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Stopping the Green Glacier

By John Andrews

Cedar tree encroachment is becoming a problem in the Missouri River valley, choking out native species and reducing available forage for cattle.

WE STOOD HIGH ATOP a ridge on Rich and Sara Grim’s ranch in Gregory County. The Missouri River below looked like a wide blue ribbon stretching from horizon to horizon. A gentle northwest breeze made the afternoon’s 91 degrees feel like 75. Cattle stood on a point along the river munching prairie grass, surrounded by the remnants of a thick grove of cedar trees.

“My nemesis,” Sara Grim said as she grabbed the soft branch of a cedar and began picking at its prickly needles.

She’s not the only rancher who’s grown to despise these hardy trees. Landowners along the Missouri River — especially in the four south central counties of Gregory, Charles Mix, Lyman and Brule — have slowly watched valuable pastureland succumb to eastern redcedars, which have fruitfully multiplied for decades, marching steadily north from Texas, through Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska, and now South Dakota. Farmers and ranchers in those southern states have long fought a losing battle against cedars, but many experts see South Dakota as the cedar frontier, the place where maybe the encroachment can finally be stopped. But to do so, landowners are having to get out of their comfort zones and reclaim acres through a force we’ve all been taught to fear — fire.

*****

HOMESTEADERS WHO POPULATED the central Plains in the 1800s were awestruck by the lack of trees. But in ravines and other protected areas stood eastern redcedars. A member of the juniper family, eastern redcedars are native to much of the eastern United States. In poor soil, they may never grow larger than a bush, but under ideal conditions they can reach 30 or 40 feet.

Sara Grim has become a staunch supporter of prescribed burning to control cedar tree encroachment.

They are drought tolerant and among the most important windbreak species on the Plains, qualities that eventually made cedars ideal for planting in shelterbelts. They can also reproduce prolifically, thanks to the birds and other small animals that ingest the tiny blue berries that sprout from a cedar’s branches. Studies have shown that the seeds pass through a bird’s digestive tract in 30 minutes, leading trees to sprout near their parent trees or along fence lines where birds might perch. Years of unchecked reproduction have led to cedar groves with canopies so thick that no vegetation can grow beneath. That decrease in forage worries cattle ranchers.

Sean Kelly, a South Dakota State University Extension Range Management Field Specialist based in Winner, says that every 1 percent increase in tree cover leads to a 1 percent loss in forage production.”It’s just a slow green glacier moving north,” Kelly says.”You see one or two out there in your pasture, and then five years later it’s 15 or 20. Before you know it, you’re trying to catch up and stay ahead of the curve. It’s hard for a rancher to stay in business very long if all they have is cedar forest and no grazing opportunities. And it can really start to snowball. If you’re not adjusting your stocking rates accordingly, it starts to spiral.”

Landowners began to act in 2011 when Doug Feltman asked the Natural Resources Conservation Service to survey his ranch south of Chamberlain to determine the impact of cedar trees. Using a series of five photographs of a north facing slope taken between 1981 and 2011, researchers determined that an area that once supported 10 cows could now barely support three. Feltman’s productive potential had decreased 70 percent due to cedar encroachment.

The NRCS then looked at neighboring Gregory County. Through aerial photography, maps, GPS and field work, researchers confirmed that 30 percent of the county was covered with a heavy to medium encroachment of cedar trees, judging by average trunk diameters.

A survey of 109 Gregory County landowners revealed that 80 percent were concerned about cedar encroachment. It also indicated that they were interested in learning more about prescribed burning.”Fire is the most economical way of controlling cedars, especially if you don’t have thick encroachment yet,” Kelly says.”When it was Native Americans and buffalo out here, natural wildfires kept invasive species like this at bay. Without that element of fire, they’ve been able to take over and keep spreading. That’s why we’re trying to reintroduce prescribed fire.”

Members of the Mid-Missouri River Prescribed Burn Association create a fire line to help keep a burn under control.

After a series of meetings that began in the spring of 2012, the Mid-Missouri River Prescribed Burn Association (MMRPBA) was officially incorporated in 2016. The organization is landowner-driven and governed by a seven-member board, all of whom own land within its four-county coverage area. Integrating guidelines from several government agencies and university experts, the association established a lengthy and detailed protocol that dictates precisely when and how they will initiate a burn.

“It’s a 15-page burn plan,” says Kelly, who also serves as vice president of the MMRPBA.”On a new burn unit, it’s easily a yearlong process.”

Every burn begins with an initial meeting between one or two board members and the landowner, who also must join the association and attend a prescribed burn on another member’s property before receiving burn services on his or her ranch. The group conducts four or five field visits throughout the year to determine the severity of cedar encroachment and identify other factors that will affect a potential burn: Where can they create fire breaks? Is any shearing needed? Are there hazards, such as power lines? Can safe escape routes be planned?

