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Some Things Never Change in S.D.

By Katie Hunhoff

South Dakotans have patiently awaited the joyful harbingers of spring: a tree beginning to bud, a flash of color from a tulip, grass slowly changing hue from brown to green. But the first sign of spring we received this year was not so welcome. March brought flooding to parts of East River, mixed with a statewide blizzard.

The mid-March storm was no surprise to most of us. We’ve endured our share of spring setbacks. In fact, our March/April issue — published just as the recent storms were gathering — includes a story on the awful historic winter and spring of 1952.

Our longtime writer Paul Higbee began the article with a line that could have made a headline this month:”It was a demon of a blizzard that melted into a monster of a flood.” The January storm of’52 especially hit the Rosebud region of south-central South Dakota. Mission, White River, Winner, Philip, Murdo, Gregory and Pierre were hammered the hardest but the storm swept over the entire state, delivering severe winds and snow from Rapid City to Watertown.

Snowmelt in the spring brought more disaster. High water along the Missouri River valley and its tributaries drove 7,748 people in 17 counties from their homes. Miraculously, there were no fatalities. But 45 houses were destroyed and 584 damaged.

The Rosebud disaster wasn’t the most tragic storm in state history, but it’s one that captured the state’s imagination in part thanks to Laura Hellmann of Millboro, a tiny ranching community in Tripp County. After the storm, she asked 66 writers to quickly submit their survival stories before memories were dulled by time or forgotten. The stories collectively show the tragedy, despair and helplessness that weather can inflict.

Hellmann eventually published the memories in a small book, which she titled Blizzard Strikes the Rosebud. The stories are captivating. A Gregory cafe became home to 32 people for two days; they played cards, listened to the radio and slept in booths. Mildred Benson kept her students at Eden School entertained by organizing a folk dance that went on for two days.

Thor Fosheim, a 75-year-old rancher, rode off on horseback to save his cattle and never returned. Murdo rancher Noel”Pete” Judd went with his nephew to bring his daughters home from school. When their Jeep stalled, the four started walking. Funeral services for all four were held eight days later in Winner.

Most farmers and ranchers didn’t drive four-wheel-drive pickups in the early 1950s, and they didn’t have 100-horsepower tractors with heated cabs and snow blowers. Some of the rescue work was accomplished by foot and on horseback.

However, one thing has remained constant from 1952 to 2019. When times get tough, neighbors and even strangers band together to help one another. Much has changed in South Dakota since 1952. Roads and bridges are better. Dams and levees have been constructed to control flooding. Equipment is better and safer.

But good neighbors are still the greatest blessing when the snow is blowing and the water is rising. It was true in’52 and true in’19.

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Old Highway 16

By Bernie Hunhoff

A stretch of Old Highway 16 east of the Black Hills is now Highway 14/16.

Can you buy the idea that a highway is a community? A long and narrow one-street town that connects places and people, good and bad happenings and a crazy conglomeration of dogs, deer and duck ponds? If a road is a community, then imagine South Dakota’s U.S. Highway 16 in its heyday. Gutzon Borglum was traveling 16 while carving Mount Rushmore. Korczak Ziolkowski helped him for a time before eyeing his own Crazy Horse carving just down the same road. Dorothy and Ted Hustead were nailing wood signs to fence posts, hoping to attract motorists to their Wall drug store. George McGovern was a shy student at Mitchell High School until he discovered a passion for debate, and motored up and down the highway attending tournaments. Sparky Anderson, the Hall of Fame baseball manager, was learning balls and strikes in Bridgewater, where businessmen promoted their stretch of 16 as Cornhusker Highway in honor of the local baseball league.

Russ Madison, one of the founders of modern-day rodeo, trailed wild broncs and bulls up and down 16 when it was dirt and gravel. Earl Brockelsby, a Black Hills kid with a fascination for snakes and reptiles, was pleased to discover that Highway 16 travelers would pull off the road and pay admission to see his collection. Alex Johnson, a railroader from Chicago, came to Rapid City to build a grand hotel for passersby; showing no modesty, he named it The Alex Johnson.

All that and a thousand more lesser-known stories along an east-west hodgepodge of dirt and gravel roads linked not only in South Dakota but across five states. The 1,600-mile journey was configured from Detroit to Yellowstone National Park, crossing Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota and Wyoming. Highway 16 was a central segment of several routes to the Black Hills and Yellowstone Park called the Black and Yellow Trail. An association formed in Huron in 1919 to promote the corridors, which also included parts of Highways 14 and 20 in South Dakota. Wood fence posts were painted black and yellow every mile or so to reassure tourists that they were still on track.

At first, Highway 16 was nothing more than a dirt trail. Model T wheels dug deep ruts during wet periods. In West River country, perhaps a car or two would pass down the road every hour on summer days — far fewer at night and in winter. At New Underwood, the road veered to either side of a giant cottonwood tree. Further east at Wicksville, W.H. Wolfenberger attracted travelers to his little store by leashing a pet coyote in the front yard. The store shelves were sparsely stocked with candy and staples, but rumors were that Wolfenberger sold moonshine under the counter.

Highway 16 bordered the north edge of Jack Brainard’s family ranch in eastern Pennington County.”We called it the Black and Yellow Trail, and before that they called it the Custer Battlefield Highway,” he says. It was also called”Fourteen” locally, because Highways 16 and 14 merged through much of West River.

Brainard parlayed his Dakota ranch childhood into a distinguished career as a horseman. Now 94 and living in Whitesboro, Texas, he still remembers a particular day when he saw a cloud of dust on the road to Wasta.”Russ Madison was driving his horses to Wasta for a rodeo, and running in the front was the first palomino I ever saw and I thought it was the prettiest horse I ever saw.”

