has stopped growing.” Economic developers are still proud of South Dakota, but I doubt they’d use such language in a brochure today.

I’ve gained a much greater appreciation for Karolevitz since I moved to Yankton in 2005, since this was his home. He was tireless in preserving the history of Yankton, right up until his death in 2011.

Buffalo for the Broken Heart, by Dan O’Brien

O’Brien was a struggling cattle rancher when he was invited to help at a neighbor’s buffalo roundup. The experience, coupled with his extensive knowledge of the West River ecosystem, led to a leap of faith: O’Brien converted his Broken Heart ranch to a buffalo operation.

O’Brien writes about how frightening the transition was, and how joyous it was to see bison — here centuries before man — once again grazing on the Plains. Today O’Brien’s Wild Idea Buffalo Company is wildly successful. By the end of the book, I was just as happy for the author as I was for the animals and their environment.

The Children’s Blizzard, David Laskin

The day on which the Children’s Blizzard raged in 1888 began as a calm, spring-like day, quite unusual for January 12. Farmers worked in the fields as their children studied in one-room schoolhouses across Dakota. Then the skies darkened, and the wind began to blow. Before hardly anyone realized it, a deadly blizzard raged. By the time it ended, nearly 250 people had frozen to death. As I read it I realized my great-grandparents lived through the blizzard, though I don’t recall any family stories. Several South Dakotans will experience the same connection while reading The Children’s Blizzard.

Laskin captures heart-breaking tales from families broken by the blizzard, and tells in excruciated detail what it’s like to die from hypothermia. He also sheds light on the primitive methods of weather forecasting, and why there was little warning in advance of the storm.

No Place Like Home, Linda Hasselstrom

Hasselstrom is one of our foremost Western writers. This collection of essays explores the sense of community found in western South Dakota and just across the border in Cheyenne, Wyoming. The book probably struck me mostly because Hasselstrom’s first chapter is about the breakup of a family ranch. I read it at about the same time our family homestead’s future was in flux, and I more closely understood many of the things she wrote about.

The Carving of Mount Rushmore, Rex Alan Smith

Mount Rushmore is probably South Dakota’s most recognizable feature. The four faces appear on promotional material, license plates and have been featured during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. The story behind its creation is fascinating, and Rex Alan Smith tells it in fine detail. Smith writes about the battles between mercurial sculptor Gutzon Borglum and the Rapid City leaders who tried to keep the project afloat through the depths of the Depression. But perhaps the strength of his book is the attention paid to the makeshift crew of former miners who toiled atop the mountain for parts of 14 years. Smith’s account doesn’t include every person and every detail of the project, but it’s plenty to give readers a sense of the monumental task.

This list, like any other, is by no means definitive or complete (there are several other titles, fiction and non-fiction, that should enter the queue), but it should serve as a starting point for those wanting to learn more about South Dakota and for South Dakotans eager to further appreciate their home.

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Grace Balloch’s Books

By Paul Higbee

As a high school student I used to stop by Spearfish’s Grace Balloch Memorial Library some days after class. I’d read a literature assignment, or work on a history paper, and sometimes check out a book for a report. It always ran through my mind: this is a quaint and appropriate name for a library. Grace Balloch. What kind of woman would earn the honor of a namesake library? I imagined a bespectacled lady, white hair in a bun, her clothes smelling a bit musty like vintage volumes, and whose whole world revolved around those classic books.

Which should tell you that I didn’t have any great capacity for original thinking at age 16 or 17, believed in certain stereotypes, and wasn’t driven to research the truth behind local history.

But it’s never too late to reform. Forty years later, after spending time with Grace’s handwritten letters, photos, and mementos, I’ve discovered a remarkable woman who lived a life of adventure, always certain of her own principles and high standards. She went to war at age 40. Late in life she presented Spearfish an offer it couldn’t refuse.

