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Black Hills Mountain Lodges

By Paul Higbee

The State Game Lodge is a casual place where the greeters sometimes have horns and four legs.

Check into a Black Hills mountain lodge and you’ll get a taste of something classic. Book your stay in the fall and you’ve added a rich spice. What could be better than absorbing sunshine and piney breezes on a wide unscreened porch, then retreating inside to a fireplace blaze as the cool of an autumn evening hits? Wide porches and big stone fireplaces are essential lodge elements. So are immediate proximity to natural splendor, separation from towns and four-lane highways, and hosts who know their Black Hills history, flora and fauna.

For over a century Black Hills builders have fashioned lodges from pine and spruce, and they’ve usually accented their structures with Black Hills quartz, crystals, petrified wood and other rock. Thankfully, this construction style is not a lost art, as evidenced by a handful of recently built lodges.

Hisega Lodge

Hisega Lodge features a double-decker wrap-around porch.

Some lodges are grand while others are understated and intimate. But they all share one characteristic: for certain visitors they stick in the consciousness forever. Every lodge proprietor can tell stories of lives transformed under their roofs. Carol Duncan, for example, sat on Hisega Lodge‘s porch a few years back, listening to the rushing waters of Rapid Creek just below. She had grown up in Stickney, vacationed in the Black Hills with her family as a child, later lived in the Hills, and eventually found herself in Florida with a good job that she enjoyed. Then while visiting Hisega (just up the creek from Rapid City on Highway 44) Duncan realized she belonged to this rugged landscape of pines, stony outcrops and ice-cold streams.

“Guests have revelations at Hisega Lodge,” Duncan says.”Or perhaps another way to put it is that they make an acknowledgement.” After her visit she left knowing she would return to live in the Hills, but never guessed Hisega Lodge would be for sale just weeks later. Since 2007, Carol and her husband Kenn have been owners, greeting visitors from around the world. Theirs is a 1909 lodge with two porch decks wrapped around the building. There are nine guest units, exceptionally comfortable chairs before the fireplace, lots of Black Hills art on the walls and even a little library. Just outside trout swim in this catch-and-release section of the creek.

“Our guests tend to be about the outdoors, not about being in their rooms,” Duncan observes.”And they’re often interested in history.”

Doane Robinson, South Dakota’s first state historian, is credited for proposing the sculpture project that evolved into Mount Rushmore. He can also be credited for Hisega Lodge. In August 1908, Robinson organized a railroad and camping adventure through the Black Hills for 17 young adults, including his secretary, sister and a niece. The group rode the old Crouch Line rails out of Rapid City, stepped off the train to pitch tents in this narrow canyon, and named the spot Hisega — derived from the first initials of six campers named Helen, Ida, Sade, Ethel, Grace and Ada. In 1909, Robinson found 50 people who wanted to vacation in the same place, only now he said he would have a lodge in place for them if everyone contributed $100. The plan, actually modest by Doane Robinson standards, worked. Originally railroad tracks lay immediately in front of the building. Over 100 years later the trains are long gone, but the lodge still stands. It has had many names over the years while the spot on the map has always remained Hisega. As would be expected, guest rooms are small by today’s standards.”But we’ve got bigger beds, king and queen sized ones, because people are bigger than they were a hundred years ago,” Duncan says.”We make sure everything is spotless, and our towels are cushy.”

The price of a night’s lodging includes breakfast, perhaps an open-face breakfast sandwich or breakfast pizza, and always featuring fresh fruit and Duncan’s homemade muffins. A century ago, she notes, house rules warned against alcohol and gambling.”Now,” she says,”our instructions are mostly about accessing the wi-fi and finding the recycling bins.”

State Game Lodge

Two presidents (Calvin Coolidge and Dwight Eisenhower) have stayed at the State Game Lodge in Custer State Park.

What do Carol Duncan and President Calvin Coolidge have in common? It’s possible that each experienced a revelation about their futures while visiting a Black Hills lodge. After making the State Game Lodge his summer White House in 1927, Coolidge surprised the nation before departing South Dakota.”I do not choose to run for president in 1928,” he stated in typically terse style. By 1929 he was out of office and enjoying boating back home in rural Massachusetts.

Built in 1922, 13 years after Hisega Lodge, the State Game Lodge combines Sen. Peter Norbeck’s vision, architect A.R. Van Dyke’s design, stonemason Monroe Nystrom’s handiwork, and C.C. Gideon’s construction skills. The remarkable Gideon, also remembered for designing the landmark pigtail bridges on nearby Iron Mountain Road, stayed as Game Lodge host and state park concessionaire for 27 years after the lodge’s opening. His wife Elma worked closely with him.