Once those questions are answered, work begins on the ignition plan. They determine how large the crew should be and what equipment will be needed. If possible, they try to incorporate one or two other landowners to utilize natural fire breaks. If a burn is planned all the way to the river, they work with the Department of Game, Fish and Parks and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Then it’s a matter of waiting for the right weather. Kelly says they generally follow the 80-20-20 rule, which calls for temperatures no hotter than 80 degrees, at least 20 percent humidity and wind under 20 miles an hour. Those parameters mean that March, April and May are prime burning months, followed by a few opportunities in the fall.

After years of preparing, perfect weather arrived in April of 2016. The association was ready for its first prescribed burn on the Grim ranch.

*****

SARA GRIM WAS A girl on horseback, helping her father move cattle through the river breaks of the family ranch. When they came to a grove of cedars, she got off and led the horse through. That’s when a cedar branch caught on the saddle horn and broke the latigo.

“Now that’s a memory,” she laughs.”I haven’t thought about that in years. I don’t remember how he dealt with that. We had bad cedar trees back then and the cattle would get in them. It was hard to get them out; we had to crawl or lead the horse through. My father was noticing a problem with cedar trees, but nobody knew what to do. We all hoped it would just go away on its own, but it didn’t.”

An aerial photograph shows the darkened patches of the Grim ranch treated by prescribed burn in May of 2023.

Grim’s grandfather, William Sutton, arrived on this patch of land in 1929. He was working for the Yeoman Mutual Life Insurance Company, which had ended up with the ranch after its original owners, the Jackson brothers (also owners of the vast Mulehead Ranch), went under. Sutton came from Iowa and within a couple years purchased the ranch from the insurance company. His ranch brand became the Y-S, for Yeoman and Sutton.

When Grim’s father Billie Sutton, a popular local politician, died in a farm accident in 1982, Grim and her brother came home to help their mother manage the ranch. Eventually they decided to split it in half. Grim and her husband work about 3,600 acres of rough river break country mostly dedicated to cattle that have slowly seen their grass get choked out by cedars.

About 10 years ago, the Grims began working with David Steffen, a retired NRCS employee living in Burke, on a Conservation Stewardship Program that focused on grassland management. The program included the idea of cedar control through burning.

Grim was still working in the county treasurer’s office, where she spent 27 years.”One day, Dave came into the courthouse and said, ëSara, what are we going to do about this green glacier?'” she recalls. He had brought an overlay showing the cedar encroachment in Gregory County. The Grims had helped develop the county landowner survey along with Steffen and were interested in prescribed burning, so they got involved.

They quickly learned that education is paramount.”I’ve talked to so many people who are just unaware. They look at those trees growing in the river hills, and they think it’s beautiful, but there’s nothing growing underneath. There’s no grass, no feed, and we’re losing ground.”

The association identified a section of the Grim ranch and formulated a burn plan. The Grims participated in a few controlled burns with local fire departments to prepare.”They were small experimental burns, and we were scared out of our minds,” she says.”I didn’t sleep for a week. It was very scary. For years if anyone saw a fire you put it out.”

But when they dropped the match on that April day, the association was in complete control. Flames roared and smoke billowed high into the sky. When it was all over, 340 acres of thick cedar forest had burned. Just as importantly, the blaze sparked confidence in the volunteers who were learning to manage such a destructive force.”You have to respect it, but you don’t have to fear it like you used to,” Grim says.

*****

PETE BAUMAN HAS been helping people get comfortable with fire for nearly 25 years. When he began, the focus was on using fire to help manage land enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program. After he started working for SDSU in 2012, his efforts shifted to working with multiple organizations on creating classes where landowners could be introduced to fire.

Cedars produce thousands of berries that are dispersed by birds and other animals.

“There was just this general idea that South Dakotans had a fear of fire,” Bauman says.”But over the years, it became very clear that people didn’t have a fear of fire, they had a disconnect with fire. There was no innate fear. It was more like we forgot how to understand it.”

Bauman says the prairie evolved with three things: fire, grazing and climate. Indigenous people recognized the value of fires and ignited them to stimulate the regrowth of native grasses that would, in turn, attract the great bison herds.”It’s nature’s wonderful reset button,” Bauman says.”Healthy prairies really are not damaged by fire at any time of the year because native plants come back. Fire stimulates native plant growth, it recycles nutrients, it definitely stimulates total production, seed production and seed viability. Pollinator plants thrive post-fire, which then creates insect habitat. They utilize that smorgasbord of nectar that’s been created. When that all functions well, you’ve got the foraging animals. Those benefits just build up the line. It’s when we throw exotic species into the mix that makes the timing of fire so much more important.”

He says the goals of fire today are to control, reduce or eliminate exotic species like brome, bluegrass, Canada thistle and sweet clover.”Now we have to look at fire as a specific tool that has to do with timing, intensity and duration, very much like grazing. We have to apply fire not as a hammer but sometimes as a scalpel and understand what the objective is of each individual fire, and that’s different than it would have been 250 years ago.”

