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Minnilusa Links Old and New

By Paul Higbee

Rapid City’s Minnilusa Pioneer Museum preserves all things Western. Pictured here is former museum director Reid Riner. Photo by Johnny Sundby.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the January/February 2015 issue of South Dakota Magazine. In 2017, Reid Riner left the Minnilusa and moved from Rapid City to Arizona . He passed away in a car accident near Phoenix in 2018. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

MUSEUM OBJECTS CAN sometimes speak more powerfully than words. Stroke Doc Middleton’s saddle at the Minnilusa Pioneer Museum in Rapid City. Feel the tooling, sniff the horn and let the leather scent transplant you to the open range.

That’s the very saddle the outlaw Middlelton used an 1893 cowboy race across the prairie, from Chadron to Chicago’s World Columbian Exposition. The man sure could ride, although it appears he cheated in this race and perhaps also used the saddle for cattle rustling.

Which brings up an important point. The Minnilusa collection documents the pioneer history of the Black Hills, and Rapid City especially. The western frontier drew a wide range of opportunists, most of them honorable and some anything but. To fully understand the frontier, which has been both glorified and marginalized by media professionals over the decades, it is important to let these objects speak as they will. In other words, an artifact’s presence here isn’t meant to say its original owner has been elevated as a role model for future generations.

That being the case, Peter Lemley’s boots, hat and Winchester carbine are here. He, like Middleton, was part of the vast open range cattle business of the late 1800s, and can be ranked as one of the meanest cusses to ever walk Rapid City’s streets. Lemley hated the Lakota people, was part of the civilian militia that played a role in events that led to the Wounded Knee tragedy, and it’s been rumored he had his own son murdered. The son’s offense? He loved animals and Lemley feared he was soft.

“But you never know what the rest of the story will be when you find someone like that in history,” notes museum director Reid Riner. “Something good came out of even Lemley’s story. Another son grew up to be a well-known Rapid City physician who started the Lemley Foundation. It’s still supporting charitable work today.”

Officers of the Sweeney Hose Company in Rapid City used this silver speaking trumpet to direct firefighters. The trumpet dates to 1888.

Juxtaposed between the Middleton and Lemley exhibits is a photo cutout of Gus Haaser, a cattleman Riner considers a remarkably moral man. “Haaser came from Norway, and he doesn’t really look like a cattleman, but he made himself into a good one,” Riner says. “He wrote that he never saw the horizon in Norway, but that South Dakota was nothing but horizon.”

Gold mining usually grabs most of the attention when historians discuss Black Hills pioneers, and it is represented at the Minnilusa museum. But the industry Middleton, Lemley and Haaser were part of (honorably or otherwise) was integral, too, particularly in Rapid City. “Beginning with the open range herds that came up from Texas, cattle brought in the dollars that changed Rapid City from a place of log structures to one of big stone business buildings,” Riner says. Indeed, the town grew from 202 residents in 1880 to about 2,000 when South Dakota achieved statehood in 1889.

STILL, RAPID CITY got off to a rocky start in 1876. On display here is the pocket compass John Brennan used, and the surveyor’s chain, when six blocks were laid out in February of that year. In the middle of that area Rufus “Pap” Madison built a little rough-hewn cabin, destined to play a big role in the Minnilusa museum’s own history 50 years later. In 1876, it was amazing the cabin survived as Lakota warriors repeatedly attacked the fledgling town. They were fully justified in their outrage because Rapid City sat illegally on land set aside for the Lakota people by federal treaty. By late summer most of the town’s original pioneers had fled 200 miles east to Fort Pierre.

They returned in force in 1877 when the government assured them the treaty had been changed — an issue that remains in dispute more than 140 years later. Never dreaming future generations could possibly question their right to the land, the first Rapid Citians rolled up their sleeves and built homes, businesses, Gothic Revival churches of many denominations and schools. Among the schools was an institution of higher learning, the territorial School of Mines. In the middle of this rush of construction, Grace French, a 26-year-old artist trained at Boston’s School of Fine Arts, stepped off a stagecoach in 1885. French made Rapid City her home for the rest of her long life, and today the Minnilusa Pioneer Museum displays many of her paintings and sketches. Her art documents the beauty of the Black Hills before roads and other development encroached, back when Rapid City felt like a tiny village nestled in the foothills.

