Tag: pierre

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South Dakota’s Best Seller


They say paper is dead. Especially paper books. Anybody who still reads books is buying e-books. So goes conventional wisdom.

But in the age of blogging and Facebook and all the other diversions, book publishing has returned to South Dakota … returned with class and success.

Book publishing, when done correctly, is a difficult mix of creativity and commerce, two things that can be incompatible in rural places. Still, South Dakota has had some good publishing houses.

The Center for Western Studies on the Augustana College campus has produced some timeless and important tomes. There was once a University of South Dakota Press in Vermillion. Aberdeen had a privately owned book publisher, though the name escapes me. There was a Brevet Publishing in Sioux Falls. Pine Hill Printer in Freeman helped several hundred authors self-publish. Linda Hasselstrom has had success with books under a name only rural people would even understand, Windbreak. We’ve published a handful of books here at South Dakota Magazine.

Just as many of our university and private book publishers were winding down, along came the South Dakota Historical Society Press in Pierre. As an arm of the state historical society, it was publishing a half dozen or so books a year and doing it quite nicely under the leadership of Nancy Tystad Koupal.

Book runs in South Dakota are generally under 5,000 — and often 1,000 or 2,000. The SDHSP was sometimes exceeding those numbers, and by all accounts doing an excellent job of publishing important regional manuscripts that deserved to be bound for today and forever.

And then the SDHSP published Pioneer Girl, the brutally honest 1930 autobiography of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Nancy optimistically ordered 15,000 copies. And they sold. She ordered again. And then again. Seventy-five thousand to date, and now Pioneer Girl is showing up on”best seller” lists.

Maybe the internet and e-books will eventually kill book publishing. But you know what Harry Truman proved about conventional wisdom. And the 1987 Minnesota Twins. And so on.

Success is always nice, but it’s especially beautiful when it happens to nice people like Nancy Koupal and her band of book publishers in the little city of Pierre.

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Treachery in the Treasury

By John Andrews

William Walter Taylor (or Walter William Taylor, depending on which records you consult) seemed like a stand-up guy when he arrived in Redfield in 1885. That’s why his friends, co-workers and thousands of South Dakotans were shocked when they learned that Taylor — as the state’s treasurer in January 1895 — had taken $367,000 of the state’s money and fled to Latin America. It put the young state in a precarious financial position, but it also adversely affected the lives of those close to Taylor, particularly Arthur C. Mellette, the former governor and one of the fathers of South Dakota.

William Walter Taylor became the most wanted man in South Dakota when he absconded with $367,000 from the state treasury in 1895.

Taylor came to Redfield from Lafayette, Indiana, where he had worked with his father in the wholesale and retail coal business. He became president of the First National Bank and the Gettysburg State Bank and general manager of the Northwestern Mortgage Trust Company. Taylor was elected state treasurer in 1890 and was re-elected in 1892. Facing term limits, he was forced to relinquish control of his office after the 1894 election.

On the surface, the state’s financial situation appeared solid. Records indicated deposits of well over $200,000 at Taylor’s bank in Redfield. But in reality, Taylor had fallen victim to the financial Panic of 1892 and its aftermath. He’d lost $232,000 through the failure of his trust company, a South American mining venture, wheat speculation and real estate investments in several states. On Jan. 9, 1895, the day Taylor was to turn over control of the treasury to his successor, he failed to appear in Pierre. He was gone, along with $367,020.59 of the state’s money.

Fortunately banks, businesses and South Dakotans themselves came to the state’s aid. Two banks in Deadwood offered $75,000 loans. Two railroad corporations paid their property taxes in January, two months before they came due. The state auditor raised $40,000 by asking county treasurers to submit anything they owed to the state and the legislature authorized the new state treasurer to sell $98,000 in bonds to make up the shortfall.

Attorney General Coe Crawford was hot on Taylor’s tail. He asked the legislature to offer a $2,000 reward for information on his whereabouts and he hired the famous Pinkerton Detective Agency. They pursued Taylor on a long, winding journey that began in Chicago and meandered through Key West, Havana, Vera Cruz, up the Mexican coast, back through Guatemala, Nicaragua and Costa Rica and, finally, the United States.

Taylor was eventually apprehended, and the state recouped about $100,000 from him. The rest had to come from several bondsmen who had vouched for Taylor’s veracity. Among them was South Dakota’s first governor, Arthur Mellette.

