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Yes, We Pe-Can

Nut trees can flourish in a sliver of South Dakota, but will their growers ever be more than hobbyists?

Darrell and Martha Ausborn have experimented with nut trees on their 10-acre farm west of Yankton since 2008.

By John Andrews

Dan DeBuhr was 6 years old in the early 1960s when his grandmother returned from a vacation in Texas with two pecan trees. She planted them in the backyard of her Elk Point home — the same patch of land where DeBuhr lives today — not knowing what to expect. “They told her they couldn’t guarantee that they would make it in South Dakota,” DeBuhr says. “And they would never bear fruit.”

Today, motorists passing by on Interstate 29 can easily spot them because they are the tallest trees in town. In fact, measurements taken last June confirm that they are the two biggest pecan trees in South Dakota, both supplanting a 61-foot pecan in Rapid City.

A severe thunderstorm pelted Elk Point with baseball sized hail early last summer, greatly diminishing the year’s pecan crop. But near the end of most Septembers, DeBuhr wages a daily battle with squirrels to collect the prized nuts. The little critters clearly collect their share, evidenced by the tiny trees that spring up from pecans buried around his yard.

We think of more temperate places when we think of pecans, but they have a history in South Dakota. Pecans — as well as hickory, chestnuts, heartnuts, butternuts, English walnuts and maybe even pine nuts — can indeed grow in certain parts of South Dakota, and experimenters are working to create the best varieties for our environment.

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South Dakota is not a robust nut-producing state. Black walnuts are the only nut trees considered native, but John Ball, a professor at South Dakota State University in Brookings, says you can find butternut, American chestnut, English walnut, Manchurian walnut and even pecan, though the growing season is not always long enough to produce nuts. Far southeastern South Dakota, however, is another story.

“It is an unusual part of the state,” says Ball, who is also an SDSU Extension forestry specialist and South Dakota Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources forest health specialist. “We should call it Western Iowa/Northern Nebraska, not South Dakota, and then it would fit. Growing pecans in those states would not be surprising, and southeastern South Dakota is kind of an extension of that. But it’s a rather abrupt line as we move out of there as to where something grows, where something’s a shrub and where something just never makes it at all.”

Our native black walnut provides a good example. “Black walnut is only native to eastern South Dakota, and really the southeast, though there is one population up in Codington County,” Ball says. “But it will even grow in Harding County. I’ve seen some trees out by Union Center and Bison. The difference is the ones down by Yankton and Vermillion can get a couple feet in diameter and 70 feet tall. The ones up in Bison get about 6 inches in diameter and maybe 20 feet tall. So while they can grow there, they grow very slowly. Down in the southeast, you can grow most of the nut trees that can grow out East, though not always as productively and not as quickly. And you have to really work at it. It doesn’t come easily.”

Any discussion of trees and plants and where they might succeed brings to mind the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map, the reference that many gardeners consult before planting. The map is based on a region’s annual average extreme minimum temperatures, with lower zone numbers coinciding with colder temperatures. Much of the northern half of South Dakota lies in Zone 4b (-25 degrees Fahrenheit to -20), though some pockets, including Aberdeen, fall in 4a (-30 to -25). The southern half is largely 5a (-20 to -15), with some areas of 5b (-15 to -10) west of Yankton and around the Black Hills, including Rapid City.

But the map may be irrelevant. Ball says the more important factor for nut trees is the number of frost-free days. “I recommend throwing the zone map out when you get to South Dakota,” Ball says. “The zone maps were first developed in Boston. They started drawing the lines back in about 1927, and they did it without ever coming to South Dakota. The real difficulty is it is based upon only one climatic factor: the annual average extreme temperature, or, essentially, how cold it could get in January. That doesn’t do well here, because what really affects our nut production is our early frost in the fall, late frost in the spring, that cold snap that occurs in April after it’s already been warm or a nice mild fall and then suddenly the temperatures fall to freezing.”

The native range of pecan trees stretches from east Texas and Louisiana up through Oklahoma and Arkansas into portions of Missouri, southern Illinois and southern Indiana. They tend to follow river valleys, extending as far north as the Iowa/Illinois line along the Mississippi River. Those areas are most likely to give pecan trees the minimum 140 frost-free days needed for nut production. In South Dakota, those conditions are most likely to be replicated in the southeast.