For the past three years, landowners have received hands-on training at fire schools that Bauman has supervised throughout eastern South Dakota. Bauman serves as the”burn boss” while attendees assume other leadership roles that a prescribed burn would require.”The coolest thing about prescribed fire is we’re in control,” he says.”We don’t ever have to drop the match. From the moment we start to the moment we stop, it’s about control, control, control, which makes the fire the tool. The tail doesn’t wag the dog. Our mantra is that we want you to be bored on your fire. If you’re bored, your fire is doing exactly what it should do. We don’t want the amped up, excited chaos associated with fire response. We want clear thinking, well planned, well executed, boring fires.”

However, Bauman says a boring fire isn’t enough for cedar infestations.”What those folks need to do to save their ranches requires a higher level of risk and coordination and fire intensity,” Bauman says.”The schools that we do help lay the foundation for those folks to build their skills, because it’s a different kind of fire. If you have a boring fire trying to kill cedar trees, you’re probably not going to kill many trees.”

*****

WE SPENT TWO HOURS traversing the vast Grim ranch by UTV. The gray skeletons of cedars burned in that first fire in 2016 are finally beginning to fall. Charred trunks and trees that sport splashes of brown amongst the green branches show evidence of the 530-acre burn they held on their West River pasture in May of 2023.

Native plants such as snow-on-the-mountain have begun to re-emerge on patches of land treated by prescribed fire.

“Oh, look at that switchgrass,” Sara Grim said, stopping the side-by-side so we could examine the new shoots already emerging, just three months after their most recent burn. Big bluestem waved in the breeze. The white flowers of snow-on-the-mountain contrasted against the blackened trunks of cedars that will eventually topple over.

That spring burn had been planned for seven years. In the meantime, the MMRPBA has kept busy with other fires. The group burned 688 acres in 2017, 271 acres in 2018 and 314 acres in 2020. Covid, drought and other hiccups put a hold on burning for a few years, but in 2023 they rebounded by burning roughly 6,000 acres. There are 10,940 acres on the books for prescribed burning in 2024.

Grim’s ranch is very near the heart of South Dakota’s cedar encroachment, but Kelly says the spread is evident, especially along the Little White River in Todd and Mellette counties and the Cheyenne and James River valleys. Its leading edge seems to be along Interstate 90, where groups are already experimenting with prescribed burns and working to form burn associations.

Sheldon Fletcher, with the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe’s Environmental Protection Office, has begun holding meetings and oversaw a 30-acre prescribed burn after traveling to watch the MMRPBA in action. Rod Voss, a Rangeland Management Specialist for NRCS based out of Mitchell, has helped with two prescribed burns along the James River.”We’re at a stage here where it would be fairly easy to stop if we can just get our people educated,” Voss says.”A lot of people are recognizing the production impacts, but it’s a hard thing to educate people that a tree can be a bad thing. Out here on the prairie, people like their trees, but a tree in the wrong place is simply a weed.”

That’s something the ranchers of south central South Dakota know all too well. Kelly hopes people in other parts of the state begin to see the benefits of fighting with fire.”It’s not an easy sell, especially in some of these areas where the encroachment is just starting and they’re not really sure if it’s a problem that’s worth spending any time on yet,” he says.”I can understand that, but if you don’t believe me come down and take a look at Gregory County, because this is what you might look like in 40 or 50 years. We’ve got a real opportunity to stop it.”

If they succeed, then South Dakota can be something that Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska could not: the cedar’s final frontier.

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

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From Coach to Congress

By Paul Higbee

Jim Abdnor (center) coached Kennebec’s Legion baseball team before embarking on a state and national political career.

Jim Abdnor talked constantly, but no one in Kennebec had any inkling that their baseball coach would ever go to Washington. Two decades before he ran for the U.S. Senate in a race that drew national attention, Abdnor was simply a kind-hearted farmer who volunteered to coach the Legion team.

Nobody doubted his baseball smarts. He told Jim Cooney to try playing catcher, a position that didn’t appeal to the 9-year-old. But Abdnor, who would eventually gain a reputation as an astute spotter of green talent, recognized something in Cooney.

“I played baseball until I was 19 or 20,” says Cooney. “Always a catcher.”

Coach Abdnor chattered non-stop at the ballpark. And he talked at the coffee shop and the grain elevator and the school. He avoided gossip, however, and he never ranted when things went bad in a ballgame. In those years, the late 1950s and early 1960s, Abdnor almost always dressed like a working man in khaki pants and a green shirt.”It was like he had three sets of the same clothes,” Cooney recalls. The coach wore a mitt during practices but, in his late 30s, he was a bit too stocky to demonstrate proper fielding.

Abdnor eventually became a familiar figure in other South Dakota towns along old Highway 16 — Oacoma, Reliance, Presho, Murdo and Kadoka. He soon grew to understand and appreciate the culture of rural America. He inherently understood that the independent spirit and work ethic that defined the towns could also be found in many of the young people who grew up there.