Grace Balloch wore lots of professional hats, but had someone asked who she was in her heart, there’s little doubt she would have answered”teacher.” There are still a handful of Spearfish people who recall her as a local college English professor and registrar long ago. In Grace’s thinking education meant more than presenting information or guiding students toward it. It also meant encouraging young people to believe themselves worthy and then helping them find necessary resources — including financial ones.

Darleen Young describes assistance her husband, Don Young, got from Grace when as a college student he was hospitalized for eight weeks with typhoid,”leaving him flat broke with a horrendous bill.” The late Evelyn Heinbaugh, one of Grace’s students and longtime publisher of Spearfish’s weekly newspaper, always admired her teacher’s knowledge, patience, sincerity and love of life.”Mrs. Balloch had courage that was self-sacrificing,” Evelyn wrote.

Born Grace Herr Franz in Pennsylvania in 1878, the future teacher graduated from Millersville State Normal School in that state. Much like the college where Grace would teach in South Dakota, Millersville’s original mission was preparing educators and it later evolved into a more diversified state university. Shortly after graduation she was running her own private school just outside Washington, D.C., in Montgomery County, Maryland. There she met Archibald Balloch, geologist and cattle buyer, and Grace’s life changed dramatically. The couple married in 1902 and decided they should relocate out West where the cattle industry flourished — St. Louis and later Chicago.

Grace worked as a librarian at the University of Chicago and taught at Bloom Township High School in Chicago Heights, where she won a reputation among students as a powerful mentor. She took special interest in pupils needing encouragement in hard times, as was the case with 16-year-old Walter Hoeppner in 1916. His mother died during surgery that year. He later recalled,”I am convinced her death was due to incompetence of the surgeon. … This was one factor that persuaded me to study medicine.” Walter had no money for higher education, but Grace helped him figure out ways to win scholarships and work his way through school at the University of Chicago and its affiliate, Rush Medical College. It’s almost certain the Ballochs paid some of his fees, as well. Walter went on to enjoy a long medical career in the Chicago area and would always consider Grace his foster mother.

As Walter wondered whether a career in medicine might be within his reach, Americans wondered whether Walter’s generation would fight in the World War then raging in Europe and other regions. In April 1917, President Woodrow Wilson announced the United States would, indeed, send troops abroad. In France they would face some of the harshest conditions in wartime history, encountering poison gases fashioned into weaponry, and fighting from trenches where disease killed just as ruthlessly as German bullets.

Grace told her husband she was sailing to France to support American boys in the trenches. She knew that the YMCA needed volunteers to staff canteens and”huts” near the front lines. These were places of shelter and refreshment, yet YMCA documents make clear that it saw its mission in France as much more than respite. Soldiers needed contact with people of strong character who could help them make sense of a world where they regularly watched friends die, and where it was easy to stop believing in God and the better instincts of humanity. In late summer, 1918, Grace boarded a transport ship and finally saw the French coastline after a voyage through remarkably stormy weather. Archibald, meanwhile, was off to Virginia, where he supervised loading military equipment aboard ships.

Grace later recalled her time in the war zone.”It was easy to keep the boys’ morale up during the fighting. They knew what they wanted, what they were fighting for, and that the sooner it was over they could return home. But after the war the let-down was terrific.” The Armistice ending combat was signed Nov. 11, 1918, but soldiers soon learned there was plenty of mop-up work for them in Europe.

Grace’s happiest day in France came in 1919 when she reunited with her foster son, Walter, a soldier serving as a medic. She came to love France and its people and even opened a bank account there, certain she and Archibald would return to visit.

Did Grace and other YMCA volunteers make a difference in France? Back home, some Americans scoffed at the program. But today, in Spearfish, yellowed letters that Grace kept the rest of her life attest that for some soldiers her presence was perhaps life changing.

“I sure am proud to have two friends such as you and Miss LeRoy, and being with you is when I feel my best,” wrote soldier Tom Johnson from a post at a French stone quarry, three days before Christmas, 1918.”I assure you I will try and return your many good traits.”