Perhaps that’s why the DeBuhr pecan trees have flourished in Elk Point. Three more pecans purchased from Gurney’s Seed and Nursery in Yankton in the mid-1940s tower over Rick Gray’s home just north of Dakota Valley High School near McCook Lake. And Ball knows of a few pecan trees in Sioux Falls that produce nuts every few years. “While we do define areas and which trees will grow and perform well there, no tree has ever read a book,” Ball says. “We always get the outlier, the tree that’s growing where it shouldn’t, yet performing better than anyone would ever expect. And that’s the fun of South Dakota. It’s not like trees grow everywhere, and you really appreciate it when they make it.”

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John Goeden is an agronomist and self-described “collector of cultivars.” When he’s not consulting on corn and soybean hybrids for Channel Seed, he’s tinkering with trees on his 1.8 acres just west of McCook Lake. “My dad was a carpenter, and he loved hardwood trees, particularly walnut,” Goeden says. “That’s probably where it all started. I helped him take out a grove of about 100 walnut trees that were going to get ripped out of the ground and farmed in the late ‘90s. So in some ways, I’m paying for the sins of my father — and myself.”

John Goeden is a self-described “collector of cultivars.” His grove at McCook Lake includes at 25 pecan varieties.

He is particularly interested in pecan and hickory trees. He believes hickories were a prominent part of the river valley landscape until homesteaders began flooding the Plains in the 1860s. “We had a huge mass migration of people from east to west, and they came in wagon trains made of wood and iron,” he says. “When they were making and repairing things, they were all looking for the straightest, hardest, most durable wood they could find, and hickory was it. That’s probably a reason why we don’t have a lot of hickory remnants left. It’s also the best firewood.”

Historically, the Lakota were familiar with hickory from their time living in eastern Minnesota, before they were pushed west. Similarly, many Great Plains tribes had a word for pecan. “That means that they were either trading in pecan or making trips to where they were plentiful, which would be eastern Iowa, Illinois and Missouri,” he says. “They knew pecan.”

Those species command most of his attention. By the summer of 2024, Goeden’s experiments with tree grafting had resulted in at least 25 different pecan cultivars, along with 15 hickory and four English walnut.

Grafting is a tricky process by which two trees are fused together. Scion wood from a donor tree is cut and attached to rootstock so that their corresponding layers of cambium — the main growth tissue located just beneath the bark — align. The graft is then tightly wrapped and kept moist until the tissues begin to grow together.

“We’re probably not going to extend the harvest to Timber Lake,” Ball says. “But they’re trying to improve the quality of the nut. The rule of thumb I always use is the better the nut, the less chance it has of growing here. You’ve really got to work to develop those qualities, and grafting is how we do it. Thank goodness for the hobbyists that are doing that work to help push the limits and extend the higher quality nuts to our area.”

It was a failed graft that led Goeden to learn about the process. “I had planted some English walnuts,” he says. “I had them in the ground nearly 20 years and they produced nuts. Well, if you look at the leaflets you can tell the difference between an English walnut and black walnut. Somewhere along the line — either before I got those trees or perhaps after — the graft died back, and the black walnut took over. That’s what I actually had.”

His interest in grafting led him to the Nebraska Nut Growers Association, an organization that since the early 1970s has worked on grafting nut trees and placing them in the northern landscape. Grafting is particularly beneficial when working with nut trees, because it can dramatically reduce the time it takes to bear fruit. Self-pollinated pecan, oak and walnut trees might not produce nuts for 15 to 20 years. A hickory might take 40 years. “But if you take wood from a pecan tree and attach it to a two-year seedling and it takes, chances are in eight to 10 years you can have a pecan in your hand,” Goeden says. “It takes the memory of that tree it was on and puts it on top of a seedling. It basically cuts the time in half.”

Grafting and selected cross pollination have resulted in dozens of pecan cultivars, each with different nut sizes, bearing times, percentage of nut meat within the shell and cracking ability. Goeden is growing several of them in his backyard. “My goal is to see what we can effectively grow here and what we can’t,” he says. “Pecans and hickories can grow here, and we’ll find out which ones will survive. I’m trying to get the biggest, best nut possible, and the way to do that is to look at a number of cultivars in your own environment.”

Several of Goeden’s grafted cultivars are growing on Darrell and Martha Ausborn’s 10 acres of land west of Yankton overlooking Lewis and Clark Lake. Ausborn is a retired forester who began in private industry in Florida and Alabama. He later transferred to the Bureau of Indian Affairs where he worked as a forester until retirement. 