Granddaughter Marilyn Oakes says the couple nearly perished here in 1921. Gideon had just completed construction of the original State Game Lodge and was living there when an arsonist struck. The couple escaped the flames and smoke with just their nightclothes, business ledgers and some photographs. The Game Lodge was lost, yet planning began immediately for the building we know today. The original lodge was intended for use by state officials only, but the second was developed with the public in mind. Today there are seven guest rooms in the original structure, plus several more in adjacent additions, nearby cabins and Creekside Lodge — all part of the State Game Lodge complex. Wherever they sleep, most guests drift through the original lodge.

With its dark woodworking, hardwood floors and Nystrom fireplaces, the lobby feels both historic and inviting. There’s usually an artist-in-residence at work here. In a pleasant lounge just off the lobby a portrait of President Dwight Eisenhower hangs over the fireplace. He stayed at the lodge in June 1953.

Small as it is, this may be South Dakota’s most famous hotel. It also ranks high among the state’s very best restaurants. You’ll be hard pressed to top the lodge’s smoked chicken fry bread as an appetizer, followed by an entrÈe of buffalo filet mignon wrapped in bacon. Waiting for dinner, you may wander and see how the building was expanded and altered, mostly in back, to accommodate more diners, and to meet Americans with Disabilities Act codes. The building’s original lines are clearly discernable. The lodge is open through October 31 and the Creekside Lodge, just across the lawn, remains open year-round.

Spearfish Canyon Lodge

A perfect fall day at Spearfish Canyon Lodge might include a breakfast of trout and eggs and a hike along the ’76 Trail to the canyon rim.

Spearfish Canyon Lodge is a new-era lodge built in 1995. It’s 13 miles south of Spearfish at Savoy, where the canyon widens and sunshine streams in. A perfect fall day here might begin with a walk across the road to the Latchstring Restaurant, featuring a traditional canyon breakfast of trout filet, two eggs, roasted red potatoes, and toast. This breakfast is listed in the menu as the Little Spearfish although there’s nothing little about it. Thus fortified, you may be ready for a strenuous hike to the canyon’s rim by way of the ’76 Trail. The trail climbs 1,000 feet in three-quarters of a mile, and begins just steps from the lodge’s front doors. Gentler trails lead to photogenic Roughlock Falls and Spearfish Falls or to trout fishing venues; there’s lots of canyon variety to experience from this point without getting into your car. Evening is time to relax by the fireplace in the impressive high-ceiling lobby. There’s a lounge just off the lobby and there’s no telling whom you could meet. Well-known guests have ranged from pioneering primatologist Jane Goodall to the late comedian Robin Williams.

Guest rooms feel like those in a hotel. Some are full suites with gas fireplaces, outdoor balconies and Jacuzzis. Few hotels in the world offer window views matching these, with towering limestone cliffs and the brilliant yellows and golds of autumn birch and aspen. All rooms are equipped with TVs if, for some reason, you need to detach from the canyon and plug into a blander world.

Though the lodge is just 22 years old, people have traveled to this spot in the canyon for overnight lodging for 101 years. There are some parallels between Savoy and Hisega. In 1909, the very year Doane Robinson built the lodge along the Crouch Line rails, Glen Inglis of Deadwood turned a former sawmill structure into a little inn right next to the Spearfish Canyon railroad tracks. Similar to the campers at Hisega, Inglis used his own name (and his wife’s) to come up with a new word.”Glendoris” was the inn’s original name, changed to Latchstring Inn by new owners a few years later. It stood exactly where the restaurant of the same name stands today.

The inn was a one-story, rambling affair that couldn’t be called a lodge. It claimed as much authentic Black Hills charm as any building, with its odd artifacts, crooked doorframes and wonderful cliff-side dining room. The much-loved inn served railroad travelers until a flood washed away the tracks in 1933, and guests who arrived by the canyon highway until Latchstring was razed in 1989.

Buffalo Rock Lodge

The Buffalo Rock Lodge was constructed with great spruce logs and mammoth pine timbers.