A dinosaur looms over today’s Interstate 90 near wall. Photo by Chad Coppess/S.D. Tourism

The travel industry soon followed in the path of that palomino. Henry Ford’s new Model A debuted in 1928; it and other car models offered more comfortable and dependable transportation. Mount Rushmore was emerging on the mountain west of Rapid City as a new attraction, along with a buffalo herd at Custer State Park. Soon a wave of hotels, restaurants, gas stations and automobile shops were built to serve the motorists.

The federal government helped gravel the route, providing jobs through the Works Progress Administration in the Great Depression of the 1930s. Workers often hauled the gravel by horse and wagon, and emptied the loads by shovel and muscle. One wagonload graveled about three feet of the roadbed.

The 400-mile stretch of Highway 16 in South Dakota connected Sioux Falls and Rapid City, the state’s two largest cities, along with several dozen smaller towns. Highway 16’s original route connected the main streets of most communities. In the 1940s and 1950s, bypasses were built on the edges of the towns, creating a second wave of motel and gas station construction.

A third wave came in the 1970s when Interstate 90 was constructed in a near-parallel route to Highway 16 across South Dakota, but even further from the local communities. Once again, new service stations, hotels, motels, rock shops and eateries were constructed.

Some travelers bemoan Interstate 90 as monotonous and sterile. Every ditch is mowed and every fence is straight. Highway beauty is in the eye of the beholder behind the wheel. Those who see boredom in the standardization of the federal four-lane — and who aren’t in a hurry to cross the state in 6 hours or less — will enjoy a nostalgic journey down the original 16.

Old trucks at Quinn.

Phil and JoAnn Stark have observed life in”the slow lane” for most of the last 30 years at Cottonwood, where they ran a bar and store called JoAnn’s Trading Post.”People think nobody lives here,” says Phil,”but Philip and Quinn and Wall are all one big community.” And in the summer, motorcyclists and other travelers who like to venture off the interstate become part of the mix.”They liked the sawdust on the floor, or the idea that they could just pitch a tent out back if they wanted,” says Phil.”Sometimes we’d have a dance the Saturday before the (Sturgis) rally, and the music would just keep going until morning and I don’t remember anyone ever getting in a fight. The people who like the two-lane are peaceful folks who just aren’t in a big hurry.”

South Dakota’s biggest car nut agrees.”People who like the back roads are our kind of people,” says Dave Geisler of the Pioneer Auto Show in Murdo, a sprawling indoor/outdoor museum of collectible cars, motorcycles, tractors, toys and Western memorabilia.

Geisler says Murdo changed with each of the three highway waves.”The old Highway 16 ran right into downtown on Second Street,” he says, on a tour of the town.”Here was a Mobil station. There was the Red Top Cabins. This was Young’s Cabin Park. That was a gas station. Here was Weber’s Deluxe Cabin Court. There was a Skelly’s station. Gas was 25 cents a gallon. Up here was the Conoco station. Nobody could have made much money but they all got along.”

Plenty of daring thinkers and doers populated the Highway 16 community in the middle of the 20th century. Many of their dreams remain intact at Wall Drug, Al’s Oasis, the Murdo auto museum and other lesser-known places. New promoters are also showing up. At the Community Pharmacy in Presho, a small sign boasts of the”Best Coffee Between Sioux Falls and Rapid City.” Further east at Kimball, Keke Leiferman remodeled an old Highway 16 gas station into an eatery and entertainment spot called The Back Forty.”I look at Interstate 90 as my community,” she admits. But the shop sits a half-mile from I-90 on Old 16.

If roads are communities, then I-90 is Sioux Falls on wheels — smooth and speedy — while Old Highway 16 is New Underwood without the cottonwood tree.

Most of Old 16 is still intact and passable. Here’s a guide to the 1950s-era corridor for those who might like to experience the slow lane for at least one nostalgic trip across South Dakota.

Minnesota Border to Bridgewater

Doug and Brenda Deffenbaugh run a honey stand on the honor system near Wall Lake. Brenda (pictured with her son, Drayden) says customers are almost always honest.

Old 16 enters South Dakota from Minnesota on 262nd Street, which skirts Valley Springs and the south side of Brandon. Just south of Brandon, take a right turn on Madison Street and enter Sioux Falls. Take a left on Sycamore, then a right onto 10th Street and follow it past the backside of Michelangelo’s David statue. The road runs through the heart of Sioux Falls, exiting the city as Hwy 42. Wave goodbye to suburbia because you’ll see little of that for the next 350 miles. You’ll drive past Wall Lake, through the East Vermillion River valley and into the heart of East River farming country on your way to Bridgewater, where Sparky Anderson played baseball as a child before becoming the first Major League manager to win a World Series in both leagues.

Bridgewater to Mitchell

Mitchell’s Corn Palace is just a few blocks north of Old Highway 16. Photo by Chad Coppess/S.D. Tourism

Leave Hwy 42 at Bridgewater and drive northeast on SD Hwy 262 to Alexandria, then north on 421st Avenue. Cross I-90 and you’ll come to Hwy 38. Take it west across the Jim River and Firesteel Creek and enter Mitchell. Watch for a big fiberglass Hereford bull, the trademark for Chef Louie’s. Perhaps the oldest steakhouse on the route, it dates to the 1930s. Hwy 38 becomes Havens Avenue through the city. The famous Corn Palace is just a few blocks north.

Mitchell to White Lake

Bob and Edith Zoon are the longtime proprietors of the A-Bar-Z Motel in White Lake.