Abdnor was born in 1923, the son of Sam and Mary Abdnor, immigrants to South Dakota from Lebanon. The couple farmed and ran a Kennebec store. They weren’t the only Lebanese-Americans working hard for a living on the West River plains. Their good friends, Charlie and Lena Abourezk, owned the Abourezk Mercantile store at Mission. The two families got together regularly for Sunday dinners of traditional Lebanese food and to listen to records of music from the homeland.

Abdnor’s parents, Sam and Mary, were Lebanese immigrants who sold groceries in Lyman County.

What’s more, the Abourezks also had a son named Jim, a few years younger than Abdnor. In time, the remarkable careers of the two Jims paralleled each other in uncanny fashion.

As was often true of children in immigrant families, Abdnor found sports as a way to absorb American values and cultural understandings. His Kennebec friends and neighbors were never too busy to support their teams. They also had political connections beyond what you might expect in a town of 400. Kennebec was home to U.S. Congressman William Williamson when Abdnor was a child, and M.Q. Sharpe — governor when Abdnor was a young man. The Lyman County courthouse sat on a hill on the south side of town, and the state capitol at Pierre was only an hour’s drive to the northwest.

Abdnor believed small communities had value, but he knew the economics of rural America were challenging, so he supported the Kennebec grain elevator and civic organizations that moved the town forward. As his political career grew, he made certain to use the Kennebec post office for his mailings — boosting local postal numbers. And it seemed almost as if he kept a roster in his hip pocket of the next generation of movers and shakers.

“If it were not for Jim Abdnor there is no way I could be doing what I’m doing today,” said current U.S. Senator John Thune in a eulogy for Abdnor in 2012. Abdnor first took note of Thune as an outstanding Murdo High School basketball player. While South Dakotans recall Abdnor as anything but flashy, Thune remembered”an understated charisma about him and an optimism that anything was possible.”

People responded to that throughout Abdnor’s life. He left Kennebec to earn a business degree at the University of Nebraska and served two years in the Army during World War II. Then he came home to help run the family businesses, teach history at the high school, and begin a 20-year stint coaching baseball. Soon another kind of work with young people put him on the road, in his spare time, building a network of Young Republican clubs. After World War II, both Republicans and Democrats recognized shifting South Dakota demographics and took action to strengthen their voter bases. In fact George McGovern — who will always be linked with Abdnor in South Dakota history — was crisscrossing the state to rebuild the Democratic party at about the same time Abdnor was connecting with young Republicans.

In 1956 Abdnor decided to seek a seat in the state legislature. Simultaneously, he knew he had to go to work on a very personal problem — a speech impediment that caused him to slur certain words. He feared that people meeting him for the first time in Pierre and elsewhere might think him drunk. Abdnor enlisted the help of a high school teacher, who understood speech problems, and he read books aloud, watching for problem words. His speech improved, although he never defeated the impediment completely. Eventually it became an endearing characteristic for many constituents and political contemporaries who understood that only a remarkable person could speak so poorly and still get elected to office.

He entered the state senate at Pierre in January of 1957, a time when the legislature was all male and not known for transparency. Committee meetings could be closed to the public at the whim of the chairman, and lots of deals were sealed in smoky rooms down the street from the capitol at the St. Charles Hotel. In both state and federal government, Abdnor always told friends in Kennebec, he disliked seeing colleagues vote against their principles in order to win votes later for another bill.

Abdnor in the legislature could be counted on to support public works (especially water projects), electric cooperatives in their territorial fights with public utilities and agricultural development.

Abdnor was reelected to the legislature five times and became president pro tem of the state senate. He ran successfully for lieutenant governor in 1968, following in the footsteps of A.C. Miller, another Kennebec politician and his personal mentor.

As president pro tem of the South Dakota senate, Abdnor handled ceremonial duties while also delving into tough governmental issues.

Then in 1970, his friend who shared his first name and Lebanese heritage, Jim Abourezk, was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as a Democrat. He would represent the state’s old Second Congressional District (generally West River), and it could have been the two Jims running against one another that November. Abdnor sought the Republican nomination for the congressional seat but lost in the primary. Immediately, supporters urged him to try again in 1972, including Phil Hogen, an attorney who had just moved to Kennebec after completing law school at the University of South Dakota. Abdnor knew Hogen from a decade before, when he worked to get Hogen — then a Kadoka High School student — a position as a state senate messenger.

Hogen was among those who campaigned hard for Abdnor, and his story was typical of many volunteers and staff. They met Abdnor as young people and were committed to him for life.”He had a remarkable rapport with young people, and I’m not even sure why,” says Abdnor’s friend and Kennebec attorney, Herb Sundall.”I only know he could sit down and talk to them like no one else I ever saw. Jim never had children himself, never married, so maybe that had something to do with it.”

Abdnor and his young campaigners won the 1972 congressional race. Abourezk, after just 24 months, vacated the Second District seat and ran successfully for U.S. Senate. Abdnor reported to Washington as the only Republican member of South Dakota’s congressional delegation, consisting also of Democrats Abourezk, Sen. George McGovern and First District Congressman Frank Denholm.

