Tag: perkins county

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In Full Bloom

By Christian Begeman

It’s wildflower season again across the Northern Plains. Lately my photography has taken me down the path of botany. Well, not fully, I guess. I’m mostly interested in flowers and florets as well as some of the myriad of creatures that can be found around or among them. That means wildflowers for sure, but also grasses, butterflies and bees, among other things. June and July are prime months to get out and search for these bits of beauty fringing the prairie grass tapestries of our region.

This spring saw good rain for much of our state, and wildflowers follow the rain. When that happens, it is hard not to fall in love all over again with the surprisingly intricate beauty of the open prairie. I was in the Slim Buttes of Harding County and the Grand River National Grasslands in Perkins County in late June. I can’t remember ever seeing more blooms there. Sego lilies, spiderwort, yucca and prickly pear, all came out to enjoy the late spring weather. While looking for pincushion cactus, I came across a new-to-me bloom called clustered broomrape. It does not have any chlorophyll and gets the nutrients it needs from host plant roots, likely sagebrush in this case. I thought plants like these only grew in forests, but the prairie proved me wrong.

Speaking of prickly pear, I don’t usually have many good things to say about that particular plant. I’ve had bad experiences stepping on, falling in or unknowingly putting my hands on this cactus in my formative years. Those are not good memories. I’ve also seen favorite pets suffer tremendously after getting entangled and then feeling awful as one of the folks had to hold it down and pry the quills out. That said, when they bloom all at once on a sunny June day, adding accents of bright colors to the prairies, well I have to say, they grow on you. Such was the sight just south of Shadehill Recreation Area in Perkins County this year.

This is the first year I’ve seen timpsila (prairie turnip) with blooms. This plant was a staple for the Lakota and other regional tribes in an earlier time. Scarlet globemallow (cowboy’s delight) also has an interesting story. In Witness: A Hunkpapa Historian’s Strong-Heart Song of the Lakotas, Josephine Waggoner describes her people rubbing the flower on their hands and arms and then plunging them into boiling water and not getting injured. It was seen as a miracle plant used to alleviate burns, sunburns and even raw skin on a pony’s back.

There is so much to learn and respect about our native prairie habitats. Seeking out and sitting with the wildflowers has taught me much. Hopefully this collection of recent photos will inspire you to take a walk in the high prairie and see what you can learn.

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

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Lemmon: The Cowboy Capital

By Bernie Hunhoff

Lemmon embraces art, especially the sculptures of native son John Lopez, who created this statue of town founder Ed Lemmon.

If South Dakota built a tribute to the American cowboy, it might look like Lemmon. The little city that straddles the border of the two Dakotas has just 1,200 citizens, but it seems 10 times that size on days when there’s a rodeo or cattle auction. In fact, even on a slow day, Lemmon looks like our cowboy capital, though nobody there would use that term to describe their town because most cowboys won’t brag.

We tried to get Paul Huffman to speak philosophically on Lemmon’s prominence in the beef world, but the 77-year-old cowboy politely and plainly responded,”It’s big cattle country. It’s as simple as that.”

Huffman runs Lemmon Livestock, an auction barn that holds sales every Wednesday, and also on Thursdays during the fall and winter”cattle run,” when ranchers bring bawling spring calves to market. A big sale attracts hundreds of buyers and sellers and up to 6,000 head of cattle. Ranchers sip coffee and enjoy hot beef sandwiches — with homemade gravy and real mashed potatoes — in a restaurant at the auction barn before gathering on bleachers for the auction. Millions of pounds of beef change hands at a busy winter sale, and enough money to make a Chicago banker blush, though in Lemmon a stranger from the city would be hard-pressed to know the buyers from the sellers. Seven-figure transactions transpire in minutes, with nothing more noticeable than a nod or the raise of a finger.

Cattle outnumber people 4 to 1 in South Dakota, making beef the biggest single sector of the state’s economy. However, in Perkins County, where Lemmon is the largest city, there are 37 cattle for every man, woman and child. Seventy-eight percent of the land is grass. The federal farm census indicates that cow and calf sales total about $70 million a year in the county of just 2,400 residents.

“We especially have a lot of natural grasslands to the south and west,” says Huffman. Most of the ranch land is privately owned, but the region also includes the Grand River National Grasslands, a 154,000-acre native prairie. A hundred ranchers have allotments that permit them to graze from 50 to 300 head of cattle — some in community pastures that operate like the open range that existed until 1902.

Stuart and Lisa Schmidt say fossils and ancient geology are popular at the Grand River Museum.

Lemmon was founded in 1907 by a cowboy who was instrumental in the transition from the open range to today’s fenced prairie. Ed”Boss Cowman” Lemmon started as a ranch hand in Wyoming at age 13. Soon he was a trail boss, herding longhorns from Texas to fatten on the rich grasses of the Northern Plains. He was a founder of the South Dakota Stockgrowers Association in 1902 and a leader of the beef industry when he discovered that a rail line was about to be built that would straddle the state border. He quickly bought land for a townsite, hoping he could make his new town the county seat for both Perkins County in South Dakota and Adams County in North Dakota.

Though he didn’t win either courthouse, Lemmon did get his town. Railroad officials named it after the cowboy, and he lived there until the day he died in 1945. Old-timers remember him today. Stories about his exploits are legendary, and several books about his life are for sale at the Grand River Museum, where an exhibit chronicles the life of a man the townspeople called Dad Lemmon.