Continue on Hwy 38 past Mount Vernon, home of Minnesota Vikings star linebacker Chad Greenway. As you enter Aurora County, Hwy 38 is still posted as Hwy 16 for a stretch. You’ll drive past Gordy’s Campground in Plankinton. See the war memorials indoors and outdoors at the county courthouse. West of Plankinton the roadbed roughens, the shoulder is gravel and you begin to see less cropland and more grass. You’re now driving between the 99th and 100th meridians, a north-south stretch called America’s”middle border” by some agrarian-minded historians who believe the big difference in rainfall amounts east and west of those imaginary lines affected the settlement of the region.

White Lake to Kimball

The Back Forty in Kimball grew from an old gas station.

The A-Bar-Z Store & Hotel was built in White Lake along U.S. Hwy 16 several years before President Eisenhower signed the Interstate Highway Construction Act. Thirty years later, Bob and Edith Zoon were”just friends” when they arrived in 1985 from New Jersey to visit relatives.”We came out and fell in love with the area,” explained Bob. And with each other. They took a trip to the Aurora County Courthouse in Plankinton, where Bob asked,”What does it take to get married here?” The sheriff and his secretary served as witnesses. Then they bought the six-room hotel and gas station on Old 16 and renamed it A-Bar-Z.

As you leave White Lake, local Hwy 16 crosses to the south of Ike’s concrete legacy and you find yourself on 252nd Street. About 12 miles later, you approach Kimball and the South Dakota Tractor Museum. You pass by a tiny Frosty King ice cream shack and then, a half-mile west, a funky coffeehouse, restaurant and bar known as The Back Forty, where proprietor Keke Leiferman gives traditional South Dakota sandwiches a gourmet twist. A mile down the road, you drive beneath an underpass and find yourself on the south side of I-90 once again, going west on what’s now called 251st Street.

Kimball to Chamberlain

Hillside Motel in Chamberlain survived the decommissioning of Highway 16. Photo by Chad Coppess/S.D. Tourism

Eleven miles after leaving Kimball, you pull up to a stop sign for Hwy 50. To the west is a big body of water known as Red Lake. Take Hwy 50 north across I-90 and head for nearby Pukwana, lawn mower racing capital of the Northern Plains. Leave Pukwana on 249th Street going west and you’ll soon rejoin Hwy 50 as it enters Chamberlain, descending into the wide valley of the Missouri River. Spend some time in Chamberlain, a little city with a one-way Main Street that includes a movie theater, restaurants and a bakery called Indulge. Just to the west of Main Street, River Street leads to a shoreline park and walking paths, good opportunities to stretch your legs or enjoy the sweets from the bakery.

Chamberlain to Kennebec

The Lyman County courthouse at Kennebec.

You’ll cross the Missouri — the USA’s longest river — on an old steel bridge that transformed travel on Hwy 16 when it was finished in September of 1925. The two-way bridge became too narrow for modern cars and trucks. When construction of the Fort Randall Dam expanded the river’s width, an identical bridge at nearby Wheeler was declared surplus and floated upriver. The old bridge became the west lane and the Wheeler bridge is the east lane yet today. Cross the bridge into West River and you’ll drive past Oacoma and Al’s Oasis, a grocery store and highway restaurant made famous by the Mueller family. The old highway ends and you have no choice but to take I-90 for about nine miles, but then you can rejoin Old 16 by turning north on Hwy 47 at Exit 251. Take Hwy 47 northwest into Reliance and then onto Kennebec, where the Lyman County courthouse serves as the bastion of government for 3,700 citizens.

Kennebec to Kadoka

Dave Geisler entertains travelers at the Pioneer Auto Museum in Murdo.

Now you embark on a long stretch of Old 16 known as Hwy 248 that closely parallels I-90, which is usually within a rifle’s shot. Hwy 248 leads you through eight more little West River towns, in this order: Kennebec, Presho, Vivian, Draper, Murdo, Okaton, Belvidere and Kadoka. Some look like ghost towns at first blush, while others are busier than their modest populations would suggest.

When Highway 16 was in its prime, Keith Patrick’s repair shop at Vivian was a Ford dealership and gas station. Today, pilots occasionally land small planes on the road without fear of hitting a motorist. Patrick fixes anything from cars and tractors to”lawn mowers, vacuum cleaners and eye glasses.” He and his brother, Kevin, display old pictures and memorabilia of Vivian in the shop.

Fading wood gas stations, motels, shops and restaurants are scattered around Draper, pop. 82. Gene Cressy remembers when Highway 16 was constructed in the 1940s, south of the railroad tracks.”The speed limit was 45, 25 on the curves because they were 90-degree curves.” Neighboring schools borrowed the road’s nickname when they organized the Custer Battlefield Conference for sports teams. The conference still exists.

Gurney Seed & Nursery of Yankton started a chain of rural gas stations in the 1930s. Vivian’s station is preserved at Pioneer Auto Museum in Murdo. Dave Geisler has an eclectic collection of 275 old automobiles (including the Dukes of Hazzard’s General Lee) and 30 buildings stocked with Old West and pioneer memorabilia. It grew from a Highway 16 gas station and Chevy dealership started by Dave’s father in the early 1950s.

Check out the dollar bills pinned all over the Reliance Bar, and the Lyman County Courthouse in Kennebec, built in 1925 when Henry Ford was still making Model Ts. In Presho you drive past a sprawling indoor/outdoor museum and Hutch’s, a restaurant and cafe built in the early 1950s that locals love for the hot beef sandwiches.