He quickly needed to assemble a Washington staff. He soon had a Red Wing shoebox full of applications, many from Capitol Hill professionals who had been working for just-defeated members of Congress. Abdnor, though, decided he wanted his Kennebec friend and campaign organizer, Phil Hogen, to serve as his administrative assistant.

“Jim, I don’t want to do this,” Hogen remembers telling Abdnor when first asked.”But I changed my mind, and the two years I was in Washington were exciting. We’d been there 45 days when AIM occupied Wounded Knee, and we got to be on a first name basis with lots of people in the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the FBI.”

Hogen quickly came to understand he worked for a man who hated paperwork but loved people.”Lots of politicians go home and walk along the street, glad-handing and smiling at everyone they meet. But Jim did that with everyone he met, not just constituents who could vote for him, and he became very well known and liked in Washington.”

Abdnor watched the Watergate scandal engulf Washington from an unusual perspective in 1973 and 1974. Michigan Congressman Gerald Ford became a personal friend, and Abdnor saw Ford quickly elevated from Congress to vice president and, soon, to president of the United States. Three months after Ford replaced Richard Nixon in the White House, South Dakotans re-elected Abdnor, even though Republicans fared poorly nationwide due to the Watergate repercussions.

“For South Dakotans he was the personification of goodness in a rural state,” says Kay Jorgensen of Spearfish, who also grew up on the West River plains and served in the state legislature.”People saw his entire goal being to make individual lives better.”

In Washington, Abdnor was as comfortable shaking hands with Queen Elizabeth as he was on the baseball diamond back in South Dakota.

The state never knew a more accessible congressman, Jorgensen added.”He was someone you could always call. Often he answered the phone himself. And if you agreed or disagreed on an issue, it never affected the friendship.”

But even Abdnor’s most loyal friends wondered if the old coach was up to the challenge of running against George McGovern for U.S. Senate in 1980. McGovern had been the Democratic nominee for president eight years earlier, carried tremendous clout in Washington, and was a polished speaker and debater. How would Abdnor fare in a debate against George McGovern?

As it turned out, McGovern’s debating skills went for naught. The old baseball coach did the political version of an intentional walk: he declined all debates. Rather, he said, he would let his conservative record speak for itself. The national press took notice of the race, partly because of McGovern’s stature and partly because a Republican win would confirm that the party was making a strong comeback six years after Watergate.

Perhaps because it was so high profile, the 1980 Senate race split South Dakota communities and families, at least temporarily.”Although Jim’s mother, Mary, was my godmother, and his uncle Albert was my godfather,” wrote Jim Abourezk in his biography,”I never let that divert my attention from what I could do to campaign — unsuccessfully — for George McGovern.”

Abdnor won a landslide victory, claiming 58 percent of the vote, thanks in part to the Reagan revolution that swept across South Dakota and the national political landscape in 1980.

Though he declined debates during the campaign, Abdnor was not a silent senator. Three weeks after taking office, he spoke powerfully on behalf of a new group of individuals whose lives he hoped to make better. In the House of Representatives he had been an advocate for quality veterans’ health care. Now he discussed a particular category of veterans whose needs were just creeping into national consciousness: former Vietnam War prisoners whose problems, especially mental health issues, might not be evident for years. If symptoms did appear, Abdnor asserted, these veterans deserved prompt attention without waiting to prove their needs stemmed from the war.”We have waited for too long,” he said,”in addressing the unique and often severe problems former prisoners of war and their families face because of their internment and their services to their country.”

Abdnor especially appreciated his appointment to the Senate Appropriations Committee. He was sometimes asked how that worked for a fiscal conservative.”I didn’t spend any more money,” he later told the Sioux Falls Argus Leader.”I just tried to make sure South Dakota got its fair share. I don’t know of any other committee where I could have had as much influence.”

Overseas tours exposed Abdnor to cultures far removed from life on the South Dakota plains.

But he was unsuccessful in winning a second senate term in 1986. His support of the 1985 Farm Bill certainly cost him votes at a time when South Dakota farmers were suffering economically, losing their farms in some cases, and generally skeptical of federal agriculture policy. Gov. Bill Janklow had challenged Abdnor in the Republican primary. Abdnor prevailed over Janklow but the party was divided heading into the general election.

The old Abdnor-Abourezk connection re-asserted itself. Abdnor was defeated in 1986 by Tom Daschle, Abourezk’s former legislative director. Daschle would go on to serve three senate terms before being defeated by Abdnor’s protÈgÈ, John Thune, in 2004.

After leaving the Senate, Abdnor was appointed by President Reagan to lead the U.S. Small Business Administration. He served until after Reagan left the White House in 1989, then came home to South Dakota. He remained a sidelines force in the state Republican Party, and played golf.”Not very well, though,” Sundall says.”But he was always buying a new club that would make him the next Jack Nicklaus.”