Mellette had done as much as any man to shepherd South Dakota to statehood in 1889. He served as the last governor of Dakota Territory and presided over state constitutional conventions in Sioux Falls. When South Dakota was finally granted statehood, he was easily elected the new state’s first governor.

Arthur Mellette, South Dakota’s first governor and a founding father of the state, was financially ruined by Taylor’s shenanigans.

As his second term came to a close in early 1893, Mellette was already suffering health problems. The financial scandal of 1895, and Mellette’s responsibility to keep the state solvent, left him a physical, emotional and financial wreck. He turned over all his assets to the state, including his handsome brick home atop Prospect Hill in Watertown. The Mellettes moved to Pittsburg, Kansas, where the former governor died in May of 1896.

The state eventually returned to home to Mellette’s widow, Margaret, after it was determined that Mellette’s debt had been settled, but the damage to her husband and family had been done. The Mellette House remains open for tours today, a reminder of the man who sacrificed so much for his state.

After serving 18 months in penitentiary, Taylor moved to Chicago, where he became involved in several business ventures, none of which proved lucrative. He died of alcoholism in New York City in December 1916, a shadow of the promising young banker who had ridden the rails into Redfield 30 years earlier.

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Christmas at the Capitol

Over 90 decorated trees fill our state’s capitol building for the 34th annual Christmas at the Capitol. This year’s theme is “125 Years of Christmas in South Dakota.” Bob Grandpre snapped these photos as crews prepared last weekend. The display is open from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. daily, November 26 – December 27.

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Capitol Art

Keith Hemmelman shared photos of the South Dakota State Capitol Building in Pierre. The four-story neo-classical building was completed in 1910 with copper dome, Corinthian columns, granite and Bedford limestone walls and decorative murals. These photos show just some of the artwork that adorns our capitol. See more of Hemmelman’s work at http://hemmelman.zenfolio.com/
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South Dakota Sunflowers

In 2013 South Dakota farmers planted 617,000 acres of sunflowers ≠– more than any other state. And we grew just under half the sunflowers produced in the country at 996.8 million pounds. This year’s flowers are still blooming. Keith Hemmelman shared recent photos from fields near Pierre. See more of his work at http://hemmelman.zenfolio.com/.

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A Capitol Spring

By John Andrews

The state capitol in Pierre is a colorful place in spring. Winter’s subtle grays and browns give way to lush greens and vivid reds, pinks and purples. The capitol grounds change every year, as new flowers, shrubs and trees take root. Tree care specialist Kevin Johnson always has something different in mind.

“We want to present a very colorful entrance that holds people’s interest,” Johnson says. That means careful planning and a lot of man-hours in selecting new plants and finding ways to arrange them. This year Johnson and the grounds crew will spend about a week planting 10,000 flowers around the 120-acre capitol grounds. The scheme will include a new disease-resistant zinnia, petunias and salvia (a type of sage). He tries to select plants that tolerate heat and drought.”These are surrounded by parking lots, so they have to be tough little things to get through the year,” he says.

In his 16 years at the capitol, Johnson has found mid-May to be the ideal flower planting time, but the weather can still play tricks.”It’s not real pleasant being in here at 3 in the morning running sprinklers to keep frost off the flowers,” he says.”I’m at Mother Nature’s beck and call.”

Johnson also experiments with new trees. He is lining the streets near the governor’s mansion with non-fruiting spring snow crab trees. They, along with Canada red cherry trees and a few magnolias he planted last year, usually blossom in mid-May. Long-leafed catalpas develop beautiful, white flowers later in the summer.

Visitors walking the Arboretum Trail also see familiar trees like elm, ash, cottonwood, cedar and Black Hills spruce. Hilger’s Gulch, north of the capitol, is another place to find flora and fauna. Capitol Lake, the centerpiece of the capitol campus, was dug by workers in the early 1900s. Fed by an artesian well, its warm waters attract ducks and Canada geese. The gulch includes a mile-long walking trail, flower gardens and Governor’s Grove, which contains trees and markers honoring South Dakota’s governors.

There are few places in the West where visitors can enjoy the color and diversity of the state capitol in springtime.

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

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Eagle Season

By Katie Hunhoff

A bald eagle built a nest near the old Meridian Bridge in Yankton two years ago, and then perched on a nearby cottonwood branch and posed for pedestrians, who were at eye level to the big bird when they were on the bridge’s upper deck.