 He and Martha, an Alabama native, chose the Yankton County acreage because, Martha says, “he needed a place to play.”

To stay busy in retirement, the couple set their sights on nut trees. In 2008 they planted a batch of grafted seedlings that included English walnut, black walnut, pecan, Chinese chestnut, heartnut and butternut. As they’ve experimented, the Ausborns have added cultivars from various nurseries as well as grafted cultivars from Goeden.

“For pecans, we’re about as far north as you can get,” Darrell says. “The trees do okay, but some years there aren’t enough summer heat days for the nuts to mature. Last year they did mature, and this year they are growing. We’ll see how far they make it into the fall. If we get a cool September or an early frost, the pecans won’t be there. But the rest of the nuts do produce.”

A visit to the Ausborns’ grove in early August found healthy hazelnut trees, the nuts still tightly wrapped within flower-like green husks. “You have to hunt for the hazelnuts,” Martha said as she searched the branches. “I like to pick them because it’s like looking for Easter eggs. They lay up underneath the leaves. The husk has to dry and turn brown, and the nut will be loose. When you can touch it and it will spin, usually the last week in August, that’s when you can harvest.”

Dan DeBuhr enjoys pecan trees his grandmother brought to Elk Point from Texas in the 1960s.

The Ausborns also boasted healthy crops of heartnuts, butternuts, English walnuts and Chinese chestnuts. A Korean pine nut tree looked somewhat out of place but seems to enjoy the Yankton County environment. “That was something out of pure curiosity, just to see if it would grow,” Ausborn says. “In about 30 years you might be able to taste a pine nut, so remember it’s here.”

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Nut harvests are modest. The Ausborns spend fall days using homemade equipment to gather, wash and shell their assortment of nuts. Goeden shares his pecans and other nuts with friends and family. They gather every winter with the Nebraska Nut Growers Association for an annual nut evaluation that measures each nut’s size, cracking ability, flavor and quality and quantity of nutmeat. The results help them determine what cultivars are working.

They are also willing to help others. “Without the knowledge and expertise of the Nebraska Nut Growers Association, Darrell and I wouldn’t have had the success that we’ve had,” Goeden says. “Grafting nut trees is an fading art that needs to be passed from one generation to the next in order to push yield potential.”

People like Goeden and the Ausborns will never grow rich from nut production. Ball says a commercial operation in South Dakota is likely not viable. Still, with the right trees, bags of South Dakota-grown hazelnuts or pecans could show up at farmers’ markets and craft fairs. “It’s kind of like farming has gone,” Ball says. “When I was a kid, a family of five could live on a 140-acre mixed farm. Now that’s a hobby farm. Nut production is the same way. It’s hard to get the scale to where you’re actually able to make a living out of it as opposed to supplementing your income. But for a supplement, yes, you can have a hobby that actually pays.”

Dan DeBuhr’s grandmother likely never thought of her tiny pecan trees as a profitable side hustle, but she loved all trees and encouraged her grandson to care for them long after she was gone. “My grandma told me, ‘I’ll never be able to see the pecans, but if you stay here long enough, you probably will,’” DeBuhr recalls. “‘Do me a favor,’ she said. ‘When the trees get big, take a chair on the hottest day, when there’s no wind, and go sit under the trees, because they’ll talk to you.’

“One day in July I was out here working, and it was so hot, no air. So I got a chair and put it right between those trees. All of sudden the leaves were just shaking. That’s what she meant by talking.”

Perhaps they were saying they belong here after all.

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

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Scoping the Missouri

By Cora Van Olson

Members of the South Dakota Ornithologists Union look for birds at Union Grove State Park between Beresford and Elk Point.

Roger Dietrich was scoping along the shore of Lake Yankton when a Rapid City woman approached him with a question about the tiny Ross’s gull, which had been sighted in the area.

“I’ve gone to Alaska twice and I didn’t see the bird there,” she said.”Is it still around?”

Dietrich pointed to a gull, sitting on ice in the middle of the lake.

The Missouri River is a bird-watching paradise. Hundreds of species of ducks, geese, gulls, loons and other birds congregate in parks, woodlands and farm fields that border its 443-mile corridor. But it still helps to know for what you’re looking.

Every habitat attracts different birds, says David Swanson, professor of biology at the University of South Dakota and author of Birder’s Guide to South Dakota, and habitats vary dramatically along the Missouri as it winds from Nebraska to North Dakota.