Another newer structure is Buffalo Rock Lodge, which opened in 1999 on Playhouse Road north of Custer State Park. If builders and owners Art and Marilyn Oakes seem remarkably astute as hosts, they come by the attribute naturally. Marilyn, C.C. Gideon’s granddaughter, worked some of Gideon’s possessions into the dÈcor, including a beautiful Navajo rug he purchased and made part of the State Game Lodge’s look during President Coolidge’s stay. If you want to hear stories about early-day Custer State Park, Mount Rushmore, Wind Cave National Park, Iron Mountain Road and the Needles Highway, this is the place. If Black Hills history isn’t your thing (although that could change while you’re here) ask Art and Marilyn how they created this impressive structure with great spruce logs, and mammoth ponderosa pine timbers that support an interior balcony. The fireplace is their masterpiece, comprised of many varieties of native stone plus some amethyst.

Mention a place you want to visit and Oakes will print her own recommended itinerary.”We’re very involved with our guests,” she says.”When people call to inquire about us, I tell them that fall is the best time to visit. There are fewer people in the Hills. We’ll get that one frost in September, then after that comes our beautiful Indian summer.”

Any time of year a highlight for guests is Buffalo Rock Lodge’s own perspective of Mount Rushmore, viewed from across 3 miles, thrust high above forests and lesser granite outcrops. The four faces can be seen from the lodge’s big porch and from two of the three guest rooms. Those rooms are spacious, beautifully decorated and TV-free. Guests awake to one of Oakes’ breakfasts, such as her Buffalo Rock Lodge French toast, and they turn in having sampled one of her evening desserts.

Leaving Buffalo Rock Lodge, driving past a natural formation that inspired its name, you feel like you’ve enjoyed all of the contemporary comforts of the Black Hills, yet also glimpsed the more rustic hills that C.C. Gideon knew and loved.

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

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Meeting the Need

By Rebecca Johnson

In December of 1996, Dallas and Mary Dietrich had their future planned. The Keystone couple owned four businesses in the Black Hills. Their daughter Dawn and son-in-law Joe Krutzky would soon move from Orlando to manage the couple’s two souvenir shops. Their son Deric, a junior at the University of South Dakota, planned to run their Rapid City and Spearfish ski equipment shops after graduation. But a horrific accident changed all of that.

On Jan. 4, 1997, the entire family was taking Dawn and Joe to the Omaha airport, but blizzard conditions on Interstate 90 made visibility difficult. Dallas drove 35 miles per hour as they neared Alexandria and Mary unbuckled her seatbelt to watch the shoulder. Suddenly, a semi rear-ended them at 75 miles per hour.

“He scooted us one-and-a-half football fields after he hit us,” Dallas says.”So all three of the kids were killed in the back seat and I was crushed between the steering wheel and seat.” Mary suffered non-life threatening broken and cracked ribs, but Dallas had no radial pulse.”They pretty much saved my life in Mitchell with the operation they did on my chest,” Dallas says. He was flown to Rapid City Regional Hospital the next day and rehabbed back and spinal cord injuries for six weeks. Dallas had some use of his legs for a while but now uses a wheelchair.

“With our plans kind of down the toilet, we were sitting around wondering what to do,” Dallas says. He had often dreamed of creating a children’s summer camp”up in the hills.” Mary saw the old Otho tin mine, 4 miles southeast of Keystone, for sale in a real estate magazine.”She said, ‘Why don’t you just buy yourself a town?’ She was joking but I didn’t know that,” Dallas says.”I couldn’t sleep; I just thought about it and thought about it. We came out here and thought, ‘What better way to memorialize the kids than to purchase this place and have people enjoy it for generations to come.'”

The couple bought the mine, established in 1892, dilapidated buildings and all.”Oh man, they were in bad shape,” Dallas recalls.”There were four of them: the bunkhouse, cookhouse, supervisors’ cabin and office. We put foundations under them and my father-in-law and my dad both said, ‘What are you doing? Just level them and start over again.’ But I just felt that this was history.”

As Dallas and Mary worked on their little town, their vision and mission changed. Dallas had long advocated for the disabled. Since 1979 he’s helped organize Black Hills Ski for Light, an event that allows people with disabilities to enjoy cross-country and downhill skiing. The couple recognized the need for accessible vacation options and felt obligated to make their resort available to anyone.”But to get the buildings on the National Historic Register and, at the same time, make them fully accessible was quite a trick,” Dallas says.”It took a lot more time and effort and a lot more money that I ever anticipated, but we got the job done.”

The first group stayed at the resort, now called Meeting the Need, in September 2003 and the Otho tin mine was added to the National Historic Register in 2004. Grants, donations, and volunteers made it possible, and they still operate with no paid employees.