Kadoka to Cottonwood

A longhorn cow roams the quiet roadway west of Philip Junction.

The Kadoka to Wall route is not for everybody, or every car. The Old 16 roadbed is still passable, but at times it becomes a West River back road seldom used even by local ranchers.

The stretch begins nicely. You travel east of Kadoka for 7 miles along the same old Hwy 248 until you reach what’s known as Seven Mile Corner. Then Old 16 runs north (now Highway 73) toward Philip. In a dozen or so miles (before arriving in the city of Philip), you drop into a valley called Philip Junction. Notice a family farm in the valley; the building closest to the highway is landscaped with old auto memorabilia. Turn west on a forgotten road that once was U.S. Highway 16, the grandest route from Detroit to Yellowstone. Today, the little asphalt that remains is cracked and dry. It looks like a road from an apocalypse movie.

The path (now 237th Street) is still marked as a”principal route” on many maps and atlases, but they are mistaken. Ruts and holes make it barely passable on a dry summer’s day, and a bad idea on a wet day. This is Jackson County, population 3,200, one of the poorest places in the United States. Little money is available for road maintenance.

You’ll travel 10 slow miles along 237th Street, mostly past pastures and grasslands. You cross two creeks, one called the South Fork Bad River, which flows northward to the Bad River, which flows into the mighty Missouri at Fort Pierre.

Bridges on the creeks seem scary, but they hold a car.

Cottonwood to Wall

Pavement is gone from the road east of Wall.

The apocalyptic segment runs onto Hwy 14 just east of the tiny town of Cottonwood. Highways 14 and 16 once joined there and continued together to Rapid City. Enjoy the next 10 miles on the smooth and solid Hwy 14 to Quinn, past Wall Drug signs advertising jackalopes, donuts and a 6-foot rabbit.

At Quinn, you face another test. You can continue along Hwy 14, a newer route for Hwy 16, or you can once again”rough it” on the original roadbed to Wall. To find the old road, drive into Quinn and look just south of the railroad tracks for a road marked as Old Hwy 16 & Quinn Road, and take it west.

At first you’ll be on a dirt path, heading past a cattle ranch. Again, this is only for adventurous souls on dry days. The asphalt has all but disappeared. At times, you’ll be on a one-lane path and at one point you’ll even need to enter the ditch to avoid a washout.

Unlike the first stretch of rough road, which is over-promised on most maps, this brief 5-mile path from Quinn to Wall is not even shown on the official state map. Keep driving west and you’ll be rewarded by a scenic jaunt past some swampy land and small bumps, precursors to the big Badlands to the south. You’ll see gnarled old wood posts along the way, and it takes only a little imagination to picture a young Ted Hustead nailing”Free Ice Water” signs on them to attract Model A drivers to stop at his now-famous Wall Drug Store.

Wall to Wasta

The owner of the old Packard Cafe and Motel in Wasta borrowed the name from the luxurious automobile of the 1930s and ’40s. Photo by Chad Coppess/S.D. Tourism

We would be remiss as travel guides if we didn’t recommend a stop at Wall Drug — still owned and operated by the Hustead family — for a buffalo burger, the crispy-soft chocolate doughnuts, 5-cent coffee and free admission to one of the West’s amazing art collections.

According to legend, Hustead actually traveled to Wasta to get water for his customers. If that story is true, then he surely made the drive by heading west on Fourth Avenue. You can do the same, but then the exact route of Old 16 is a mystery. Most likely, today’s I-90 was built over some of the original roadbed. Our recommendation is to take I-90 to Wasta, but then drive into Wasta, where you’ll easily find traces of Hwy 16 on the north side of town. It soon dead-ends if you turn west, but go east a mile and you’ll be rewarded with a better look at the Cheyenne River valley than I-90 travelers enjoy. Park your car and take pictures of the Old 16 car bridge and the nearby railroad bridge, both still in service.

The nearby town of Owanka died due to lack of water.”If they did find water, it had a high sulfur content and they couldn’t drink it,” says Jack Brainard.”They shipped water in on the train.” The name Wasta came from the Lakota name for the springs, mini wasta, or”water good.” When Highway 16 was routed to the north side of town, hotels and restaurants were opened like the Redwood, where motel scenes for the movie Thunderheart were filmed in 1991.

Wasta to Rapid City

Margaret Larson, Alice Richter, Janice Jensen and Joyce Wolken play cards at BJ’s Country Store in New Underwood.

Return to I-90 and head west for just a few miles, then take Exit 90 and go south on 173rd Avenue to the Wicksville Community Church, where services are held on the second, third and fourth Sundays of every month — leaving travelers to wonder what happens on the first Saturday that carries into Sunday morning? At the church corner, you’ll find an old stretch of the original highway that leads east but dead-ends a mile down the road. Head west and you’ll once again be on Old 16, but it’s diplomatically called Hwy 14/16 these days. The Black Hills are now visible on the horizon, just two towns away.

The first is New Underwood, Margaret Larsen’s home for 86 years. Most mornings she can be found at BJ’s Country Store, playing cards with friends. They cheerfully interrupted the game long enough to share stories.”Before the interstate we had a lot more stores — two grocery stores and a lumberyard,” says Larsen.”We still have plenty of bars.”

The next town is Box Elder, home to Ellsworth Air Force Base and one of the Dakotas’ boomtowns of the last 50 years. Box Elder was a tiny place in the heyday of Old 16, but nearly 10,000 people now live there. Hwy 14/16 skirts an old part of the boomtown and enters Rapid City.

Rapid City to Custer

Buffalo graze west of Custer.