The museum is a good reflection of how the cattle industry shapes Lemmon. The Schmidt family homesteaded in the Grand River Valley in 1910, contemporaries of Dad Lemmon.”Our grandchildren are sixth generation on the ranch,” says Stuart Schmidt.”My folks started the museum after many years of finding dinosaur fossils.”

Thinking the fossils and other local artifacts might be a way for the town to draw tourists, Stuart’s parents Ed and Phyllis Schmidt began to collect historical and geological items.”We moved into a downtown location in 1998 but we knew we needed more room and we wanted a highway location,” says Phyllis.”We soon bought an old machine shop that was empty for a long time. It was a mess. People thought we were crazy,” she laughed.

If so, their friends and neighbors like crazy: the Schmidts’ efforts attracted many supporters, including the Wheelers and Beelers — two other pioneer families who are very philanthropic in Perkins County, though that’s not a word that cowboys would use. Four years ago, the nonprofit museum moved into a new addition with ample space for exhibits, fossils and cast specimens from the dinosaur age.

Native American culture and history is also documented, and Stuart notes that new information continues to show up, including a hand-drawn map of how to fence the reservation that was sketched by Dad Lemmon. The map was discovered at the Wisconsin State Historical Society when Nathan Sanderson was researching and writing Controlled Recklessness, the latest book about the pioneer cattleman.

The museum has exhibits on major Hunkpapa leaders, including Sitting Bull, Rain in the Face, Gall and Thunder Hawk. It also has a timeline for Creation Science. The entryway features a life-size sculpture of a grizzly bear attacking mountain man Hugh Glass, an epic survival story of the American West that took place in 1823 in the Grand River Valley south of town. After the story was retold in the blockbuster movie The Revenant, Lemmon promoters started a Hugh Glass Rendezvous that has gained popularity every year.

The town’s signature attraction, since the 1930s, is the Petrified Wood Park, a funky collection of petrified wood, fossils, stones and other geological wonders, some mortared together in the shape of trees and spires. Rounded stones known as cannonballs, collected largely from the nearby Cannonball River Valley, are a big part of the park.

The Grand River Museum features a display paying tribute to Ed Lemmon, aka “Boss Cowman.”

But not even petrified art can upstage cowboys and cattle as Lemmon’s top attraction.”Let’s face it, this town has been a cattle town since the start,” says Dave Johnson, the economic development director.”Ranching is our foundation. Everybody feels it when cattle prices go up or down, whether or not they own cattle themselves.”

Johnson says the cow culture goes beyond dollars and cents; it impacts the arts, literature, recreation and education. The local high school mascots are Cowboys and Cowgirls. Rodeo is bigger than football and some local athletes have done well on the rodeo circuit, including Stuart and Lisa Schmidt’s son, Chuck, who is a champion saddle bronc rider.

Lisa’s brother, John Lopez, is a nationally acclaimed metal sculptor. Several of his sculptures are found in town, including the museum’s Hugh Glass piece; a cowboy aboard a bucking horse, by the front door of the high school; and a representation of Dad Lemmon on a horse that stands in a little plaza downtown. Lopez has opened a studio and gallery known as the Kokomo Inn next to the plaza, one of several recent civic additions and improvements — many of them either assisted or spearheaded by Dave Johnson’s organization, the Lemmon Area Charitable and Economic Development.

Johnson worked as a commercial photographer in Dallas and Chicago before coming home. One of his first challenges was the Palace Theater, a dilapidated movie house where he ran the reels as a teenager. The community supported his efforts to digitize the projector system, renovate the interior and reopen the theater for movies, live concerts and other events.

When the State Extension Department held its annual Energize Conference in Lemmon last summer, Johnson gathered some of the town’s newest business men and women in the theater for a panel discussion. He began by explaining that even he is sometimes amazed at how much a little city can accomplish. He credited a creative culture and a community spirit.”The trend for a lot of these little places in the 1980s and 1990s was just to become a bedroom town to a bigger city but Lemmon never had that option because we are too far away from a bigger town,” he said. The only alternative was to maintain a high quality of life despite the smaller population. Encouraging museums, art, restaurants, theater, entrepreneurship and music seemed daunting, but it’s probably not any more difficult than fencing the prairie or building a petrified park.

Jack and Kim Anderson operate Midwest Rodeo Entries, which handles reservations for the South Dakota Rodeo Association, as well as The Current Connection, a computer and office supply store.

Johnson told the Energize attendees, who came from equally small communities across South Dakota, that he learned an important lesson from participating in big projects:”It’s about doing what’s right — it’s never about the money.”

Lemmon’s success stories include a new housing neighborhood and the downtown plaza known as Boss Cowman Square. The community has also supported several new businesses, including a hotel, grocery store, butcher shop, photography studio and a boutique with sequin-lined denim jackets for cowgirls. They coexist with old Lemmon standbys like Wheeler Manufacturing, a family enterprise that employs more than 100 jewelry-makers.

Romancin’ the Range, the new boutique, shares space with a flower store and coffee shop. The owner is Kate Westphal, a young nurse who grew up on a nearby ranch and moved away to Bismarck, North Dakota.”I thought I was never coming back,” she says,”but I started to miss home. Nobody greeted me or asked how Dad’s sheep were doing or how my mom was feeling. Now, if my car breaks down I have 10 people to call, where in the city I had no one. I also realized there were opportunities for growth.” She works as an R.N. at the local nursing home, manages the boutique and makes leather jewelry.