Following is a guide, from south to north, of habitat patches and the surprises that await birdwatchers, both the serious birders looking for the rarest”lifer” bird and those who are happy spotting sparrows and swallows.

The Adams Nature Preserve attracts wading birds such as blue herons.

Adams Nature Preserve

Southeastern South Dakota

The Adams Homestead and Nature Preserve near North Sioux City includes many trails.”It has a variety of habitats,” Swanson says.”It has an extensive cottonwood forest that borders the river, and there’s also a little lake called Mud Lake that’s attractive to waterfowl. The ring of trees surrounding Mud Lake can be good for woodland birds, too.”

Mud Lake is approximately a quarter mile from the Adams Homestead parking lot, so a brief hike is required to access it. Wooden observation blinds lie along the trail with a view of the lake.

“The other habitat at the park is a restored open prairie,” he says.”It’s one of the few sites in the southeastern part of the state where you can find Eastern meadowlarks. The common meadowlark in South Dakota is the Western meadowlark, but the Eastern meadowlark is expanding its range in the southeastern part of the state and Adams Homestead is one of the places where you can find those.”

Since first being sighted in 2017 by Swanson and his ornithology students, the Eastern meadowlark has made regular appearances in the open-prairie habitat, often with multiple birds singing among the scattered trees.

“I wasn’t aware at the time that Eastern meadowlarks had started to expand their range, and I heard these Eastern meadowlarks calling,” Swanson says.”I go, ‘That is very unusual.’ We kept walking and saw them and everybody in the ornithology class got to see me geek out over it.”

Though birdwatching at the Adams Homestead is enjoyable year-round, it’s best in spring, summer and fall.”Mostly, it’s hiking the trails during migration and seeing a variety of birds at that time,” Swanson says.”It’s lots of warblers and sparrows, so the migration periods are late April to mid-May. Then in the fall, from mid-to-late August into about mid-September is probably the peak for warblers and vireos, some of which migrate all the way down to Central and South America.”

Sparrows that migrate to the southern U.S. and Mexico slightly later in the year can typically be seen at the Adams Homestead from mid-September to mid-October. Along the river and at the lake, birdwatchers encounter ducks and geese, as well as wading birds like herons and egrets.

“In the cottonwood forest, there are Eastern whippoorwills,” Swanson says.”Those are birds that don’t really get too much out of the southeastern part of the state. Of course, they’re nocturnal, so they don’t start calling until it starts to get dark.”

Least terns can be found on sandbars below Gavins Point Dam.

Gavins Point Dam

West of Yankton

Gavins Point Dam, the southernmost project on the Missouri’s system of six dams, is surrounded by unique bird habitats.

During the summer, hundreds of American white pelicans can sometimes be seen near the dam, while on the river itself, there are piping plovers, still considered a threatened species in most of the U.S., and the least tern, North America’s tiniest tern, often seen flying low over the river and hovering before plunging for prey.

“One of the reasons I like birding is the idea that it would be so cool to fly, and least terns are just the best flyers,” says Roger Dietrich, a local authority on ornithology.”They’ll fly and they’ll see a minnow, and then they dive straight down in the water — and splash!”

In winter, the 2-mile-long earthen dam creates an unusual condition for birds and birders.”Some years, when it doesn’t freeze, like lately, there’s been lots of open water above the dam,” Dietrich says.”Some years, we get lucky and even the Lewis and Clark Marina doesn’t freeze over real early. So, that’s a popular spot where some grebes and loons will stop.”

Black scoters, surf scoters, white-winged scoters and long-tail ducks, which are mainly ocean birds, are known to visit the lake and river in winter.

“I tell people from other places that we have those birds here and they’re just not believing it, because they don’t think of the center of the United States as a place where these birds would show up,” Dietrich says.”And when I say they show up every year, usually, for a fairly long period of time, they just can’t believe that we’re so lucky.”

The common loon migrates through the area, as well as a number of gulls — including Sabine’s gulls, kittiwakes, black-legged kittiwakes and even the Ross’s gull, which is associated with the remote arctic. Crest Road, which passes over the dam, is a good place to observe such birds. It requires no special pass or permit.

“Scan for the birds with binoculars or a spotting scope and chances are, you’ll find something different,” Dietrich says.”Sometimes there are huge flocks, and you can spend hours just scoping the birds there,” he says.”So, if you see somebody there with their scope out or binoculars, stop and ask them what they’re seeing. I’d say 99 percent of the people will be glad to point things out to you, and maybe even let you look through their scope to see what they’re seeing.”