No longer do you need much guidance, because you’re now driving the lone surviving stretch of U.S. Hwy 16. It starts out in downtown Rapid City as Mount Rushmore Road. You’ll climb out of Rapid City and into the mountains on a highway made to accommodate the two million people per year who visit Mount Rushmore. You drive past the Brockelsby family’s Reptile Gardens, Bear Country USA, Fort Hays Old West Town and numerous other visitor attractions.

You skirt the old mining community of Keystone, which sits at the foot of Mount Rushmore, and then follow the old highway as it cuts right through Hill City. There are many interesting stops in the little town, ranging from the century-old Hill City Cafe that remains as unpretentious as the small town eateries you might have enjoyed 200 miles to the east in farming country to an 1880 excursion train and the popular Prairie Berry Winery.

A dozen miles south, you’ll find the Ziolkowski family’s Crazy Horse mountain carving, and then dip down into the city of Custer. Black Hills Burger & Bun Co. is on the west side of the highway as you arrive downtown, one of 35 restaurants in a city of only 2,000 people.

Custer to the Wyoming Border

Three scenic paths wind through Jewel Cave National Park.

As the elevation climbs you rise beyond all the manmade accouterments that you’ve enjoyed between Rapid City and Custer. Now it’s just you and the forest and the highway, until you reach Jewel Cave National Monument. Want some strenuous exercise? Two unusual trails descend into Hell’s Canyon. This is a rare opportunity for a wilderness walk into one of the Black Hills’ deepest canyons. You’ll likely see birds and wildlife, and feel blasts of cold air as you poke your head into caves that connect to the 170-mile maze that comprises Jewel Cave.

It’s a short drive down the mountain. You enter private rangeland as you reach Wyoming. There’s no official”Welcome to Wyoming” sign, but the border is just a short distance west of the ruins of an abandoned cowboy bar and cafe. U.S. Hwy 16 continues on to Yellowstone, the original destination when federal road planners created this east-west route nearly a century ago.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the July/August 2015 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Finding the Silent Guide

By Michael Zimny

The Silent Guide Monument stands on a lonely hilltop west of Philip.

A solitary stone pillar stands atop a knoll known locally as Stoneman Hill, about 8 miles west of Philip on East Grindstone Road.

The winds on Stoneman Hill can be fierce and biting cold, but the views from where the Silent Guide stands stoically are copious, reaching southward into the Badlands. Looking northward you might almost sense the smell of a roasted turkey wafting in from a Christmas party held long ago at Pedro Hall.

Local lore says the pillar was first built in 1900 by a shepherd named W.S. Jones, to mark the spot of a watering hole. There were Joneses who homesteaded in Haakon County, but neither the U.S. Census of 1900 or the county history Haakon Horizons shed any light on who W.S. was. If a reader knows, please feel free to educate your correspondent.

The story goes that the monument often fell victim to the cowboy vs.”honyocker” rivalry. Within a couple of decades, old rivalries gave way to nostalgia for the days before fences hemmed the seas of grass and the local community first rebuilt the pillar in 1924. In 1950, the Silent Guide was designated as a U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey reference marker.

In 1999, the wind-beaten sentinel had again grown weary and the community once more came together to restore the foundation. In 2010, M.R. and David Hansen, who grew up in nearby Grindstone, replaced the brittle mortar holding the stones together.

To find the Silent Guide, start west out of Philip on Highway 14 just past where it crosses the north fork of the Bad River. Take a slight right onto E. Grindstone Road. Stay straight for about 8 miles. You’ll see the monument when you reach the top of a steep hill opposite Stoneman.

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

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West River Melting Pot

By John Andrews

We really have a thing for rocks at South Dakota Magazine. I’m not ready to call it an unnatural obsession because rocks really can be quite fascinating. And they are natural, so I guess it would be natural obsession?

Anyway, two weeks ago in our online feature on Moody County, we wrote about Lone Rock, a huge glacial erratic and local landmark. Lone Rock had been our selection back in the summer of 2011, when the magazine did a feature on one unusual thing to see in every county.

When it came to Haakon County, guess what we chose? Yep. More rocks. This time a pile of them. But just like Lone Rock, there’s a story behind the stack that helps us understand the uncertainty that came with settling Haakon County, a 1,800-square-mile tract right in the middle of West River whose untamed prairie could easily have intimidated homesteaders as they eventually trickled across the Missouri River.

This manmade landmark is the Silent Guide Monument, built sometime in the late 1800s or early 1900s by a sheepherder who wanted to mark a well that never seemed to go dry. It originally stood 14 feet tall and could be seen from 35 miles around. As cowboys and sheepherders battled for land, cattlemen sometimes roped the monument and pulled the stones to the ground. Once, a fed-up sheep man sat atop the pile with his shotgun, daring others to destroy it.

James “Scotty” Philip.

The monument’s importance faded as more homesteaders arrived and found their own wells. Still, locals kept watch over it, rebuilding its stones when they naturally toppled to the earth. Eventually they were permanently cemented together. You’ll find the Silent Guide Monument about 8 miles west of Philip on the way to Grindstone.

Many of the early homesteaders who relied on the monument were Scandinavian, which explains why the county was named after King Haakon VII of Norway after its creation in 1914. It’s the only county in South Dakota named for a non-American person, and is one of nine named for people who did not live in South Dakota.

One exception to that immigration rule was James”Scotty” Philip, who came from Scotland in 1874 and settled east of Philip in 1881. Philip is best known as”the man who saved the buffalo,” although history has shown that fellow rancher Fred Dupris deserves just as much credit as Scotty. Still, you can’t think of Philip without thinking of buffalo.