The Current Connection is another Lemmon success. Jack and Kim Anderson started the computer and office supply store 15 years ago. When the local Ben Franklin store closed, they added school supplies. Jack, who grew up locally and rode bulls in high school and college, recognized that the rodeo industry wasn’t taking advantage of technology. He developed software and started a company called Midwest Rodeo Entries, which handles reservations for the South Dakota Rodeo Association, the Colorado Rodeo Association and the Indian National Finals Rodeo.

“Jack wanted to stay active in the rodeo industry, but not ride bulls,” Kim says.”This was a way for him to do that.” He also created summer jobs for teachers and students, who staff the phones.”It saves cowboys and cowgirls a lot of time,” says Kim,”and it gets them to the right place at the right time.”

The town’s new LemmonMade Butcher Shop was started by Carl and Kylee Kimmerle, who came from Utah two years ago to live on land homesteaded by Kylee’s great-grandfather. The shop quickly gained a reputation for beef jerky, breakfast sausage and other specialties. The Kimmerles hope to eventually raise and process their own cattle and hogs, but for now the new business and three young children occupy most of their time.

The downtown area has also been bolstered by the Beeler Center.”It was put up about a dozen years ago because of the success of the Boss Cowman Rodeo,” Johnson says.”Every year, we would rent a tent for the rodeo and someone had the good idea that it might make sense to just build a building.” Ever since, the town has hosted more weddings than 1,200 people would ever propose.”Lots of times, the bride and groom are not from here but they know they can stay in the hotel and there are plenty of restaurants so it’s just a good place to get married.”

The town’s six restaurants include Benny’s, just across the street from the Beeler Center. Matt Johnson (David’s nephew), who recently purchased the long-established eatery, says it’s a challenge to run a steakhouse when most of your customers are ranchers who raise some of the world’s best beef.

“You gotta start with the good stuff,” he laughs. His most popular menu item is called the Steak Sandwich, but again that’s cowboy modesty: the”sandwich” is a delicious sirloin coulotte.

Chislic is also popular at Benny’s, but Johnson doesn’t use lamb, like restaurants in Hutchinson County, where Germans-from-Russia first brought chislic to the Dakotas. He grills cubes of –you guessed it — beef sirloin ball tip.

That seems appropriate, however, in a city corralled by cowboys.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the March/April 2020 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Accidental Rancher

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

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

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

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

Pigeons

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Babies,” said the Bean.”Big babies.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Lemmon: Our Cowboy Capital

By Bernie Hunhoff

If you designed a town as a tribute to the American cowboy it would look like Lemmon. The little city straddling the border of the two Dakotas has just 1,200 citizens but it seems 10 times that size on days when there’s a rodeo or a cattle auction. Even on a slow day, Lemmon looks like a cowboy capital — thought nobody there would claim the title because real cowboys don’t brag.

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Petrified Giant

By Michael Zimny

An ancient petrified tree in Perkins County may be one of the largest ever discovered and may eventually tell us more about what kind of landscape existed here in the past.

“My father and a friend of his discovered it while herding sheep back in the 1930s,” recalls retired local rancher Clyde Jesfjeld. “They decided that it had to be a tree because of the way it appeared.”

Contemporary newspaper articles confirm that it was George Jesfjeld and Charles Murphy who first discovered the tree northwest of Bison. “Word got around, and back in those days the WPA was in operation,” Jesfjeld says.”There was a small crew that came in and unearthed more of it than what my father and his friend had uncovered.”

Over the years, there have been several efforts to partially excavate and examine the tree. In 1949, the Rapid City Journal reported that University of South Dakota Museum Director W.H. Over visited the site. He estimated the tree’s age at 60 million years. The same article listed its measurements as 9 feet in diameter at the exposed base, with 84 feet uncovered, extending to as much as 200 feet total as it disappears beneath the sloping ground.

Fred Jennewein, a Bison-area rancher who ran a small range relics museum in town, was active in the effort to excavate the tree. “In the 75 feet of exposed log,” Jennewein wrote, “there is no break thru [sic] the trunk of the tree altho [sic] in recent years there has been some vandalism by shelling off considerable sized pieces of the petrified wood.”

Today, the base of the tree — which is located on a School and Public Lands parcel, but not accessible by road — can still be seen, though much of tree has been re-interred with earth. We counted 37 paces walking along the depression where excavation once apparently occurred, before the earth above it slopes upward. Away from the exposed base, an occasional glimpse of petrified wood emerges from beneath the surface.

At one time, some locals hoped that the entire tree would be uncovered or excavated. “When the summer comes again we are going out with a bulldozer or some other kind of dozer and find out just how much farther that Oldest Old Timer goes back into that hill,” Jennewein wrote.

That does not appear to have happened. After the 1950s, newspaper articles about the tree are scarce. Though there had been some talk of removing the tree intact, that would have been difficult and expensive. In 1967, the state legislature allocated $1,200 to place a fence around the site, probably to prevent its gradual disappearance.

“I remember as a young boy taking a lot of different people down there so they could look at it,” Jesjfeld recalls. “A lot of people took a small piece.”

There is no fence in place, if one was ever built. Souvenir seekers may have forgotten about the tree and its remote location.