Several snowy owls hung out along the dam road a few years ago.”They were feeding on the flocks of coots that were there.” Wintertime also brings large flocks of lesser scaup, which birdwatchers will scan for specimens of greater scaup, a polar bird that tends to prefer saltwater and is rarely seen inland, Dietrich says.

“It’s the same with the big flocks of common goldeneye,” he says.”People try to scope out the Barrow’s goldeneye, which is another species. It’s more of a West Coast bird, but once in a while, we’ll get one here — always a highlight.”

Bald eagles frequent Gavins Point Dam and some now nest year-round in the tall cottonwoods that border the Missouri.”They’re used to a lot of people around and some of the trees they perch in are right along the local roads,” Dietrich says.”You can see them in action, swooping down and picking up fish. I’ve seen eight or nine at a time on the ice up above the dam, eating the dead snow geese they’ve picked off.”

A pair of Barrow’s Goldeneyes at Fort Randall.

Fort Randall

Pickstown

Fort Randall Dam also hosts a large congregation of bald eagles. Below the dam is the Karl E. Mundt National Wildlife Refuge, which provides habitat for the eagles.

Kelly Preheim, a kindergarten teacher in Armour and a well-known local birding enthusiast, especially likes the wooded area around the Fort Randall Dam.”We’re mostly on agricultural grassland in southeastern South Dakota,” she says.”But the dams have a lot of woodland, forested areas, and I enjoy walking on the trails.”

She found 71 bird species on a recent camping trip to Pickstown.”In the morning, oh my goodness, the singing,” she recalls.”My husband’s like, ‘I can’t get any sleep. It’s so loud here!'”

A hike to the tailrace, the channel below the dam that carries water away, will often be rewarded.”Fish that go through the dam come out somewhat stunned in the tailrace,” Preheim says.”Then, all these birds, like gulls and eagles and certain ducks, eat those fish.”

Like nearby Gavins Point, Fort Randall Dam is also home to many types of waterfowl in autumn and winter.”There are a lot of different ducks on the scene, hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands, of different ducks there at a time,” Preheim says.”I saw a brown pelican one time. That’s actually an ocean bird.”

Other surprise visitors at Fort Randall include a yellow-billed loon, typically associated with Alaska and America’s western coast, and a great black-backed gull, which is an Atlantic coastal bird, Preheim says.

Scarlet tanagers are often found in South Dakota but summer tanagers, a rare visitor, might also be seen around Fort Randall.

Pelicans near Big Bend.

Big Bend Dam

Fort Thompson

The best birdwatching at South Dakota’s northernmost dams — Big Bend and Oahe — occurs from April through May and from September to November, according to lifelong birdwatcher Ricky Olson, who lives at Fort Pierre.

Big Bend has fewer access roads and trail amenities than Oahe and the other dams, but it has its own charms. Ospreys nest below the dam and brown pelicans have been spotted.

“Once in a while, in the wintertime, you get a Brant goose at Big Bend,” a seacoast bird.”I run down to Big Bend at least every two weeks in the winter to see what’s there,” Olson says.

Big Bend also attracts smaller goose species, including snow geese and white-fronted geese, both of which are common to the area.”In the fall, it’s neater to go to Big Bend,” Olson says.”Also, the shad and minnow species will be in the shallows then, and you’ll get all kinds of cormorants and pelicans and hundreds of gulls in these frenzies where they’re all feeding, and the gulls are trying to steal from everybody.”

Canada geese along the Missouri River.

Oahe Dam

Central South Dakota

Ring-billed gulls, herring gulls and California gulls may be sighted at Oahe, as well as the arctic tern, a mega-find for birders.

A spectacle occurs during flooding when Oahe Dam’s hydraulic turbines are running.”It’s a feeding frenzy. You get thousands of gulls, maybe 20,000, below the tailrace in a half-mile stretch,” Olson says.”It’s like a snowstorm. Thousands of people come to watch the ‘gull snowfall.'”

Oahe also has cliff-dwellers.”In the sand layers in the cliffs, in the holes, there are barn owls nesting,” Olson says.”They dig their own holes, and often, they’re near where colonies of bank swallows have dug holes.”

In autumn, Sabine’s gull may be spotted.”It’s very pretty. It’s black and white with half a diamond on the wing,” Olson says.”We also get Bonapartes and Little gulls, which is a little gull, and we get some of the big ones. Once in a great while we get the great black-back, which is the biggest gull.”