Grace spent that Christmas at a military hospital, writing letters from wounded soldiers to loved ones in the States. Reminding soldiers to write home, it seems, was something she repeated like a mantra.

She kept a copy of this poem by an anonymous soldier who, among other things, appreciated those reminders to write:

When he wants to write a letter

(And you know that he had better)

To his mother, or his father, or the girl,

Or he’s feeling sort of lonely

And the thing he craves is only

An oasis in the racket and the whirl

Or he yearns for conversation

Or the glad exhilaration

Of a dish of ice-cream or piece of custard pie,

He will hurry helter-skelter

To the YMCA shelter

Hereinafter to be spoken as the”Y.”

By spring Grace had completed her YMCA work and applied to work a few months more in France, helping noted historian Ray Stannard Baker document the war. A close friend of Woodrow Wilson, Baker had been the President’s eyes and ears in wartime France and his press secretary when the Treaty of Versailles was signed. Grace was selected as part of Baker’s team, and there’s no doubt that their extensive work contributed to Baker winning the Pulitzer Prize for an eight-volume biography of President Wilson.

Finally it was time for Grace to return to America, and the soldiers she trained to write letters continued writing her for years. But their letters found Grace not in Chicago, but the Black Hills. Photos dated 1920 show Grace and Archibald with horses on a ranch near Custer. At the same time Archibald was helping build the first roads through Custer State Park. In 1923 Grace taught summer English classes at Spearfish Normal School (today’s Black Hills State University) and was offered a full time position that fall. Spearfish would be the Ballochs’ home for the rest of their lives.

They never made that trip to France. Archibald died in 1934. Five years after that another world war engulfed Europe. In 1940 Grace learned of Paris falling to the Nazis. They even seized the French bank where she had deposited $150 during World War I in hopes of returning. She told a reporter that most French citizens valued freedom and their own form of government and would”gladly die for their cause. It is horrible that a few ambitious traitors and blood-thirsty dictators can bring so much misery and destruction to the backbone of the French nation.”

Grace was in no condition to participate overseas in the new war. She learned she was terminally ill at age 63, and she set her sights on solving a local problem. Spearfish, her adopted hometown, had no public library and Grace decided to nudge the community towards developing one. Not that Spearfish was anti-book. It claimed a history of literary clubs, book exchange groups, and a short-lived Works Progress Administration library service in the 1930s. But as a college community Spearfish could sometimes sit back and let its state-supported school provide certain services, rather than funding those services itself. Black Hills State was happy to let Spearfish citizens use its library, especially after they helped re-stock it following a 1925 fire. Sometimes the college even loaned books to a Main Street store for checkout.

In Grace’s mind that was a far cry from a public library, and she said she would donate her personal collection of 1,500 volumes. Grace wrote in her will:”To the City of Spearfish, to be used as a nucleus for a city library, I give and bequeath all my books, and I request that a committee be appointed by the Mayor of the City of Spearfish to take charge of this bequest.” The will further left the Balloch home on Main Street to Grace’s sister, Anna, and after Anna’s death the property would go to the city for constructing a library building.

Grace died in November 1944, happy to know that France had been liberated from the Nazis. Certainly she understood that her gift to Spearfish would be somewhat difficult for city leaders, who had no space for her books and no budget for operations. Initially the city council declined the donation. But as was true for Grace everywhere, she had touched Spearfish lives profoundly and left behind loyal friends. In 1945 voters overwhelmingly demanded that city funds be directed toward a library to be called Grace Balloch Memorial.

It’s hard to imagine a more modest library than the first version to bear Grace’s name. It was a 10-foot by 30-foot room in Tom and Margaret Cutter’s Spearfish Hotel. In 1962 the books were carted up the block to rooms in the Sullivan Insurance building. There was no room for expansion or programming, but library patrons knew better days were coming. The city had acquired Grace’s home site after her sister’s death in 1959, and readers who kept a library book a few days too long at least had the satisfaction of knowing all fines went into a construction fund.