“There was discussion about getting the tree hauled out of there and placing it somewhere else where the public could view it,” says Mike Cornelison, Land Agent for School and Public Lands. However, any such effort would have to balance protecting the integrity of the native prairie against extracting the tree, a delicate task in its own right.

“If there was the right kind of supervision, it could be excavated,” Cornelison says.

So far, the funding has not come forward. Recently, several scientists at South Dakota School of Mines and Technology have expressed interest in visiting the site. Perhaps soon we will learn more about the tree’s history and potential future.

Is this the biggest intact petrified tree in the world, as some local enthusiasts claimed in the past? That probably depends on how bigness is measured. Maybe the tree can tell us more about the environment it thrived in, back in the days, to quote Fred Jennewein, “when the earth was young.”

Michael Zimny is a content producer for South Dakota Public Broadcasting and is based in Rapid City. He blogs for SDPB and contributes columns to the South Dakota Magazine website.

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South Dakota’s Sledding Hills

Local youth take to their sleds at Yankton’s Morgen Park. Photo by Bernie Hunhoff.

By Bernie Hunhoff

South Dakota’s reputation for geographic diversity holds true when it comes to snow sledding. Some of our eastern cities are too flat, and the slopes in some of our mountain towns are too rugged, steep and rocky.

In Aberdeen, where the terrain has been described as”flat as a barn door,” city leaders manufactured a 25′ hill so kids could enjoy winter. However, we discovered that most communities have a natural hill that becomes a hot spot when it snows.

Pack your sleds as you travel this winter because there are plenty of hills to explore. Most of the snow hills are unsupervised, so adults should be ready to act if they see something dangerous — a heavy toboggan sled, for example, that could carom out of control and hurt someone, or a motorized vehicle on the slopes. Sledding has long been a favorite winter tradition, even for our flatland friends. Let’s keep it alive.

Here’s our list of city slopes. Tell us what we’re missing. We’d also like to know where to find the closest and richest hot chocolate after a day on the slopes.

ABERDEEN — God created most of South Dakota’s hills and mountains, but man assisted with the modest slope in Baird Park (1715 24th Avenue NE), the most popular sledding spot in the Hub City. City officials created the gentle 25-foot just for kids.

BELLE FOURCHE — Slopes behind the Tri-State Museum (415 5th Avenue) are a favorite, though they may be too fast for younger kids and there is a walking path at the foot of the hill so watch for pedestrians.

CUSTER — Pageant Hill has been touted as one of the finest family sledding spots in the Black Hills. It may be too steep and long for younger kids, but you don’t have to descend from the very top. The hill is the summit of beautiful Big Rock Park, which also includes hiking trails and a disc golf course. It rises above the city’s south side.

HOT SPRINGS — Southern Hills Golf Course (1130 Clubhouse Drive) is fun and scenic.

HURON — Toboggan Hill (6th Street & Lawnridge Avenue), aka Slide Hill, is a bluff above the Jim River valley on Huron’s east side.

LEMMON — The ever-resourceful people of Lemmon discovered years ago that it was less expensive to build a small hill for their new water storage rather than just build a taller tower. Then someone got the great idea or also making it into a sledding slope with a warming shack. Tank Hill is quite easy to spot on the city’s west side. Many years ago, when the water tower developed a leak during a cold spell, kids were able to slide on the ice flow all the way downtown.

PIERRE — The slopes above the soccer fields in Hilger’s Gulch are popular. The gulch is a scenic valley just north of the State Capitol building.

RAPID CITY — Meadowbrook School Hill (3125 W. Flormann Street) is a good spot, as well as the Civic Center hill that rises above the Holiday Inn Rushmore Plaza parking lot downtown.

SIOUX FALLS — Tuthill Park in southeast Sioux Falls is the site of weddings and parties in the summer months, but when the snow falls it becomes the domain of well-bundled children with sleds. Spellerberg Park (2299 W. 22nd Street), closer to the city center, also has a fair slope. Great Bear Ski Valley welcomes snow tubers, who get to ride the ski lifts.

SPEARFISH — Hills behind the Donald E. Young Center on the Black Hills State University campus are fast and fun.

STURGIS — Lions Club Park (off Lazelle Street) is a good place for younger kids, and Strong Field Hill on Ballpark Road is fun for older youth.

WATERTOWN — St. Ann’s Hill, a sledder’s delight, is so named because St. Ann’s was the original name of the nearby Prairie Lakes Hospital. Take Highway 20 to 10th Avenue and turn uphill.

WESSINGTON SPRINGS — It’s worth a drive to experience Ski Hill on the west edge of Wessington Springs. The natural setting in the Wessington Hills is idyllic, but the real attraction is an old, homemade invention with an electric motor that powers a 1,200-foot rope lift. Jokingly called the”Rube Goldberg ski lift,” the simple equipment has been lovingly cared for by handy volunteers, including Lloyd Marken, 85, who helped to build it in 1956.

YANKTON — Morgen Park (1200 Green Street) is the go-to sledding hill in town, however kids also like to slide down the earthen slope of Gavins Point Dam, where it rises above Pierson Ranch Recreation Area west of Yankton.

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Meet an Accidental Rancher

By Katie Hunhoff

Accidental Rancher is a collection of poignant stories gleaned from Eliza Blue’s life on a Perkins County ranch.

When Eliza Blue mailed me her manuscript about life on a West River ranch, I admit that I had some skepticism. The document sat unread in my inbox for a few days. Did readers want another perspective on ranching life?