Gulls breed on a few islands along Oahe, Olson says.”There are only a few places in South Dakota where that happens.”

Another rare visitor to Oahe, among the sea ducks like the scoters and the long tail duck, is the occasional coastal harlequin duck in the tailrace.

“We get loons,” Olson says.”Sometimes we get the Pacific or the yellow-billed or red-throated loon, which are rare for our state.”

Further north on Oahe, retired biology teacher Stan Mack says opportunities are available even in Mobridge’s city limits.”There’s a walking trail along the south side of town. Just follow Main Street to the river and walk west and you’ll see the ducks and geese and gulls that sit on the water.”

Mack says Indian Creek (east of Mobridge) and Indian Memorial (across the river to the west) offer trails and habitat.

Mack doesn’t walk well enough to explore like he once did, but the birds will come to him.”I’m doing a feeder watch for Cornell University. Right now, I’m looking at a collared dove — we never saw them before — and I see about 16 more picking up seeds on the ground.”

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the March/April 2025 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Sharing Nature’s Wealth

Editor’s Note: Sisters Mary and Maud Adams donated the first parcel of their family homestead to the state of South Dakota in 1984. Today, the Adams Homestead and Nature Preserve features walking trails through prairie, forest and riverbank, restored buildings and hundreds of species of flora and fauna. Here’s the story behind its creation from Mary Adams, who died in 2009.

By Cindy Lange

A dream Mary Adams shared with her sister Maud is developing right before her eyes on the family homestead near McCook Lake in the southeastern corner of South Dakota. The sisters, the last descendants of the Adams family, wanted others to benefit from the land as they had. They saw the land as a gift that they should share so others could learn about the area’s history and experience the beauty and tranquility of nature.

Driven by a love of the land and an appreciation for education, the two Union County natives donated the farm to the state of South Dakota. But this isn’t just any farm. It has been in the Adams family since the sisters’ grandparents homesteaded it in 1872. All told it consists of 1,500 acres of prime real estate — an oasis in a bustling commercial development spurred by Dakota Dunes, South Dakota’s newest city.

Now, more than 10 years after the sisters donated the first portion of land and more than a year after Maud’s death, Mary watches with satisfaction as their donation is being transformed into one of the state’s premier recreational areas.

The Adams’ gift is incredibly unique, said Marty DeWitt, a parks and recreation official who has been involved with the project from the start. “I’m not that familiar with all the offers that come across the table of the department,” he said, “but they are typically donations of land — mainly gifts of farmland or land for game production or wildlife production areas.”

Few can compare to the Adams sisters’ gift in scale or value, DeWitt said. It is more dramatic considering the recreational use of the property. “It’s 1,500 acres of prime real estate in one of the biggest booming areas of the state,” he said. “The reason it came about is because they wanted a place for people to learn, enjoy the natural surroundings and experience what the area is all about. Their vision was that it be protected and preserved.”

As the Adams Homestead and Nature Preserve, that is happening. Not only will it be preserved, but it will serve as a valuable green space in an area surrounded by the residential and industrial development of Dakota Dunes and North Sioux City and growth near McCook Lake, he said.

Deciding what to do with the land took some thought, Mary said. “My father had the land and he is gone. My mother had the land and she is gone. My brother, Stephen Adams III, was killed in World War II. So it was just my sister and I,” she said. “My sister and I were left with the decision. It never entered my mind to sell the land. I thought the land was a gift to me and that I had benefited greatly from the land. I thought it should continue to be shared.”

But that thought did enter Maud’s mind. “At the time the land value was extremely high,” Mary said. Maud considered selling the land and giving the money as chairs to the University of South Dakota in Vermillion. “She was very education oriented, as I was. It became then a question … what form of education,” she said. In the end they decided to give it to the state so people of all ages could learn from it.

The sisters contacted the state. “They didn’t have a clue of what we were talking about,” Mary said. She said they talked in general about the land back then. Neither she nor the state really knew what the site would become.

“Maud would be shocked. The place has become alive with plans and work and there’s a state presence,” she said. “I think that this place will be the only intact piece of land of the original settlers in this part of the state. It’s shocking but it’s true.”

A recent visit by two young children and their father convinced her they’ve made the right choice. A little blond haired boy, about 6 years old, had found a half-awake garter snake. He was so excited and went to the house to ask Mary for a jar to put it in. “He was just thrilled,” she said. “When he left, he said, ‘You’ll save any other snake you find for me, won’t you?'”