He even formed a friendship with his 1980 opponent, George McGovern, who also spent many of his sunset years in South Dakota.”They didn’t agree politically but they respected one another’s honesty,” Sundall says.”Jim said when George told you he would do something, he did it.”

Abdnor also rekindled his love for youth baseball. He lived in Rapid City for several years and was a regular presence at games of the national powerhouse Post 22 American Legion team, even traveling to out-of-town games and out-of-state tournaments.

Baseball diamonds are where many South Dakotans had their last encounters with the senator from Kennebec. He would talk baseball, applaud the good plays and grab the hands of friends old and new.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the November/December 2018 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Drawing the Roundup Years

By Michael Zimny

In the early 1950s, Bert L. Hall was making the rounds of West River ranch and farm country collecting tales of the old days for his Roundup Years: Old Muddy to Black Hills, a cowboy memoir of the halcyon days of fenceless prairie as wide open as the sky — a time as legendary as short-lived, that still exercises enormous power on the American imagination, and at the box office.

While Hall was out mining the memory banks of the first generation of West River pioneers, a young Jack Ashcraft was sharpening his skills as an artist, taking correspondence courses from the Minneapolis-based Art Instruction Schools, famous for their”Draw Me” ads in magazines and comic books — when he wasn’t busy working on the family ranch.

“We lived out south of Kennebec,” recalls Ashcraft. “But my dad liked the Black Hills and he subscribed to the Rapid City Journal. For some reason I always read the newspaper too. Maybe unusual for a young man, but I did. One article sparked some interest and I recall drawing a cartoon of some sort. I put it in an envelope and sent it out to the Journal, and they published it.”

Soon after Jack’s breakthrough, Hall’s research brought him to Lyman County.

“I think everybody in the [West River] country knew Bert Hall,” recalls Ashcraft. “He made it his business to go around and talk to the old pioneers because he wanted their input for his book.”

Hall visited Jack’s grandfather Herbert Ashcraft, who wrote a piece for the book about his homesteading experience in 1904.

Excerpts: “Our first night in Lyman Co. was spent at Tacoma, then the county seat. We asked where the court house was and were told that the county was too poor to have one.”

Apparently due to Jack’s single cartoon in the Journal, Hall arrived with some awareness of his work as an artist. “We made an agreement on how many [drawings] he wanted,” says Ashcraft, “and I took a bunch of notes on what he had in mind.” Six to eight months later,”he had his art work and I had a little bit of money, which made me think that I had died and gone to heaven, because I was actually getting paid for doing what I liked to do.”

Teenage Jack’s drawings document with a stark (if innocent) simplicity some of the rapid changes in West River country over the course of 100 or so years, from the dispossession of Native people to the cowboy’s demise — and hints at the tension between cattle interests and”honyockers” — a pejorative term for homesteaders.

Though now semi-retired, Jack Ashcraft is still an artist. After a long stint in the Air Force, he started a foreign car dealership in San Luis Obispo, California. In the 1970s, he studied automotive design at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, where he would go on to teach. In the late’70s he founded an ad agency in Medford, Oregon, where he lives today. A longtime Saab enthusiast, he also published the niche magazine, the Saab Journal, and he started a mail-order company selling vintage Saab parts. Though semi-retired now, he still reconditions some old parts while his son runs the business, and does some freelance artwork. He and his wife are also avid ballroom dancers. Apparently that Lyman County mettle never left his system.

While Roundup Years never made The New York Times Best Sellers list, it is one of a handful of true cowboy memoirs, written and/or compiled by riders who could remember the days of the wide-open range. Out of print now, it sells for upwards of $200 per copy — a vanishing memorial to a breed that was already galloping into history almost as soon as it got in the saddle. Decades from now, some Old West museum in Tokyo or somewhere will exhibit a copy, opened to a page with a stark black-and-white drawing signed by Jack Ashcraft.

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

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Halverson’s Skies

By John Andrews

Randy Halverson’s fields are his livelihood and his passion. By day he farms 1,300 acres of corn, wheat and milo in Lyman County. But when the sun sets, Halverson swaps his tractor for an arsenal of Canons and high tech gadgetry that produce stunning photos and videos of South Dakota’s night sky.

Halverson got his first camera as a teenager, and experimented with shooting passing storms and the solar system. He spent time as a storm chaser during the 1990s, photographing and licensing his images of thunderstorms and tornadoes. Then he discovered time-lapse photography.”I knew that out here there wasn’t much light pollution, so I thought it would work pretty well as long as the skies were clear,” he says.”I already had the cameras, so I thought I’d try it.”

In a time-lapse video, images are captured slowly. For example, a flower might take two hours to open, but you can watch the entire process in 15 seconds. Since Halverson works mostly at night, he incorporates long exposure photography into his time-lapse videos. A single image is exposed for 20 to 30 seconds, with two or three seconds between each exposure. To add motion, Halverson uses a dolly that slides the camera a quarter to half an inch between exposures. A typical night of shooting lasts three or four hours, leaving Halverson with up to 400 photographs to edit. And the fruits of one evening’s labor? About 10 seconds of a time-lapse video.