Scotty Philip’s bison were up to the challenge presented by Mexican fighting bulls.

Our favorite story involving Scotty’s herd happened in 1907, when Philip was on a fall buying trip to Texas. He encountered two men from Juarez, Mexico, who were bragging about the toughness and stamina of their country’s fighting bulls. Philip suggested that any one of his bison could easily take down a bull, and offered to prove it by shipping one or more south for a fight.

Philip selected an 8-year-old named Pierre and a 4-year-old, and under the guidance of his nephew, George, they departed for Juarez. On the day of the fight, Pierre sauntered into the ring and, tired from his long journey, flopped down right in the middle. The crowd roared when the Mexican fighting bull was released. He was eager to fight because darts had been plunged into his shoulder to enhance his spirit.

A favorite hangout for local ranchers is the Philip Livestock Auction Barn. Cattle sales are held on Tuesdays, and the popular cafe is open daily. Gathered (from left) are Jake Schofield, Barry Barber, Boyd Waara and Thor Roseth, the owner and operator.

Pierre got to his feet in time to absorb the bull’s first charge. When the dust cleared, there stood Pierre, with the dazed bull wondering what had just happened. A couple more charges left the bull shaking in the arena, the crowd showering him with jeers.

The Mexicans, believing this first bout to be a fluke, sent three more bulls to square off against Pierre. Each time the bison stood his ground, and the question of species superiority was settled once and for all.

Philip became a prominent stockman and legislator before he died suddenly in 1911 at the age of 53. It is said that as he was buried in the family cemetery, his buffalo crested a nearby hill to say a final goodbye. His life was the subject of a recent documentary called The Buffalo King, written and produced by Justin Koehler, who grew up near the tiny settlement of Nowlin in Haakon County and named his Colorado-based film company Nowlin Town Productions.

George Stroppel’s healing hands still soothe aches and pains in Midland.

Philip left several lasting legacies, including the buffalo herd at Custer State Park, which descends from his animals. Another is the town of Philip, formed in 1907 and named after him. It’s the largest city in Haakon County, with 762 people, and is definitely a cow town. The Cattle Business Weekly newspaper is published on Center Street and sale days at Philip Livestock Auction are lively. But there are also amenities you won’t find in most towns fewer than 800, including the Gem, the only movie theater between Pierre and Rapid City.

Just up Highway 14 is Midland, a town of 130 people tucked into the hills of the Bad River Valley. Midland has been known for decades for its healing hot springs and the hands of George Stroppel, longtime operator of the Stroppel Hotel. He has sold the business, and its now called the Lava Water Hotel, but he still offers the massages that draw people from hundreds of miles.

Sundays are busy in Milesville, pop. 2.

If you relish an even slower pace of life, visit tiny Milesville, pop. 2 — Dan and Gayla Piroutek. The postal service no longer delivers mail there, but two churches still hold Sunday services and the town hall hosts birthdays, anniversaries and other special occasions.

Outside of those towns, there’s a lot of open space in Haakon County — and, if you believe in legends, a buried treasure. Ed Sanchez was one of Haakon County’s earliest homesteaders, settling on land near the Grindstone Buttes in 1878. He operated a roadhouse, ran cattle and carried the mail from Grindstone to Pedro. His business ventures must have been lucrative because local legend says that before Sanchez died in 1902, he buried his fortune in fruit jars along Dirty Woman Creek. Buy a shovel at the hardware store in Philip, head west out of town on the Grindstone Road and try your luck. If you unearth any rocks, just pile them up. They won’t look out of place.

Editor’s Note: This is the seventh installment in an ongoing series featuring South Dakota’s 66 counties. Click here for previous articles.

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Philip: The Rugged West

By Paul Higbee

On horseback and in wagons, adventurers rode for a week in July 2011 across prime shortgrass country, along the Bad River from Philip to Fort Pierre. Could there have been a better way to honor Scotty Philip, the man credited with saving the buffalo and for whom the town is named? Scotty would recognize every stream and butte along the route.

Born in 1858 at Morayshire, Scotland, Scotty is best remembered as for his buffalo conservation, although South Dakotans of his era knew him just as well as a cattle baron, financier and legislator. He always seemed bigger than life, and the state was stunned when he died suddenly on July 23, 1911 at age 53.

In the 1880s, still in his mid-20s, Scotty grazed cattle along the Bad River. By 1891 letter writers across America could address an envelope to Philip, South Dakota, and it would come to a makeshift post office near Scotty’s ranch headquarters. Most of the letters (and bills) were for his own cowhands. This rural post office proved remarkably mobile the next several years, bouncing from ranch to ranch. The post office ended up at today’s Philip townsite after the Chicago and North Western announced its rails were coming through, connecting Pierre and the Black Hills. By the time the first locomotive rumbled its way to the site in June 1907, businesses had sprung up, including the 73 Saloon. The saloon is still serving drinks today. Scotty Philip had called his cattle outfit”The 73,” and the saloon founder was Slim Taggert, a 73 cowboy.

Sign painter Barry Knutson’s customers include Wall Drug, Al’s Oasis and other West River must-stops. Most of his billboards are along U.S. highways, but he created a Wall Drug sign in Italy while serving there in the National Guard.

Another early Philip business was the North Western Hotel, where homesteaders who rode the rails into town slept, ate and met locators who showed them prospective farm sites. Among those who stepped off the train in 1908 was Besse Gause, 24 years old, single and from Iowa. She established a homestead and landed a teaching job in a one-room school. Her life was later profiled as part of the Daughters of Dakota historical collection. Besse’s adult daughter wrote that she wondered why her mother opted for such a hardscrabble existence.