“Then the little girl found a tree branch that had fallen and was at just the right angle she could jump over it,” Mary said. The girl shouted, “Daddy, watch me again” over and over. “I thought, well that’s the purpose of the park. They were here a very short time and they had fun and they learned from the earth, the sky and what’s between,” she said.

During the early years, the project was known as the Adams Nature Area and was considered a low-intensity recreation area, said DeWitt, who was stationed at Newton Hills State Park but now oversees Visitor Services for the Game, Fish and Parks Division. Now, with the homestead, historic buildings, interpretive elements and eventual recreational programs, it’s climbed a few steps above a nature area.

Federal funding was secured for trails inside the area but private donations and grants have also boosted the project. That money will enable the state to construct limestone trails and primitive footpaths throughout the property, including a bridge across Mud Lake. A group picnic shelter, a visitor information center and interpretive displays, observation blinds and trailside signs to acquaint visitors with the natural and historical aspects of the area are also planned. The Adams project also will be linked with several trail systems including a bike trail from Sioux City, Iowa.

A 13-acre area will be designated as the homestead site. It will feature historic Adams homes and other buildings. Another 30 acres, not far from the area tabbed for the visitor information center, may be used as an agricultural museum, demonstrating how homesteaders managed to survive and the tools they used. Native grasses also are being planted.

Securing federal funds made a big difference. It allowed officials to take the best parts from the two-phase master plan to create a more complete package of features. That reduced the timeframe of the project from 10 to 20 years to about two years.

Mary’s work is also in progress. Her main project involves moving from the historic Shay-Adams house to the original 1880s Adams farmhouse, which she and Maud had moved back to the property. The Shay-Adams house has been there about 70 years. “It’s a house of two houses,” Mary said. The front part of the house — the front room and two upstairs bedrooms — is the old Shay house.

“It sat about where the Dunes country club is,” Mary said. “The old Missouri River was about to cut the old Shay house into the river so my dad put it up on dollies and brought it here,” she said. He added the back part later. Mary grew up in the Shay-Adams house and Maud grew up in the old red farmhouse.

All three children attended the University of South Dakota in Vermillion. The two daughters left to pursue careers in nursing and education.

Their parents continued to live on the homestead. Their father died in 1959 and their mother lived there alone during the 1960s. When she became ill, Maud, a nurse who had lived in New York for some time, returned in the late 1960s to care for her until her death in 1977. Later when Maud became ill, Mary, who was serving as acting dean of the College of Nursing at South Dakota State University, returned to the homestead to care for her.

Maud died in 1995. Though she never saw their dream materialize, her presence can be seen and felt everywhere. It was her idea to call it a place for inner renewal, Mary said, and it’s very fitting of her and the place.

An old barn, a Union County country schoolhouse and an old rural church from the Platte area, which the sisters moved to the place, remain and have been restored. They are situated on the 13 acres and will comprise the homestead feature of the area.

Mary has learned a lot since returning to the homestead. The first was that there were no closets in the downstairs of Shay-Adams house. More importantly, she has learned just how much the place meant to the family and how much of them still remains. “I don’t know how my father and mother held onto this place during the Depression,” she said. The family lost a lot of land to foreclosure during those years.

“They put three of us through college and two through professional training or professional preparation. I never appreciated what they did until this year,” Mary said, acknowledging it required a lot of sacrifice. “But they believed in education and were great believers in the land and how it could be enjoyed.î

One of her mother’s favorite books was Sea of Grass. “The idea that you could go out and listen to the wheat and listen to cattails in the wind and hear waves,” she said. “Mom’s family came from Norway so that part gave her a closeness to family,î Mary said, with tears forming in her eyes.

“When I was acting dean I traveled a lot in South Dakota and I loved to see the wheat fields from Onida down through Winner,î she said. “You really can see and hear the sea of grass.”

You don’t hear that anymore. The wheat she remembers from her childhood has been replaced with soybeans and hybrid corn. Other things also have changed. “It’s totally different than when I grew up. We always called this place ‘The Place,’ the ‘Adams Place,'” she said. She recalls where the neighbors’ places once dotted the landscape and the days when farming was more labor-intensive. Days before 1939. After that year, the land could be worked by machines or horses.