People began noticing Halverson’s work when he produced Sub Zero, a 2-minute, 43-second winter time-lapse video shot near his Kennebec farm during a brutal February cold snap. Wind chills plunged to 25 below zero, and Halverson had to regularly place his cameras and computer equipment in coolers filled with hand warmers to keep frost at bay and the electronics functioning. The starry sky, low wispy clouds racing across the horizon and frozen landscape, illuminated by the bright white light of a full moon, created an eerie scene.

Halverson’s time-lapse videos of the night sky became Internet sensations, appearing on wired.com because of their advanced technology and nationalgeographic.com for their natural beauty. At times, the attention nearly overwhelms the soft-spoken farmer.”I thought people might like it, but I didn’t think it would get as much attention as it has,” he says.”A lot of people are interested in time-lapse now, especially if you’re using dollies, where you can get the camera moving. A lot of people haven’t seen that before.”

The Milky Way has always been Halverson’s favorite subject. Most of the videos on his website show the galaxy as it skirts across the night sky between twisted corn stalks and above abandoned prairie homes. His 3-minute, 39-second Tempest Milky Way won Best Overall and Audience Choice at New Mexico’s 2011 Chronos Film Festival, a gathering of time-lapse, slow motion and stop motion photographers.

“I love the way the Milky Way looks,” he says,”but you don’t really get to see it this way with the naked eye.” Few South Dakotans have observed the night sky quite like Halverson. But as long as he roams his fields, camera in hand, more people will glimpse the heavens from a perspective seldom seen.

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

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Cities at the Crossroads

By Paul Higbee

Photography by Chad Coppess


Thirty-some years ago I drove across South Dakota on an autumn evening. Baseball season was over but the AM radio airwaves crackled with news about New York Yankees manager Billy Martin. He had been involved in an ugly incident or offended someone with a remark, and rumors swirled that Yankees owner George Steinbrenner was about to give him the axe — again.

I spent that night in a Chamberlain motel, heard Martin discussed some more on an early morning TV show, then drove a couple miles across the Missouri River to Oacoma for breakfast at Al’s Oasis. Sitting a couple tables away was none other than Billy Martin, no worse for wear despite the public beating he was taking. He laughed with some pals, all of them dressed for hunting. I took Martin’s example to heart: if the manager of the New York Yankees could escape job pressures and grant himself a respite on the prairies and river bluffs of central South Dakota now and then, so should I.

Oddly enough I wasn’t that surprised to encounter Martin at Al’s Oasis. South Dakotans have grown accustomed to running into most anyone there. Know how to tell the difference between a South Dakotan and, say, an Iowan or Californian at Al’s? Watch the eyes. Upon entering the big dining area a South Dakotan will be scanning the room for acquaintances.

If ever there was a state crossroads, Al’s is it, and by extension so are all of Chamberlain and Oacoma. No South Dakotan needs to be reminded where these twin communities lie. Perhaps no other spot on I-90’s 412-mile stretch across the state grabs your attention quite like this one, where the highway drops into the Missouri River valley. Chamberlain, home to St. Joseph’s Indian School and the South Dakota Hall of Fame, sits on the east bank. Oacoma on the west side is smaller, yet holds its own with Cedar Shore Resort and the iconic Al’s Oasis, established in the 1950s when Al Mueller moved his family’s 30-year-old Oacoma grocery business toward the highway.

Hunting and fishing trips beyond count have been planned and later critiqued at Al’s. Boat trailers, as well as pickups transporting hunters, display license plates from across South Dakota and surrounding states. But unlike visitors, many of Chamberlain and Oacoma’s own people see river country recreation as much more than an occasional adventure. It’s central to a local lifestyle that makes leaving hard to imagine.

“I’m a river person,” said Richard Kirkpatrick, who’s also a National Guard recruiter living in Oacoma and working in Chamberlain. Over the years he and his wife Tina, and their three children, have hit the river in the family’s boat for water skiing or just escaping summer’s heat. They’ve fished for walleye and catfish, Kirkpatrick says,”or anything that bites. I like shore fishing, too, just sitting and enjoying the day. There’s always wildlife along the river to watch if you’re not catching fish.”

Pay a Visit to Our Crossroad Cities

Akta Lakota Museum & Cultural Center houses a renowned collection of Lakota, Dakota and Nakota art.


Visitors and residents tend to zip between Chamberlain and Oacoma in a couple minutes via the four-lane, 1970s era interstate highway bridge. Next time you’re traveling down I-90, take a few minutes to enjoy the scenery, grab a piece of pie at Al’s and take in some of the local attractions.