Suffice it to say some people are drawn to the Dakota prairie, the more remote the locale, the better. Marie Slovek, like Besse a teacher, is a modern day example. Originally from Chicago, vacations west told Marie she was cut out for a life removed from city lights. Still, when she pulled into Philip several years ago, she recalls,”I thought I’d teach third grade for the nine-month school year and maybe move on. But I absolutely fell in love with the area and the town.”

That relationship was cemented when Marie suffered a house fire in Philip.”By the next morning,” she says,”people had arranged for a place for me to live, and I had furniture, appliances, food and clothing. People in Philip really look out for one another.”

She stayed, married buffalo rancher Dwight Slovek, and became the school’s technology coordinator and elementary computer teacher.”When my family visits from Chicago,” Marie notes,”they’re awed. They sit on the deck at night and see no man made lights, or in the day they can watch weather moving in, watch it before it happens.”

Kerry Hostetler (pictured with her son, Jesse) is a rancher’s wife who runs a flower shop in Philip.

Philip puts the surrounding vastness to creative use. Early residents took the lead in complaining that Stanley County was too vast, that it should be broken up to create two or more additional counties. They believed Philip sat perfectly positioned to serve as a county seat, which it became in 1914 after Haakon County was established. Municipal leaders also worked to make certain Highway 14 was routed their way, and in 1935 won support for a municipal auditorium. The idea was to create the region’s main center for live entertainment and athletics. The brick structure went up fast after gaining Works Progress Administration (WPA) designation. For the next quarter century Philip hosted district high school basketball tournaments and popular dances featuring big band leaders Lawrence Welk and Tommy Dorsey.

In the early 1960s, just as the shine had worn off the auditorium (the historic building is now a well-stocked Hardware Hank), Art Kroetch decided it was time to take his Philip salvage yard enterprise in a new direction. He started Scotchman Industries, a manufacturer any community — big or small — would be proud to claim. First Kroetch and his crew built heavy-duty farm and ranch products: corral panels, chutes, gates, and pickup racks. In the process the company acquired enough modern metal working know-how to manufacture its own metal fabricating systems, beginning with an innovative hydraulic ironworker. Kroetch, who died in 2007, aggressively pursued international markets, and the company he founded remains a worldwide industry leader.

Mark Buchholz and his son, Kent, operate Kennedy Implement, a farm machinery headquarters.

Art Kroetch”had the community of Philip in his heart” says his son, Jerry, who is current Scotchman Industries president. Indeed, the company is a key to how Philip has successfully weathered ag country’s economic ups and downs, steadily maintaining a population of about 800 over the decades. Today there are 60 Scotchman Industries employees.

Visitors find an intriguing small town — and not just because of the storied hardware store and 73 Saloon. Center Avenue, two blocks long, is understated until an observer takes a look at the array of small businesses — a steakhouse, attorney, pharmacy, several bars, Cattle Business Weekly newspaper (“For cattlemen — by cattlemen”), a variety store, insurance, auto parts. And there’s something most unusual for a town of less than a thousand residents. The Gem, with 212 seats, is a first-run movie theater.

“We’re the only movie theater between Pierre and Rapid City,” says Amy Moses, whose family owns and operates the Gem. In saying that she echoes the way dozens of Philip entrepreneurs have promoted their businesses over the years. At the Gem, $6 will buy an adult admission (a dollar less at matinees) and a sack of large popcorn is just $1.50. Once in a while movie-goers will drive more than an hour from Rapid City, not surprising given the reasonable prices and the pretty prairie drive most summer evenings. First-time visitors see the Gem as something of a museum piece in this age of multiplexes.”It goes clear back to the silent movie days,” says Moses, pointing out show bills from that era, displayed on the walls. The original ticket booth — a narrow booth, indeed, with room for one ticket seller — stands in the middle of the lobby. Movies run Friday through Monday.

A favorite hangout for local ranchers is the Philip Livestock Auction Barn. Cattle sales are held on Tuesdays, and the popular cafe is open daily. Gathered (from left) are Jake Schofield, Barry Barber, Boyd Waara and Thor Roseth, the owner and operator.

Although it has its charms, like the Gem, Philip overall exudes a feeling of West River ruggedness and functionality. It’s not a place that seeks the label”quaint.” Residents know, too, that there’s always been more interest statewide in Scotty Philip the man, than Philip the namesake town.

Today’s historians are quick to explain that Scotty Philip had help in saving the buffalo, beginning with Frederick Dupree. Both men ended up with South Dakota towns named after them. And both made fortunes on cattle, in part because their marriages to Indian women allowed them to graze stock on the Great Sioux Reservation. Dupree, his sons, and probably some ranch hands captured five buffalo calves in 1883. After Frederick died in 1898, Scotty bought the buffalo. When he died in 1911, the herd had grown to over 900 head. Five years later, part of the herd moved west to Custer State Park, an event that was key to the buffalo’s comeback both regionally and nationally.

Some historians consider Scotty Philip and Frederick Dupree emblematic of the culture that jeopardized the buffalo’s existence in the first place. Even such critics, though, agree both men were likely influenced by their wives, and their wives’ extended families, to see buffalo as more than mammoth pests.

Out there on the prairie, after the wagons stopped rolling for the night, all that history made for good talk under the stars.

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

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The Buffalo vs. the Bull

By Jim Dickson
Folks from both sides of the border gathered to watch the contest between Scotty Philip’s buffalo and a Juarez fighting bull.