The resort has 23 beds in the original buildings and two new walled tents, but they can accommodate more. There are places for tents and small RVs. Wooden boardwalks connect everything.”Recently we finished the tree house that’s 12 feet in the air. It’s got a 200-foot ramp so little kids in wheelchairs can wheel up and spend a night there, so that’s pretty cool.”

The Dietrichs charge $25 per person per night and guests have access to the fire pit and a few horses.”We have a number of tourist facilities, like Reptile Gardens, the 1880 Train and Crazy Horse, that provide free participation to our guests. And we own an old time photo place so that groups that have disabled family members can get an old time photo,” Dallas says.”It’s pretty affordable for most folks and, of course, if there’s somebody with disabilities that can’t afford it then we would waive all charges.” He’d specifically like to offer free stays to South Dakota’s disabled veterans as a way of giving back.

Meeting the need is open May through September and they still have openings for this summer. Able-bodied guests are welcome, but they give preference to those with disabilities. Call (605) 666-4610 or email dallasdietrich@hotmail.com to make reservations.

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MoRest in Mobridge

By Ruth Steil

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the March/April 2009 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.

A few years ago, Kelly Kemnitz and her husband, Brent, moved back to their hometown of Mobridge to run the MoRest Motel. The 27-room, 1950s vintage motel was more than a piece of property to Kelly. Her parents, Denny and Glenda Palmer, owned the motel for over 25 years; Kelly and her brother were raised there.”People who stay at the motel remember me as a little kid,” she says.

The Kemnitz family, which includes four children, Michael, Jeffrey, Kathryn and Elizabeth, live in a three bedroom house attached to the motel. Brent has a degree in landscape design and managed a garden center before the Mobridge move. During the spring and summer months the family didn’t see much of him. Now he and Kelly work together every day.”It’s a mixture of running a motel and caring for family,” says Kelly.

They open the office each day at 8 a.m. Most of the motel cleaning is done by employees, but the Kemnitzes wash all the linens themselves except for the sheets, which are sent out.”Every day is different,” Kelly says.”If there’s been a group who’s been here for a while with all the bedspreads, blankets and towels I’ll be washing all day.” Brent also operates MoPro Walleye Guide Service. That’s no chore for him since he loves to fish. He’s out fishing as soon as the ice starts breaking up,” Kelly says. Brent doesn’t have to go far. They can see Lake Oahe from the kitchen window.

Their customers come from South Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Nebraska to fish. Many have been coming for years.”We usually know most of the people who stay at the motel,” Kelly says. Some evenings the Kemnitzes and their guests gather to talk about the ones that got away and cook the ones that didn’t. Here is Kelly’s recipe.

Kelly’s Pan Fried Walleye

Walleye filets
Flour
Eggs, beaten
Boxed potato buds
Seasoned salt
Vegetable oil

Rinse walleye filets in water. Dip fish into flour, then eggs, then potato buds. Fry in oil until golden brown. Season generously with seasoned salt. Serve with tartar sauce, cocktail sauce or both.

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Buffalo Ridge Resort

Gary’s School for the Blind is now a top-notch resort

By Paul Higbee

Historic buildings and the small-town setting give Buffalo Ridge a unique ambiance. The property is also attracting new business enterprises.

Long ago American Indians carried rocks to a designated spot on a hillside, west of present-day Gary. No one knows which native people they were, nor in which century they lived. With the rocks they created a great replica of an arrow. Does their artwork mark a burial ground, or did it perhaps point to a gulch flush with game? Roger Baer, active in the Gary Historical Association, has done some investigation and thinks the arrow could be a kind of compass indicating the region’s prevailing winds — northwest to southeast, and southeast to northwest.

If so, the arrow has proven strangely symbolic in the 21st century. Wind is a powerful force in Gary today, having delivered employment at renewable energy companies here: Broadwind Energy, Dakota Wind, Airstream Renewables. Wind industry profits even saved the original South Dakota School for the Blind campus in Gary. Thanks to Joe Kolbach, owner of Dakota Wind, the campus was transformed in 2009 to become the Buffalo Ridge Resort and Business Center.

Satisfied guests like the quiet setting, an atmosphere that feels like a bed and breakfast, a large patio set up for barbeques, and 50 pretty acres. Kolbach brought back the campus lake, which is actually a damming of Lac Qui Parle Creek — the only eastern South Dakota stream rapid and cold enough to support trout. Guests say they can sense history in the stately buildings, especially in the web of tunnels that visually impaired students once walked daily between buildings.