Finally, I opened Eliza’s manuscript and I changed my thinking after reading just a few paragraphs. Her writing, like her songs, pulled me in. Even tales of mundane tasks, such as milking a cow or searching for missing livestock, fascinated me. Somehow, her words transform ordinary life in South Dakota into something enchanting. For days after I read the manuscript, I found myself narrating my life inside my head as if Eliza Blue was writing my story.

To make a long story short, South Dakota Magazine has proudly published Eliza’s book, Accidental Rancher. We worked on it through the winter, knowing South Dakotans would appreciate her storytelling.

Eliza’s fresh perspective comes perhaps from her background of being both a storyteller and singer/songwriter. She is now also a Bison rancher’s wife and mom. Eliza grew up in suburban Minneapolis, but much to our benefit she landed in Perkins County a few years ago and dived into ranch life. Somehow, she also finds time to contemplate and write about life on the high plains.

Too often, rural America’s stories and culture are interpreted by writers who visit for a day or a week, often to write only about the latest catastrophe — most likely a blizzard, a drought or a trade war. Trouble and woe are usually their themes, though there is so much more. A handful of rural West River writers have worked to dispel such myths. Linda Hasselstrom, Kathleen Norris and Elizabeth Cook-Lynn are good examples. Eliza Blue is a new voice, and she brings a musician’s grace. Her stories, like her songs, have a catchy way of grabbing attention.

One of my favorites is titled”Pigeons.” Eliza and her son discover baby pigeons in an abandoned grain bin. The mother had laid the eggs inside a plastic bucket, and her babies became trapped after growing too big to spread their wings. Eliza freed the birds, but noticed something amiss. The birds’ muscles hadn’t developed enough for them to stand, let alone to walk or fly. She and her son visited every day, and employed some therapy techniques to encourage them to move. You can imagine the joy — both of the humans and the birds — when the little wings grew strong enough to fly.

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

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

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West River Odyssey

By Christian Begeman

My immediate family gathered this month in Mobridge. It was the first time we’d all been together in several years. From a family of six on the farm to a family of more than 20 scattered from Sioux Falls to California seems pretty amazing, but probably not that uncommon. I grew up roughly 60 miles west and 10 miles south of Mobridge near the Moreau River breaks. I don’t get back in that country near enough, but this was a good year to go. The rain has been abundant and the wildflowers profuse. Last season was dry, and it seems all that stunted life from a year ago has burst into its fullest measure this time around.

Before heading home, I took a notable detour to the beautiful Matthews Opera House in Spearfish to take in my friend Eliza Blue’s new album release concert. From there I wandered down through Custer State Park, where I reveled in a summer thunderstorm (until a few large hailstones caused me to flee south into Wind Cave National Park). Then I spent a day and a half in the Badlands, where I had good luck watching burrowing owls take care of their young. After that, I made my way north to the rolling hills of Perkins and Corson counties.

The real surprise of the journey was an impromptu photo tour just northwest of Bison. Sion Hanson is a friend of a friend who asked if I’d be willing to take some photos of him and some of the landmarks on his land for his grandkids. Hanson turned 60 this year and wants to pass along a little bit of the family history and legacy in images as well as stories. I didn’t quite know what to expect as we pulled out of the yard and headed north along a wheat field through the tall grass. Then we crested the hill.

As I mentioned, I grew up near the rugged and rolling hills of the Moreau River breaks along the Dewey and Ziebach county line, so I have a near-and-dear appreciation for the long draws and short grass hills topped with gravel, yucca and Black Samson flowers (also known as wild purple coneflower). What now opened before us was the south edge of the Grand River breaks, and it was breathtaking. The short grass prairie had taller than normal grass waving in the wind, and it was ablaze with wildflowers, particularly Black Samson. One of the long draws before us was where Hanson’s grandfather and grandmother had a sod house built back when the land opened for settlement in the early 1900s. Hanson’s granddad was a freight wagon driver who hauled goods to Bison from the nearest train depot to the north. Each trip was a two-day journey. We saw parts of the old road from Bison to Hettinger that survived as a fire trail, at least into the 1970s. It is mostly overgrown now.

It was an unexpected and enjoyable trip to some of our state’s truly wide-open and rugged country. To hear the history of it as well as help a new friend keep the stories and places alive for his family was quite an honor. Those couple hours of looking over the land, reminiscing and simply enjoying the view was a good reminder of how strong the family unit was and still is in these open prairies of our great state. It was only fitting that my next few days of vacation were spent making new memories with my own family at the end of this summer’s West River odyssey.

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

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A Song for the First of May

Even the heartiest of South Dakotans might mutter a nasty word or two under their breath at the sight of snowflakes on May 1, especially after a particularly long, cold winter. Eliza Blue, however, wrote a song about it.

The Perkins County singer/songwriter is releasing her newest single today. “South Dakota, 1st of May” is a beautiful rendition of that period when spring struggles to gain control over winter.