The eagle eventually abandoned that nest. Maybe it was a tad too close to civilization for her comfort. But more eagles than ever are wintering on the open water of the Missouri River in Yankton, and they often glide slowly over the walking bridge that extends into the city’s old downtown.

Eagles were following the Dodo bird to extinction a scant 50 years ago. Illegal hunting, habitat destruction and a poison known as DDT were killing the species. In 1963, only 487 nesting pairs could be found in the United States.

But the Endangered Species Act banned DDT in 1972, and the eagles gradually adapted to a changing prairie landscape. Today, the state Game, Fish & Parks Department estimates that there may be as many as 300 nesting pairs just in South Dakota.

Most South Dakota eagles can be found wintering below the Missouri River dams, where massive old cottonwood trees provide a barky foundation for their large, heavy nests. Open water below the river’s dams provides easy fishing. Eagles also nest in the Black Hills near the Deerfield Reservoir, and it’s not surprising to find them in any part of the state.

Eagles build their nests by mid-February and begin laying eggs in late February. The birds mate for life, and use the same nests from year to year, adding twigs each year. Their nests are among the largest of any North American bird. One big nest measured 13 feet deep by 8 feet wide.

The majestic bald eagle was chosen as our national emblem in 1787, partly because it was native to North America. The fierce appearance of its curved beak, regal white head and piercing eyes were also factors. In the emblem, drawn in 1782, a bald eagle is displayed with an olive branch in one claw and 12 arrows clutched in the other, representing both peace and war.

Benjamin Franklin famously opposed putting the bald eagle on the nation’s emblem. He favored the wild turkey, which he claimed was, “A much more respectable bird and a true native of America.” He said the turkey was a bird of courage that “would not hesitate to attack a grenadier of the British guards who should presume to invade his farm yard with a red coat on.”

It seems Franklin was also put off with the bald eagle’s habit of eating carrion. They often steal food from smaller birds by intimidating them into dropping their prey. They also feed on dead fish and crippled birds. “He is a bird of bad moral character,” wrote Franklin. “He does not get his living honestly. You may have seen him perched in some dead tree where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the labor of the fishing hawk and, when that diligent bird has at length taken a fish and is bearing it to his nest for his young ones, the bald eagle pursues him and takes the fish.”

It seems unpatriotic to dredge up Franklin’s comments. After all, the eagle is just doing what comes naturally. Go eagle watching this spring and you will instantly be reminded of why our founding fathers chose this regal bird to represent our nation. Your best chance to see some soaring is to visit the Missouri below the dams at Yankton, Pickstown, Fort Thompson and Pierre. In Yankton, a few eagles can often be found in the big trees that lie south of Riverside ballpark.

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Anti-Civil Rights Bills Bad for Business

By Cory Allen Heidelberger

I’ve written previously on these pages that the South Dakota Legislature doesn’t do a great job of building South Dakota’s brand with a broader audience. The 2014 Legislature continues its poor performance, making South Dakota sound like a haven for folks who want to erase the Civil Rights Act.

First this session came Senate Bill 67, a bill intended to protect religious bakers from the terror of having to make wedding cakes for homosexuals. As worded, SB 67 would have permitted shopkeepers, lawyers and perhaps public officials to deny services to any married couple whose union somehow didn’t square with their religious beliefs. Got divorced and remarried? Sorry, I’m an old-school Catholic, and divorce is a sin. You’re a white woman, and you married a Lakota man? Sorry, St. Paul tells me no miscegenation, so you can’t stay in my motel. Yeesh!

After some public outcry, prime sponsor Sen. Ernie Otten withdrew SB 67, not because he saw the light of equality, but because he concluded that the discrimination he craves is already legal.

Worse, some of his conservative colleagues quickly followed up with Senate Bill 128, which goes beyond the wedding-cake homophobia of SB 67 to allow bosses to fire employees because of their sexual orientation, to nullify federal civil rights laws, and to impose legislative restraint on the judicial branch.

Responding to criticism from a young constituent at a Rapid City cracker barrel on Feb. 1, SB 128 author Sen. Phil Jensen farcically called his bill an “anti-bullying free speech bill.” The only free speech SB 128 protects is the speech of bullying businesses that want to hang signs on the door reading “Straights Only.”