A sparkling new library opened in June 1971. Presiding at the building dedication was Mayor Don Young, the man Grace helped back to his feet as he recovered from typhoid 35 years earlier. Certainly those who attended the dedication believed the building would serve many generations. But Spearfish’s population boomed the next two decades and the library’s collection kept pace with that growth, outstripping the space. In 1996 the library moved a fourth time into the ground floor of Spearfish’s new municipal services building, a beautifully designed structure that is certainly beyond anything even the well-traveled Grace Balloch could have imagined.

Amber Wilde, library director since 2008, notes that Walter Hoeppner’s family still makes an annual contribution to the library fund. She is impressed by the wide range of Spearfish area residents making use of the library regularly. There are story times for children, programming for adults, and of course computer access to information centers around the globe. There are more than 71,000 books, audiobooks, tapes, and other items catalogued.

Readers can still find some of Grace’s own 1,500 volumes on the shelves, identifiable by her personal bookplate. It depicts a child, looking at a bookshelf, as if awaiting someone’s help in selecting something to read.

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.

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Winternight Blossoms

By Dianne Gloe

Near midnight, sleepless, I walk outside into this ghostly world of winter. Above me is the lilac, which has endured more than half a century of winters. Thousands of black branches lie like shadows on the seemingly even plane of the sky. This winter night near midnight the old lilac, bare of leaves, is blooming. The brilliant blossoms shine like stars.

Who is the artist with courage to paint this night? Vincent Van Gogh, who killed himself, would have tried:”I often think that the night is more alive and more richly coloured than the day…” But this winter night is brushed only with strong yet simple starwhite and gray and black.

Watching the stars filter through branches, eerily, I sense that my stare is being met by another pair of eyes. All the while I have looked at the lilac, eyes have watched me. The moonlight colors them an unfamiliar gold. Or does night betray my sight?

The owl flies.

I have read that some cultures believe the owl to be an evil omen. I’m not convinced, but I am uneasy.

I walk on the road toward the colder north. The wind against my face is like the breath of someone dead. Before I reach the narrow bridge, an odd-shaped head on a bony neck appears. I do not recognize the ashen face. I cannot see what expression it wears. I hesitate. Will it greet me “Good night” with a sunken, toothless and lunatic grin? Or with anger at my intrusion?

The apparition is my neighbor’s mailbox.

My footsteps disturb a woman who sings under the bridge. Ghastly and lovely is her song. I try to convince myself that the music is water. I know it is not; the stream is frozen. Why is she, too, outside on this winter night? I recall the owl, the omen of evil.

Her song explodes. Her dress unfurls, rises white-gray-dark above ground, and whirs away on pigeon wings.

By taking this midnight walk, I did not intend to test my heart for strength. On my right a snow-packed trail leads up a hill, seeming to beckon me. I resist following that line of snow on the leeward side of the fence. I turn toward home.

I look again at the tree. I almost wish Van Gogh could visit my home and paint the winter lilac, a shadow of branches blossoming with stars. But, I do not wish aloud. On a night like this, he might come knock-knocking on my door.

Whether to linger outside or go inside — I am like the moon that has never made up its mind how dim or bright to shine. The cold decides.

In another season the quiet lilac will explode with heart-shaped leaves and purple fragrance. But for now, no color is warmer than the light, golden, behind the window of my home.

Editor’s Note: This tale by Dianne Gloe, a Hartford, South Dakota native, originally appeared in the Jan/Feb 1988 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 1-800-456-5117.

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Fifty Years in South Dakota

Light streams in on South Dakota poet Badger Clark at his home, the Badger Hole, in 1937. Dakota Discovery Museum photo.

Editor’s Note: In honor of National Poetry Month, here are a few stanzas by Badger Clark, South Dakota’s first poet laureate, on life in our fair state.