“I wrote the opening verse for this song the first spring I lived in South Dakota after it snowed on May 1,” Blue says. “I am from Minnesota, so I am no stranger to long, cold winters, but that May 1 dusting, combined with the endless wind, made me realize I was in for something pretty different here.”
“This winter has been similarly epic. Christian Begeman and I had to delay our filming date for the video after a spring snow storm in early April. You can see the remnants of it in the background. We’d hoped to go out to the pasture to film, but the drifts made the road impassable, and we had to settle for the yard.”
“The bottom line: There is no doubt, you have to be pretty tough to be a Dakotan!”
Blue grew up in Minnesota, went to college on the East Coast and has lived in New York City and Portland, Maine. She now lives on a ranch in Perkins County with her husband, Max Loughlin, children Wesley (2) and Emmy Rose (1), a herd of sheep and some chickens.
“South Dakota, 1st of May” is the title track of Blue’s new CD, which will be released in July. You can read more about that in our upcoming July/August issue, but for now, listen as Blue conveys, like no one else can, the changing of the seasons.

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Chased Across Perkins County

By Jean Simon

The peaceful Perkins County prairie turned violent one hot summer night in July of 1953.

It was a hot July Saturday night in 1953, the kind of night that tests your temper. A sad-looking family in a sorry-looking Nash automobile arrived in the small town of New Salem, North Dakota, not far from the South Dakota border. They rented a motel room and at about 10:30 p.m. they parked by the town’s only cafe. The father, Edward Crane, was 32 years old; the mother was a few years younger and dowdy. Their five children ranged in age from 2 to 12. Earning a living for a family of five is hard when the father is AWOL from the Army. In fact it had been six years since the Cranes had a place to call home. They’d been wandering from place to place, often relying on what food could be begged from local churches.

The oldest boy told his dad that a bottle of pop would taste good. Crane gave the boy some change.”Just four bottles,” he said. The boy walked into the cafe. The owner’s plump, blonde wife was behind the counter. Several customers sat at small round tables on twisted wrought-iron chairs with wood seats. The light inside was dim, partly due to years of cigarette smoke blended with bacon grease that slowly darkened the cafe’s wallpaper.

“I want some pop — four red ones.” The woman reached for the pop cooler rather slowly and pushed the four bottles across the counter.”That will be 41 cents please.” The boy put four dimes on the counter.”Guess you’ll have to have another penny, Sonny.”

“Don’t have one!” he snapped back. Just then his father and mother appeared at the cafe door.

“What the hell’s holding things up anyway?” the father bellowed, as the clerk held out her hand.

“We have to have another penny to make the governor happy you know.”

“Well, I ain’t payin’ the governor nothin’. The kid has paid for the pop, that’s it,” said the father.

The storekeeper then pushed through a two-way door and came to the counter. He was a large man, a little too heavy but almost handsome with his dark, curly hair.”Listen folks, I don’t make these laws, ya know, but one thing I do in this place is to carry them out, get that?”

The father led the family out the door, leaving the pop on the counter. Before he drove away he fired five shots at the cafe, breaking a window. The owner reached for the phone and said,”I’m calling the cops.”

Within a mile from New Salem, the Nash was overtaken by Police Chief Edward Mumby, accompanied by Walter Hoherz, a friend who farmed near town.”I think you better come with us,” Mumby said to the father.

They were a dismal group, walking across the dark prairie on uneven ground, sometimes stumbling and not knowing which way they were going or where.

Crane didn’t seem scared, but Vera did. Her husband was always in trouble. Now they’d have to follow the police car back into town. The 12-year-old was nervous and quiet; the other two boys were quarreling, hitting one another and unaware of the serious situation. The 3-year-old girl, in a plain grey dress too long for her, looked sad. The youngest child, a 2-year-old, was asleep in the car seat, a sticky baby bottle lying beside her. When the car stopped, flies descended by the dozens. The little girl wiped them from her face with the back of her hand. The sleeping child brushed them away in her sleep.

Crane wasn’t very cooperative as Chief Mumby placed him in the back seat and returned to the front with Hoherz, who was driving.

A flash of panic swept over Crane; everything seemed jumbled up. It was the same old routine.”Read him his rights, too bad we don’t have any place for your wife and kids, don’t you have relatives some place?” His mind was racing; he felt he couldn’t stand being jailed again. He pulled a gun from his shirt and fired wildly. The first bullet hit the back of Mumby and the second went through the roof of the car directly above the driver. The car came to an abrupt stop when Hoherz saw the pistol near his head. His friend had collapsed; blood was oozing from his mouth. Crane made him back the car up so he could load his family in the back seat with him. He waved wildly to his family in the other car as he breathlessly said to Hoherz,”You’re getting me out of this, fella!”

Vera was always submissive. She seemed afraid and helpless. She’d left home at a young age, drifting from one waitress job to another. She married the tall and confident Crane, hoping for security and protection. But babies seemed to come fast. Crane often had a temper when he came home from the Army base at night. It wasn’t what she expected in a marriage. One night he loaded everyone into the car and started driving. He had been in trouble before for forgery.”Oh well, they won’t look too hard,” he said.”There’s plenty of soldiers.”

Now he had killed a man, and he wanted them to leave their car and climb into the farmer’s car with the dead policeman. Why? But she gathered the children and obeyed. The kids were sent to the back seat, and they all headed south for South Dakota on the main road with the frightened Hoherz driving.

Not a word was uttered as the car moved along except for Crane’s constant urging to go faster, then changing to”be careful.” A few miles down the road, he ordered Hoherz to dump the policeman’s body out.

The miles piled up behind them. It was too dark to distinguish figures, but a huge sign by the road made Crane suddenly do some thinking.”Have we crossed the state line?” he mumbled to himself.”Jesus, I’d be in real trouble if I got caught kidnapping. Hold it,” he yelled.”Turn around and go back.”