Technically, South Dakota law already gives Senators Jensen and Otten the right to discriminate against homosexuals as their bills advocate. We already ban same-sex marriages. Our public accommodations law does not include sexual orientation as a protected class. That law does ban sex discrimination, and the federal government does interpret sexual orientation as an expression of sex.

But South Dakota’s law and these proposals from our legislators make our state look bad. SB 128 has drawn negative out-state attention. Some Republican legislators are backing away from this civil rights black eye. U.S. Senate candidate Rick Weiland calls SB 128 a return to Jim Crow. Independent candidate Larry Pressler has warned that SB 128’s retrograde attitude toward civil rights could cost South Dakota jobs and Ellsworth Air Force Base (why would Uncle Sam keep a military installation in a place where its soldiers’ gay spouses couldn’t get jobs?).

Senators Otten and Jensen can swing their religious fists all they want. But their rights end when their Bible-clutching fists start hitting other people’s noses. SB 67 sought and SB 128 seeks to drive certain people out of South Dakota businesses. Unfortunately, such proposals will drive even more people away, and drive some South Dakotans out of business.

Editor’s Note: Cory Heidelberger is our political columnist from the left. For a right-wing perspective on politics, please look for columns by Dr. Ken Blanchard on this site.

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

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Winter is for the Birds

By Christian Begeman

A friend of mine recently shared a link to a bird photographer’s exquisite work capturing small songbirds in flight. The message was accompanied by a good-natured challenge to start producing similar images of my own. I’m always up for a challenge. The problem, I soon discovered, is that getting a good photo of wild birds in nature is extremely hard … not to mention predicting where and when said bird will take flight. What I’m trying to say is that I’ve failed miserably in this particular challenge … so far.

With that confession on the table, I figured I’d share some tips (and photos, both good and bad) that I picked up along the way. Now I’m not much more than a greenhorn birder myself, but I do have a starting suggestion. Find the nearest winter bird feeder and camp out nearby. Last year I had good luck at the Sioux Falls Outdoor Campus during a steady morning snowfall. This year I tried the bird feeders at Farm Island State Park near Pierre and at the entrance to Good Earth State Park southeast of Sioux Falls. These feeders allow you to get fairly close as long as you stay still and are willing to wait for the birds to return after initially disturbing them. This wait can take anywhere from five to 15 minutes. At Good Earth, I chose to sit cross-legged on the ground next to an evergreen as I waited. Soon I had juncos hopping a few feet away and a downy woodpecker nearly ran into my head. I sat so still for so long that my leg fell asleep. Good thing no one was around. Standing up was accompanied by numerous mutterings and murmurs.

I read that Farm Island is home to northern saw-whet owls, so after spending some time at the feeder missing shots of flying finches (those things can move!), I searched for a couple of known saw-whet roosts reported on a birding website. I failed to find them as well. My guess is that the high water a few years back may have re-arranged a lot of things on the island (but in reality, being a rookie birder didn’t help much either). I did, however, have a fun game of hide and seek with a noisy northern cardinal male for about a half hour along the trail. I must have been near its nest when I saw a flash of red and heard the telltale metallic chirp. Long story short, he let me get the closest I’ve ever been to a cardinal, with one stipulation: he put as many branches and twigs of his favorite tree between the two of us at all times.

I really like owls, and earlier in the month I accidentally scared a great horned out of an abandoned church. He flew to the tree windbreak nearby and, like the cardinal, kept the densest part of the tree between him and me. I saw a long-eared owl for the first time in my life while checking out the swans of LaCreek National Wildlife Refuge in Bennett County. He was sunning himself in the early morning light and I happened to notice his outline from at least a quarter mile away. I didn’t get a great shot of him from that distance, but it made the day worthwhile.

The last tip I have is to use your ears. The best tool for locating a bird while out and about is hearing them. I’ve still got work to do on this one. Just last weekend, as I sat quietly along Sergeant Creek at Newton Hills State Park, I could pick out cardinal, chickadee and at least two other unknown songs amongst the steady drumming of woodpeckers and the brazen calls of blue jays. The only birds I could actually see were two bald eagles soaring high above the distant Big Sioux River. Experiences like this make birding addicting. I know they are out there, I know they make great photos, and I know it is a challenge to put it all together and get the unique shot. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

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