Grace French is just one of the artists and storytellers remembered by this museum. Others include poet Captain Jack Crawford, early photographer Jack Collins, historian Annie Tallent, and husband and wife newspaper pioneers Joseph and Alice Gossage. The Gossages made the paper known today as The Rapid City Journal into western South Dakota’s premier paper, and in time Alice played a key role in launching the Minnilusa Pioneer Museum.

UNLIKE MANY HISTORICAL exhibitions across the West, the Minnilusa doesn’t dwell extensively on bawdy enterprises, although it notes madam Dora DuFran ran a house of ill repute in Rapid City in addition to her Deadwood and Sturgis franchises. There’s more emphasis on above-board businesses that filled those big buildings cattle money built.

Soldiers stationed at forts around Dakota Territory may have carried firearms similar to this 1877 Colt single action .45 revolver.

“In interpreting mercantile businesses, it’s effective to tell the stories of the personalities behind those stores,” Riner says. And to be sure, downtown Rapid City claimed larger-than-life entrepreneurs. Cattleman Peter Duhamel’s in-town job was overseeing a massive downtown store, and nearby he manufactured his famous Duhamel saddles. Tom Sweeney was a name known by everyone across western South Dakota and sizeable sections of Wyoming and Montana. That was because of signs and handbills that read simply, “Tom Sweeney Wants to See You.” Once drawn into his big Rapid City store, customers weren’t disappointed. They could buy everything from trousers to a freight wagon.

Sweeney didn’t claim the only local slogan well known a century or more ago. “Learn to say Cyco Cigar,” read old print ads, referring to a tobacco product manufactured by Rapid City’s own Gate City Cigar Company. Other early merchandise that has found its way into the museum include a wicker purse, fine china and a Red Wing butter churn. Most intriguing is the museum’s collection of patent medicine bottles and packaging. “People came to Rapid City from places where there were no doctors, and if there had been, they couldn’t afford them,” Riner says. “So they saw patent medicines as their best options for staying healthy.”

Lots of those patent medicines contained alcohol, Riner adds, so customers certainly felt better after a dose or two — for a little while. It’s unlikely the modern Food and Drug Administration would have seen much merit in Dr. Hobson’s stimulant, described as a “wonder drug promising to ‘cure while you sleep’ whooping cough, croup, bronchitis, coughs, grip, hay fever, diphtheria & scarlett fever.” But for ranch families living 100 miles from a doctor, knowing the “wonder drug” sat waiting in the kitchen cupboard brought comfort.

By the 1920s, Black Hills pioneers were passing away and, in too many cases, taking their stories with them. Communities suddenly took great interest in monuments, celebrations and museums that would record pioneer names and adventures. That decade Spearfish unveiled its 11-foot-tall stone “Memorial to Spearfish Pioneers, 1876 – 1926.” Deadwood launched its Days of ’76 festivities in 1924. In 1926 in Rapid City, Alice Gossage, the newspaper owner, put money and her considerable community clout behind an effort to repair and move Pap Madison’s 1876 cabin to Halley Park, just west of downtown. “The story is she just walked into a city council meeting and said it had to happen, and so it did,” Riner says.

Richard Hughes, one of the best Black Hills historians and himself an 1876 pioneer, wrote this poem inscribed on a slab outside the cabin:

I was built in the olden, golden days,
When this was an unknown land;
My timbers were hewn by a pioneer
With a rifle near at hand.
I stand as a relic of ‘seventy-six,
Our Nation’s centennial year;
That all may see as they enter the Hills,
The home of a pioneer.

Not only was the cabin a museum artifact, it became a museum itself after items collected by the recently formed Minnilusa Pioneers’ Association were displayed within. “This society,” wrote Hughes in the late 1920s, “organized to preserve data and relics of the early-day West River country and Black Hills area, has in its membership many descendants of pioneers.” Those early members decided to use a Lakota term for their association’s name, one meaning “rapid water.” When translated to English it gave Rapid City its name.