  • Locals never stop thinking up new ways to put their impressive stretch of water to recreational use, like River City Racin’, an annual hydroplane race, and the Chamberlain-Oacoma Chamber of Commerce‘s ice fishing tournament.
  • Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery made camp along the river just below the future Oacoma town site in September 1804. Chamberlain’s I-90 rest stop at mile marker 264 offers museum-quality displays interpreting Lewis and Clark’s visit, and sits atop a bluff with a stunning view of the river and the location of the Corps’ campsite on the other side.
  • The pretty school grounds of St. Joseph’s Indian School, site of the excellent Akta Lakota Museum and Cultural Center, are another major destination. Don’t miss Our Lady of the Sioux Chapel, where Oscar Howe’s powerful Indian Christ tapestry hangs.
  • Located on the Missouri River, Oacoma’s Cedar Shore Resort was bound to be a great destination for boaters, fishermen, and hunters. What’s more, it’s gained popularity as a centrally located place to rendezvous for meetings and conventions, regularly drawing conferences of 1,000 or so.
  • The South Dakota Hall of Fame in Chamberlain honors South Dakotans who made national or international names for themselves in politics, sports, entertainment, journalism and other fields. It also includes men and women whose fame never extended much beyond their hometowns, but whose lifetime work permanently enhanced those communities and improved the lives of future generations. There’s something wonderfully South Dakotan about this hall: an acknowledgement that greatness can take you far away or keep you close and devoted to home.


Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the March/April 2011 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.



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Video: Sub Zero in South Dakota

Lyman County farmer, Randy Halverson, was featured in our current issue of South Dakota Magazine for his stunning images of South Dakota’s night sky. His keen eye and sophisticated equipment allow him to capture details that are rarely seen by the naked eye. His favorite technique is long exposure photography, which is then incorporated into time-lapse videos.

Almost a year ago to this date, Halverson set up his camera near his Kennebec farm during a brutal cold snap. Wind chills plunged to 25 below zero, and Halverson had to regularly place his cameras and computer equipment in coolers filled with hand warmers to keep frost at bay and the electronics functioning. The starry sky, low wispy clouds racing across the horizon and frozen landscape, illuminated by the bright white light of a full moon, created an eerie scene.

You might want to put on an extra blanket before you watch it.

To see more of Randy’s videos, visit his website, DakotaLapse.

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Visions of the Past

By Christian Begeman

Abandoned farmhouses and barns intrigue me. I realize that a lot of folks see them as eyesores or maybe even negative signs of the times. I see them as pieces of history. I imagine stories of the joys of living the country life as well as stories of hard times on the prairie all wrapped into those weathered walls. When I look at an old, abandoned house I can almost see gathering friends and family chatting on the front step or sitting around the dining room table for a high holiday. I guess part of it is reliving my childhood on the farm. My boyhood home is still being lived in, but my grandparents’ house that stood just a mile away is now gone. I stopped there this summer and walked the old yard I used to mow. I marked the old foundation and where the garage was. It was a bittersweet thing to remember the good times there with my grandparents and family.

The old barns, on the other hand, have much different stories to tell. Stories of daily chores, stories of somehow both loving and hating the farm animals that used the barns. I know our barn would have a lot of stories to tell. I can think of many incriminating instances concerning my brothers and I that demonstrate the old saying;”boys will be boys.” Some of the tamer shenanigans would be goofing off with the newborn kittens in the hayloft while our oldest brother milked the last of the cows, hollering at us every couple minutes to get down and help. There were also epic fights in that barn. Mostly between my older brothers, but I was in my share as well. In fact, the only time I ever remember bloodying anybody’s nose in a fight was in that barn — it was a blind swing over my shoulder in a fit of lost temper. It quickly ended the skirmish, but I think my brother was more surprised than hurt.

I cleaned that barn floor more times than I can count. The worst was in the winter. The western side of barn got so cold that the hot water would freeze on the cement almost as soon as we poured it out of the bucket. I had to be quick in order to sweep it down the drain or it would create an ice rink, which was fun to play on, but created havoc for 40 milk cows to cross over. One winter our drain froze solid and we had to sump pump out the water until June.

It is funny how living those memories didn’t seem like all that much fun at the time. I realize now how important it was to learn how to work and work hard. My brothers and I can now laugh at the old barn stories. Which is a good thing.

All that to say, that when I have time and the light is right, I can’t help but stop and take some photos of old, abandoned buildings found along South Dakota’s country roads and wonder about the stories they could tell.

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

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A Farmer’s Pictures

Today we stumbled upon the website of Randy Halverson, a farmer from Kennebec whose photos and videos of South Dakota’s night sky have been shared around the world.

Halverson raises corn by trade, but does time lapse photography as a hobby. He describes it as the opposite of high speed photography. The exposures are long, and when replayed at a normal speed things appear to move faster. He has shot storm clouds, cottonwoods and the Milky Way passing over a cornfield. The video that’s gotten the most buzz lately is his “Sub-Zero: A Winter Night Time Lapse.” Halverson braved 25-below wind chill to create a 2 minute, 43 second video of the night sky, featuring the constellation Orion passing overhead.

National Geographic called his videos “jaw-dropping.” Watch and you’ll understand why.