Fifty Years in South Dakota

By Badger Clark

We lack sophistication; our lives are all frustration,
We South Dakotans, so some writers say
According to those novels we mostly live in hovels
And all our days are dun and gray.
We flounder in futility, punch-drunk to imbecility
From dust and debt and drought and dying kine,
Aridity, frigidity — yet I, in my stupidity
Have lived here fifty years and like it fine.

I nearly froze my gizzard in one riproaring blizzard,
But that was in the year of Eighty-eight.
Thought I was never wealthy I’ve been absurdly healthy
Like nearly all people in the state.
If skies went dry and coppery, if fields got all grasshoppery,
That made the good years better when ’twas done,
And though my weak humanity slipped sometimes to profanity
I’ve lived here fifty years and think it’s fun.

I wonder if the fellows who paint us all in yellows
Have heard the meadowlarks among the grass
Or seen the corn in tassel or climbed a granite castle
That stands on guard above a Black Hills pass.
We like a fat prosperity but there’s a tougher verity
That roots us to the prairies and the Hills.
It’s HOME to us, our motherland, dearer than any other land,
I’ve lived here fifty years, but yet that thrills.

It never is”verboten” for any South Dakotan
To laugh and talk as freely as he votes,
And if they haven’t riches to carry in their breeches
They always carry laughter in their throats.
Our maidens sweet and willowy, our matrons good and pillowy,
Our boys and men look you in the eye
Make up a grand fraternity to do me till eternity.
I’ve lived here fifty years, and here I’ll die.


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Ghost Town Friends

By Doug Rees

Editor’s Note: We were sorry to hear that Black Hills historian and South Dakota Hall of Famer Watson Parker died this week at the age of 88. Long-time Hills residents might remember the Palmer Gulch Lodge dude ranch and resort near Hill City, operated by the Parker family until 1962. Parker and his wife Olga raised three kids in the shady pines there. He earned his PhD in history in 1965, taught at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh for 21 years, and gave expression to his love of the Black Hills in four books. The creation of one of them, Black Hills Ghost Towns, is described below, in a story from our January/February 2006 issue.

Watson Parker and Hugh Lambert published Black Hills Ghost Towns almost 40 years ago as a record of the myriad towns, stage stops and hovels that rose and decayed along with the boom and bust of the Black Hills gold rush. But their Ghost Towns is more than a coffee table book of interesting pictures and witty anecdotes. It is a valuable record of a vanishing history and a legacy to the enduring friendship of the two men who collaborated for over 17 years.

Like many Black Hills stories, this one starts with a family vacation. In 1937, Hugh Lambert’s family traveled to the Black Hills. While staying at Palmer Gulch Lodge, young Hugh fell in love with the Black Hills and met the innkeeper’s son, Wat Parker. They would become lifelong friends.

After Wat finished his daily chores, the two boys searched for abandoned mining camps. Their summer explorations left an indelible impression on Hugh. Even so, he would not talk to Parker again for 20 years.

Around 1957, Hugh Lambert decided it was time to return to the Black Hills. To his happy surprise, a call to the American Automobile Association confirmed that Palmer Gulch Lodge was still in business, and still run by the Parker family. It didn’t take long for Hugh and Wat to become reacquainted as they shared memories. Both observed that many of their stories would disappear as the towns and mines turned to dust.

Dr. Watson Parker was professor emeritus of history at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh before retiring to the Black Hills.

Rather than lament in nostalgia, the two decided to find and record the history of the surrounding ghost towns. Little did they know that they would work on and off for the next 17 years, gathering material for what eventually was published in 1974 under the title Black Hills Ghost Towns. Their book describes about 600 towns and sites that once populated the Black Hills region. A few of the places survive today, but most were already ghostly when Parker and Lambert began their project.

They divided the work. Parker researched the places in old newspapers, maps and the”musty books of history.” He also wrote the descriptions for sites featured in the book. Lambert located the places on the ground, using the opportunity to correct old maps and to draw up new ones, many of which appear in the book. Lambert also selected photographs for the book and wrote many of the captions. He supplemented the photographs with his own pen and ink drawings.