In the 1870s, when only a handful of people lived on this glacial ridge that runs along the South Dakota and Minnesota border, the ridge offered good soils, stands of burr oak and other timber, and springs feeding clear, rapid creeks. Their setting, early residents believed, was perfect as a welcoming gateway to Dakota Territory. They sprang into action and built a town as the Winona-St. Peter railroad extended its rails west into the territory in 1872. First the fledgling community went by the name Headquarters because it was where the railroad based its construction operation, or by State Line because it sat right on the border. Minnesota was the only state in the equation then, because South Dakota statehood wouldn’t be achieved for nearly two more decades. The name Gary stuck after postal agent H.B. Gary delivered the first U.S. mail by train in autumn, 1872. By 1873 regularly scheduled trains were carrying passengers and freight.

By 1889, the year of statehood, some 650 people called Gary home. Local historian Eldeen Baer says brick making was an emerging industry then, as was a form of tourism. Hunters rode the rails into Gary for waterfowl and prairie chickens prior to the pheasant’s introduction to South Dakota.

In 1894 Doane Robinson, future state historian, became publisher of the newspaper, the Gary Interstate. As state historian in the 1920s he would be credited for first proposing a mountain sculpture in the Black Hills. In the 1890s, on the opposite end of the state from where the Rushmore carvings would take form, Robinson proposed a much different scheme. After Gary lost county seat status to Clear Lake in 1895, Robinson began advocating for the state to commit to a South Dakota School for the Blind, to be built on former county courthouse property a couple blocks north of Gary’s business district. As time would prove, Robinson possessed a knack for pushing big projects toward fruition. Ground was broken for the school’s construction in 1899 and students were on campus in 1900. Over the next 25 years, in addition to the original administration/classroom building, girls’ and boys’ dorms were built, along with a power plant connected to a laundry. Also vital to the school’s operation were a barn and other agricultural outbuildings, recalls Baer, who worked in the school’s kitchen in the 1940s. On-site crops, an apple orchard, cows, pigs, and chickens made for healthy, home-grown meals.

George Selken of Sioux Falls was among the students who lived at the school in the 1940s and’50s, when enrollment averaged 40 or so.”I was there nine months a year for 12 years,” he says.”The way they’ve brought it back is fabulous. It blows my mind, but of course a lot of the students aren’t alive to ever visit it.”

That’s because the school moved its services from Gary to Aberdeen nearly half a century ago, in 1961. Selken says he can count most of his living schoolmates on his fingers. One is Dorothy Fiala, class of 1953, now residing in Browns Valley, Minn. She attended the resort’s grand opening, came back for a barbeque in August, then returned in September with her husband, five adult children, and three grandchildren. It was important, she thought, for her children to fully understand her years at Gary.

Fiala lost her sight at age 11 after contracting both polio and the measles. Just months later she left the family farm near Sisseton for a new world at Gary.”Big changes, of course,” she remembers.”Living in a dorm, the rules of the school, an exact time to be up every morning. Everything was regimented and I came to like that. The structure was a big help in getting my life together.”

She recalls the regimentation in detail: up in the morning at 6:30, lined up for breakfast at 6:50, standing next to her chair in the dining hall at 6:57, taking her seat at 7. Assembly began at 8, followed by classes at 8:30. Girls took walks around the block clockwise, boys counterclockwise. Younger children were in bed at 8 and older ones at 10.

Not that there weren’t whispered conversations after lights out. As would be expected, students found any number of ways to occasionally bend or break rules. Some had favorite hiding places near the school where they’d go to smoke. At least once a group of boys climbed the Gary water tower. As for the tunnels, Fiala laughs,”Thank goodness those walls can’t talk.”

After the school relocated, part of the campus served as a privately owned retirement center for several years. But the buildings were mostly abandoned after 1980. Once in a while, kids broke in to look around, as did raccoons and squirrels. Human visitors started a campfire in the old school auditorium and charred the floor. The outdoors had also changed dramatically after Lake Elsie was filled in, following a drowning soon after the school closed.

So, on a given day, the campus could see vacationers checked into some of the resort’s 19 guest rooms, along with students training across the yard (or through the tunnels) at the administration/classroom building. Meanwhile a meeting could be underway in the former school auditorium, now called the ballroom, and an outdoor wedding could be happening alongside Lake Elsie.

EDITOR’S NOTE ñ This story is revised from the Jan/Feb 2010 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order this back issue or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.