There’s no one quite like a four-year-old for pondering the imponderable. My grandson Little Jack once asked me if a saber-toothed tiger could beat up a Tyrannosaurus rex. I told him I’d have to think about that, but I did know that a South Dakota buffalo could beat up four Mexican fighting bulls. At least that’s what happened in Juarez, Mexico in 1907.

Scotty Philip, the well-known Stanley County cattleman and buffalo fancier, was in Texas on a fall buying trip and encountered a couple of sports from Juarez who were given to loud and repeated boastings about the stamina, fierceness, and fighting heart of the sharp-horned bulls they bred for combat in the bull rings of that country.

In response to this chauvinistic yammering, Philip politely suggested to the boastful Mexicans that he had, on his ranch, any number of ordinary buffalo that by damn could mop up the ring with the finest of those so-called fighting bulls. He furthermore offered to ship one or more of these buffalo to Juarez to prove his point and solidified his proposition with a substantial wager.

The Mexicans had seen only pictures of buffalo, and the prospect of one of the awkward, shaggy creatures challenging their fast-stepping, muscled beasts of destruction translated to them as an unprecedented opportunity for mucho dinero. Philip’s sporting proposition was quickly joined, and arrangements were made for publicity and use of the Juarez bullring.

Unfortunately, a severe blizzard required Scotty Philip’s presence on the ranch that January, so he was unable to make the trip to Mexico. In his stead, he dispatched his nephew, George Philip, to look after family interests and those of the local community, which had accumulated a sizeable pot to be wagered on behalf of the buffalo. Cowboys Eb Jones and Bob Yokum were sent along to tend the livestock.

From his ranch near Ft. Pierre, Scotty Philip selected two run-of-the-herd buffalo bulls, an eight-year-old and a four-year-old, for the contest. He called the older one Pierre; the name of the other isn’t recorded — Murdo, perhaps. The bulls were loaded into a specially reinforced boxcar, and the entire party made the trip to El Paso and across the Rio Grande to Juarez in seven days, amidst a generous amount of en route hoopla due to the advance publicity and general interest in the outcome of the matchup.

Stanley County matadors? George Philip and fellow South Dakota businessmen posed in the ring after the famous fight. Photo from S.D. Historical Society.

When they got the buffalo to the bullring on the designated Saturday, George Philip (according to his account of the trip in South Dakota Historical Review thirty years later) and company were surprised not only at the size of the facility, but at the number and fervor of the partisans from both sides of the border who had gathered for the spectacle.

When Pierre ambled out into the arena, the crowd emitted a buzz of anticipation. But the buzz became a groan as the shaggy bison reached the center of the ring and, tired from his long trip, calmly flopped himself down. Then there was a great reverberating roar as the Mexican bull was turned into the ring. Enraged by the darts that had been plunged into his shoulder to enhance his fighting spirit, the snorting, pawing bull launched himself at the unkempt mound in the middle of the arena like some 1,500 pound juggernaut from hell.

Pierre managed to get to his feet in time to take the bull’s charge head-on. There was what sounded like an underground explosion, and the dust cleared to reveal the unmoved Pierre stoically contemplating a surprised and slightly dazed bundle of bovine bewilderment that had been bounced back a rod or so from the point of impact.

But the bull’s momma hadn’t raised any dummies; after all, hadn’t he a pair of sharp horns that could slice this upstart’s liver right out of his body? So he sidestepped to a position that gave a clear shot at the buffalo’s uncovered flank, lowered his head and charged in for the vivisection.

Alas, the bull’s momma hadn’t told him about a major difference between bulls and buffalo; namely, that buffalo turn on their front, rather than rear, legs. This ability allowed Pierre to pivot at the last minute and once more absorb the bull’s charge with his massive skull plate. And this time, the buffalo put some thrust behind powerful counter-blows.

After the final encounter had brought him to his knees, the once-fearsome fighting bull fled to the nether regions of the arena and tried to climb out of the ring. Failing that, he could only stand shaking as the catcalls and imprecations of the angry crowd rained down.

Claiming a fluke, the Mexican breeders called on George Philip to allow them to try one of their “best” bulls against the buffalo. Ever willing to go the extra mile, George agreed; and a fresh contender — sinewy and belligerent as the first bull — roared out of the corral directly at Pierre, who stood patiently at ring center. The outcome was the same as before: no matter from which direction the bull charged, he was met head-on.

This scenario was replayed that afternoon with yet two more bulls — and to the same end. By the time the sun had started to sink behind the stands, four battered and shaking Mexican fighting bulls huddled in the shadows by the west wall while the pride of Stanley County rolled contentedly on his back in the arena sand. George Philip offered the younger buffalo in combat the next day, but all the heart had gone out of the Mexican breeders, and they declined. For them the question had been settled, and they had no desire for any further decimation of their prize stock.

It would be nice to report that the buffalo were given heroes’ welcomes back home; but because of transportation costs, they were sold in Juarez. One hopes they were used to enrich the fighting bull genetic strain, but the likelihood is that the burrito might have been replaced by the buffalito as the fast food mainstay in old Juarez for a time.

Later that year Mr. Scotty Philip founded the town that bears his name. His nephew, George, eventually became a respected lawyer in Rapid City. Eb Jones served as a Stanley County commissioner, and Bob Yokum has evidently been lost to history.

As I told my grandson, a South Dakota buffalo might have a struggle with old Tyrannosaurus rex, but I’m sure he’d give a sabre-toothed tiger all the fight he wants, and then some.

Editor’s Note: The author, Jim Dickson, is a Sturgis native who currently lives in St. Paul, Minnesota. This story is revised from the March/April 1995 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a back issue or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.