Parker and Lambert’s Ghost Towns goes a long way toward capturing and preserving many of the”history, ballads, yarns, legends [and] monuments” that give the Black Hills its own unique sense of place. A favorite handed down from Parker’s grandfather is set in Pactola, once a bustling mining area and resort, now under the waters of Pactola Reservoir:

At Pactola in years gone by there used to erupt a dance of quite considerable vigor, presided over by the indomitable Mrs. Bernice Musekamp. During Prohibition, Wat Parker’s grandmother arrived for a visit in the hills, driven, in those long-gone days, by her chauffeur in his natty uniform of boots, breeches and visored cap. It was in this outfit that Pace (that was his name) decided to attend the Pactola dance. Unfortunately for him the local populace mistook him for a revenue officer on the prowl, and a hurried midnight call from Mrs. Musekamp brought Pappy Parker to Pactola just in time to rescue Pace from the angry crowd that was about to lynch him.

The authors also tell about Gayville, named for Albert and William Gay, the latter of whom”achieved notoriety by killing a boy who delivered a flirtatious letter to his wife. He was sent to reside in the crowbar hotel for three years; he returned unrepentant and was welcomed back with a brass band. A dissident party who didn’t like the way William dressed — thought he would look better in a rope necktie — hoped to put him on a platform where everybody could see him, but they were in a minority and nothing was done about it.”

The book teaches without an ounce of pedantry but with plenty of dry wit. One good example is found in the caption that accompanies an otherwise nondescript photo of a cemetery near Harney:

They always built the cemetery on a point of rocky ground. Some say it was to get the departed nearer to heaven, and probably many of them needed all the help they could get. Others say it was to get off the wet valley floor, for no man in his right mind would want to spend eternity in a grave that wasn’t properly drained. But mainly they picked out the most ornery patch of ground there was, that nobody wanted, and made a graveyard out of it.

Parker and Lambert also teach us that Moskee in Crook County, Wyo. was taken from the Pidgin English”maskee,” meaning”no matter, never mind, I don’t care.” They share the lore that Mystic might have been derived from”mistake,” but suggest the more likely (but more mundane) version that it was named by a pioneer who hailed from Mystic, Conn. They explain that the origin of the name Two-Bit is much disputed, and could have been named for placers that yielded 25 cents in a single pan, or, for the more pessimistic, because a miner couldn’t get two bits worth of gold in an entire day. With tongue firmly in cheek, the authors tell us that Bare Butte was”an early name for Bear Butte. Captain Raynolds, exploring the area in the 1850s, took meticulous care to note that it was pronounced Bewt, to avoid giving offense to the delicate-minded.”

While the book has many lighthearted stories, it also captures the pioneers’ desolation. Describing Burdock, in Fall River County, the authors note that”one gets the impression that maybe the young folks held out there as long as grandma in her little cabin looking towards the mountains lived, but when she died, they folded up the store and headed for civilization.”

Only occasionally does a touch of nostalgia creep into Parker and Lambert’s writing. In discussing Rockerville, Parker and Lambert recount its development as a”real mining camp,” and”one of the roaringest.” The authors then ruefully describe how modern Rockerville became a tourist town, and note with palpable regret:”There are not many echoes in the Rockerville of today — the clink of coin, rustle of bills and click of cameras have drowned them out.”

The book’s central theme is that”the ghosts of the past are where you find them.” The epilogue features a Parker story and a Lambert drawing as a monument to the lives that were lived in the harsh, rocky Black Hills:

Here lived the pioneers and built their hopeful towns, and here they nursed their frail ambitions only to move on, into the pages of history. These Hills and their past will come alive, though all around is in ruin and decay, if you will follow down the trails we have trod, see those strange sites that we have seen, and hear the tales that we were toldÖ