She wishes a small piece of the past can be returned to her family’s land. “I would like to see on this place, these 13 acres, a garden established to represent the Adams women’s gardens,” she said. It would offer a tribute to her grandmother, mother and sister. “They loved to dig. They loved to transplant. And they loved to water,î Mary said. Though it would take some work to get it established, a century garden representing the plants grown from the 1870s to 1990s would be fitting, she thinks.

As she prepares to settle into the family’s 1880s farmhouse, she busies herself inside the Shay-Adams house packing memories and uncovering family papers no one else was intended to find. Though she’s finding it to be a difficult, task, Mary remains comfortable with their decision to share the land. She said she has studied the meaning of altruism or selfless regard for the well being of others. It was a gift of love, as she puts it.

But that doesn’t make parting with it any less emotional. “When you give a gift it’s not yours anymore,” she said, fighting back tears. “I hope the people of South Dakota enjoy it and keep it up. There are a lot of feelings … here.” She takes comfort in believing her deceased family members would also approve. “I think that the positive spirits of my mother, my dad, his parents and my brother and sister are here,” Mary said. “I don’t think there would be an incompatible voice.”

Mary will continue to watch as the dream she shared with Maud develops into a place to be shared. She’s also looking forward to the peace and tranquility her family loved about the place. All she needs is a little time off. “I retired,” Mary said. “But, honest to God, I haven’t had a day yet that I could say, ‘I’m retired. What am I going to do today?'”

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the July/August 1996 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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When the Governor Decides … And the Levee Breaks

By Cory Allen Heidelberger

Last week, South Dakota’s southeastern goatee faced its second hundred-year flood in three years. The floods came from two different rivers — the Missouri in 2011, the Big Sioux last week — so we haven’t violated any statistical rules yet.

As was the case in 2011, Gov. Dennis Daugaard responded with swift and serious civil engineering. To keep the storm-swollen Big Sioux from sweeping North Sioux City down to Omaha, Gov. Daugaard turned Exit 4 into a levee to divert Big Sioux overflow across Interstate 29 into McCook Lake and down into the Missouri River a couple miles upstream from the usual Big Sioux–Missouri confluence.

When I first heard the plan, I had visions of bulldozers, Guardsmen and inmates heaping dirt under the Exit 4 overpass into a Great Wall of Union County. All we got was a measly-looking line of Hesco baskets filled with dirt and packed in a tight line across the roadway.

While not as visually impressive as I’d imagined, that 4-foot wall showed the Governor’s willingness to accept two major costs. First, building that line meant closing Interstate 29 from Vermillion to North Sioux City. The shortest detour — to Vermillion, across the Missouri, through Ponca and back to Sioux City — adds 35 minutes to a trip. The default detour would have diverted southbound truckers at Sioux Falls east on I-90 to Albert Lea, then down to Des Moines and back to Council Bluffs, adding around four hours. Multiply the lost travel time by the productivity of 11,000 car drivers and 2,500 truckers for each day I-29 would remain closed, and I suspect you’d get a small but significant impact on the economy of the Upper Midwest.

Also on the red side of the emergency response ledger are the 300-some houses around McCook Lake. Plugging Exit 4 meant McCook Lake would bear the full force of the Big Sioux overflow. Officials guesstimated up to a 10-foot increase in the lake’s water level. With less than two days to prepare, McCook Lake residents waited in line for two hours to get 20 sandbags from the National Guard and not much else. However much water was coming, the Exit 4/McCook Lake decision showed that the Governor was willing to sacrifice those few hundred homes to protect the rest of North Sioux City.

That’s a big decision. It’s a gutsy decision. And, luckily for almost everyone, it turned out to be an unnecessary decision. A levee broke upstream, near Akron, flooding some farmland and homes. The Big Sioux spread out, lowering the flood level downstream. The river crested at North Sioux City Friday morning a few hours early and 4 feet below the predicted max. Exit 4 stayed dry, as did the homes at McCook Lake. By noon Friday, one day after we cut off I-29, the Hesco baskets were gone and I-29 was open again.

Emergency response is one of the hardest parts of the Governor’s job. He had to evaluate lots of variables, many of them unpredictable (how much more rain will fall? will every levee hold?), choose priorities and make sacrifices. The Big Sioux was rising. The water had to go somewhere. Gov. Daugaard chose McCook Lake, and nature chose Akron. What would you have chosen?

Cory Allen Heidelberger writes the Madville Times political blog. He grew up on the shores of Lake Herman. He studied math and history at SDSU and information systems at DSU, and has taught math, English, speech, and French at high schools East and West River.