They returned to a road sign designating the state line.”This is the place,” Hoherz announced.

“Get out,” Crane said.”This is where you start walking.”

Illustration by Emmylou O’Brien.

Hoherz tried not to show his relief, outwardly at least, but he quickly brought the car to a stop. Crane ordered Hoherz to show him how to shift the car and how to start it. Then he said,”Give me your billfold. You can keep the money, but I need a new identification.”

The Crane family then drove off into South Dakota, and Hoherz started to shake.”Oh, my God, oh my God,” he said to no one. As the car disappeared out of sight, sounds of the prairie night took over. He made his way to the nearest farmhouse to call the law.

The sunny morning broke cooler, luckily, for the Zeona community picnic had already started. Men came in clean overalls and dress trousers, big hats, caps, bare heads, boots and shoes. The older women wore cleanly starched and ironed print dresses, skirts and blouses; some younger ladies wore slacks.

Food filled a big table made from planks placed on sawhorses — potato salad, fried chicken, meatballs, Mrs. Bekken’s lefse and wieners ready for youngsters to roast over the fire. There was the customary chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, lemon and sour cream raisin pies and homemade ice cream. A copper wash boiler simmered with coffee. Lemonade cooled in a crock borrowed from the rural schoolhouse.

After lunch, the crowd separated intoclusters. Kids played ball and hunted meadowlark nests. Women shooed flies and covered the food, then retired to the farm kitchen of the hostess, Rachel Feryance, to talk about children, gardens and recipes. Men broke up into groups to”talk politics” and exchange news on making hay and their harvesting progress. Not many were aware of news flashes on the local radio stations.”Be on the lookout for a plain black car… man, woman and five children escaped in a car after shooting a police officer in North Dakota over a dispute over a penny sales tax. This man is considered dangerous.”

Meanwhile, Ed Crane had restlessly driven gravel side roads all afternoon in Perkins County, looking for a safe way to get food for the kids and fuel for the car. It was late and dark when he decided they couldn’t go much further. As he topped a slight rise in the road he saw a gate leading into a cow pasture with a well-traveled road; he headed down the trail. Within minutes he found a perfect place to”stash” the black car with the empty gas tank and the bullet hole through the top. It was just under the face of a small stock dam in a deep, short draw in Dale Simon’s pasture. He turned the car abruptly down the steep hill, where it fit under the dam like it was in a box.

“It’s a man and woman with five kids, figure it out for yourself … “

Vera remained glum and silent, like she had for the past several hours. The children had whined and complained very little in spite of their discomforts. For a long time no one spoke or moved.

It was getting dark and chilly. Mosquitoes started to buzz in the car windows. Vera finally broke the silence in her tearful way.”Ed, we’ve got to do something.” The smallest child started to cry from hunger. They were at the breaking point.†

“So, we’ve got to do something, O.K. What I’d like to know. Go feed you in some fancy restaurant I suppose.” But even as he spoke, Crane knew that sitting in the car on the prairie at night was accomplishing nothing. He opened the door and got out.

They were a dismal group, walking across the dark prairie on uneven ground, sometimes stumbling and not knowing which way they were going or where. Ed was ahead, walking too fast for the rest of them; but the landscape became easier to see as they walked along. A barbed wire fence appeared to their left, small sagebrush and gullies made up the terrain. When car lights showed up, it helped them locate the main gravel road. It seemed like hours had gone by when car lights again appeared, going a short distance and turning.”Maybe there’s a place down there. Maybe we can get food. Oh, let’s rest for awhile,” said Vera. She dropped to her knees, exhausted from carrying the small child.

Finally, the seven walked across the small creek and through a gate to the porch of the farmhouse.

The Hathaways awakened with a start when the knock came on their door. They hadn’t been in bed very long. The picnic and other events of the long day had kept them up. Thank goodness the children had not been disturbed. As they got out of bed, May whispered to Cliff that it might be the fugitive family they heard about on the radio.

Cliff opened the door and was surprised to find it wasn’t a neighbor, but a strange man and woman and five children — cold, dirty and mosquito bitten, a pitiful group. Crane spoke immediately.”Could we get some milk or something for the kids? Our car broke down.”

“Sure, come in. We’ll make some coffee for you. Where is your car? Did you come a long ways?” Cliff talked in the friendly manner common to West River.

May started coffee on the stove and got cookies from the jar. The milk in the large gallon jar was from that night’s milking. Vera meekly handed the baby’s bottle to May, who was taken aback.”That’s what the poor baby has been drinking,” she thought to herself as she took the dirty nipple from the bottle that had a trace of sour milk in the bottom. She rinsed it and filled it with fresh milk. As she handed it to the woman, the baby reached up, grabbed the bottle and sucked hungrily. The other four children devoured milk and cookies. Nothing was said for a while. Cliff, puzzled by the strange group, asked,”Where’d you say your car quit?”

“Oh, a ways back, but a guy came along and is pulling it to town. Our other boy is steering it. Sure hope he gets along all right, the fella was kinda drunk.”

As Cliff pondered their unlikely story, Crane swallowed his coffee and said,”Guess we better go. We’ll wait until they bring the car.” Vera got up, showing signs of deep fatigue and mental strain. They all followed Crane to the door.

The sun wasn’t up, but the sky was light in the east as they walked past the yard gate, then slowly started down the road. Suddenly Cliff was filled with pity. No one should let such small kids face the mosquitoes.”Here, let me take you,” Cliff burst out, and much to May’s surprise he headed toward his pickup. Without much conversation they all crowded into the cab. As Cliff started the motor, Crane said,”Maybe you better take us to Chance. I have a job on a ranch up there.”

Almost certain by now that it was the fugitive family, Cliff said,”If you want to go to Chance, I will have to get some gas at the store.” The 5 miles to the store seemed to take a long time. Cliff was squeezed into the corner of the cab. When the gas pumps appeared before him he felt more comfortable, because he knew there were other people there.

The store was quiet. After a few minutes, Lee Simon, the Zeona store owner and a good friend of Cliff’s, came to the door in his stocking feet. Crane handed Cliff a $5 bill. At the same time, Cliff noticed Crane turning sideways in the seat and he had the uncomfortable feeling that he had a gun. Crane quietly told the oldest boy to go into the store with Cliff. Knowing Lee was without shoes, Cliff said he’d pump the gas. Cliff and the strangers painted an unusual picture so early in the morning. Lee wondered about it, but said nothing until Cliff came inside the store.”What the hell’s the deal anyway?” he asked.†

“It’s a man and woman with five kids, figure it out for yourself,” he quietly replied. He left the store quickly and started back down the road in the direction they’d come.†

“Something is sure wrong. That’s not like Cliff,” Lee said to his wife, Lillian, as she started breakfast.

The small farmhouse was so quiet. May couldn’t stand the silence when she could no longer see the pickup as it slid up over a rise in the road. She ran to higher ground to see if she could see anything at all. The farther she went the more she trembled, hoping the kids wouldn’t wake up, and still hoping they would break the silence and anxiety. When she returned to the house, she had made up her mind. After breakfast she would go to Cliff’s parents’ home a short distance away and milk the cow, but not tell them about their early morning”visitors.” She knew Cliff’s folks, Cecil and Lena, would panic before she finished telling the story.

Meanwhile, Cliff headed the pickup for Chance. When they had driven about 5 miles down the road, past the Gilbert Dalen place (Cliff’s uncle) and the rural school near the river with cottonwoods and buffalo berry brush, Crane suddenly said,”Stop right here and let us out.”

The family piled out of the pickup. Cliff picked up the old cotton”Indian” blanket he kept in the seat and gave it a toss toward them, pulled the door shut and drove away as fast as he dared. As he stepped on the gas, he slid low in the seat, expecting to hear a gun shot. It didn’t come. When May saw him drive into the yard, she was overcome with joy. But there was still the issue of how to apprehend the wanted man.

Lee Simon was still puzzled when he began to drive to Newell, 50 miles away, to do some carpentry work. Soon he heard a news bulletin on the pickup radio, the same that was broadcast the day before:”Keep on the lookout for a man, woman and five children. The man is wanted for shooting a police officer, considered dangerous.” It was the first time Lee had heard about the man who was wanted for a shooting over a penny sales tax.

That had to be the family in Cliff’s pickup. When he got to Newell, he immediately contacted the county sheriff. By that time, word had already spread to law officials and farmers and ranchers in a large area. Cliff had informed Gail Coe, a local deputy, of the location of Ed and his family in the brush along the Moreau River.

A number of Cliff’s neighbors lived along the river. It was the pattern begun in homestead days; settle close to water, wood and shelter for livestock. Neighbors spread the word by party-line telephone as far as it reached. Raymond Edwards and Gilbert Dalen, who were making hay near the river, were told to keep on mowing and raking as if nothing was wrong.

Strange things happen when excitement runs high and panic takes over. Women seek neighbors for comfort. Hazel Burge went to Polly Edwards, taking her half-risen bread dough along. Lena and Cecil Hathaway hurriedly drove to the location to”see,” well ahead of the officials. Christine Dalen forgot to put on her”bloomers,” as she called her underpants, as she dressed and ran out of the farmhouse. All this happened while Crane hid in the underbrush. But he let the kids wade in the Moreau River, in full view of the people who were driving over the nearby bridge.

By noon vehicles of every kind were heading to the spot north of the river where two roads converged. From the air it looked like a giant anthill, a major departure from the usual tranquility of the rural community. Deputy Coe, a pilot, was instructed to circle above Ed Crane and his family, and to pin-point Crane’s location in the brush. Crane kept moving, but as the local officers approached on foot he dropped his gun and gave up without a struggle.

Edward F. Crane then revealed his real name. His Nash car was registered to Fred E. Werren, one of the aliases he had been using. The family was taken to Bison, and later moved to North Dakota after some disagreement between the two states over who would be responsible for the wife and children. Eventually, Edward Crane was sentenced to 30 years in a North Dakota prison. When the radio news reached all over the United States about Crane, Vera’s relatives in Connecticut notified officials in North Dakota that a legacy of $3,000 had been left for her by her father, who had died several years earlier. No one knew where she was, and she had last seen her father in 1946.

Walter Hoherz’s car was taken to Bison, where the owner picked it up. That gave the Bison and Zeona communities even more to talk about. Whenever the issue arose, Cliff Hathaway’s dilemma was discussed. He couldn’t bear to see the fugitive’s family suffer, everyone said, so he got involved and risked his life.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the January/February 2008 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.