This pocket watch with human hair fob was fashionable in the 1800s. Jewelry made with hair was often carried as a tribute to lost loved ones.

While the Pap Madison cabin can be considered the Black Hills’ first history museum (it predated Deadwood’s Adams Museum by four years), it was also one of the smallest. For decades most of the relics collected by the association were stored in a warehouse. Beginning in the 1930s the cabin shared Halley Park with the U.S. Department of the Interior’s world-class Sioux Indian Museum, a collection of Lakota artifacts placed in a new stone building built by the Works Progress Administration. In 1956 a new wing was added to that building, space that allowed the Minnilusa Association to take artifacts out of storage and into exhibits.

“In 1956, in the minds of some people, an Indian institution and a pioneer institution didn’t seem to belong together,” Riner says. But in Rapid City it worked, and nearly 60 years later the two museums still co-exist under one roof, although not in Halley Park. They were among four museums that remained independent yet moved into the Journey Museum complex in 1997 (the others are the South Dakota Historical Society’s Research Center and City of Rapid City’s Duhamel Plains Indian Artifact Collection). The Pap Madison cabin trailed behind, arriving in 2012. It stands in front of the Journey.

Riner became involved with Minnilusa in 2004. He grew up next door to Rapid City in Black Hawk, then left the state for 16 years for work and education. He earned a master’s in Public History at Arizona State. He enjoyed visiting the Journey Museum during trips home, and was ready to return to the Black Hills to stay when the Minnilusa position opened. Riner inherited a strong organization with a solid endowment and a collection that now numbers more than 6,000 artifacts, of which 30 to 35 percent are on display at any one time.

A West River cowboy made this horsehair bridle and rein set sometime in the 1880s.

The museum is also home to a collection of 8,000 to 10,000 photographic images, most scanned into a digital format. The collection is proving itself invaluable to historians, publishers and individuals hoping to learn more about their Black Hills roots. Well-known Black Hills photographer Johnny Sundby serves on the Minnilusa board and helps manage the photos. Among his favorites are those depicting the towns of Pactola and Sheridan before reservoir waters claimed the sites, Rapid City’s nearly forgotten Alfalfa Palace, mines, flume trails, Rapid City’s first airplane flight in 1909, and development of Mount Rushmore and the Hotel Alex Johnson. “We’re always looking for original prints people may have,” Sundby says. “They can take home a cleaned-up image where scratches, discoloration and tape marks are gone.”

Riner considers Rapid City’s true pioneer years to have been from the 1870s until 1934 and 1935, when manned balloon flights into the stratosphere (documented well by the museum) moved Rapid City into the nation’s consciousness in a new way.

But that doesn’t mean the spirit of old-fashioned town-building ended at that time. In fact, Rapid City’s downtown redevelopment over the past decade is unmatched regionally, resulting in Main Street Square, arts venues and new dining and retail. There’s increased emphasis on pedestrian access, ways for visitors to park their cars and move through what Riner describes as an evolving “cultural campus,” linking the museum to the civic center, historical district, public art and library.

“We’ve got the seeds for growing cultural tourism,” he says, “and a city government committed to making it happen.”

It’s happening even without Alice Gossage barging into meetings and demanding action.

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

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Hidden Trails

By Michael Zimny

Whether you’re visiting Rapid City or you live here, sometimes you might want to hike the Black Hills without first driving an hour.

The Buzzard’s Roost, Flume and Stratobowl Rim trails are all fairly well-known options. Here are two more that explore unique nooks of the National Forest without burning half the charge on your Nissan Leaf.

Diverse flora gives Botany Canyon its name.

Botany Canyon

Some locals will bristle at the thought of Botany Canyon as a lesser-known locale, but most visitors will not have heard of it. Others would likely prefer that it stay semi-secret. On the other hand, hikers can help protect this lush riparian wonderland from unauthorized motor vehicles by serving as an overwatch.

Since the Canyon was reclaimed for foot travel only, the watercress beds and kaleidoscope of mossy banks and lichen-rich rocks have begun to thrive again. The place is a paradise for botanists and flora fiends, hence the name, replete with rare species of flower like death camas.

To get there, you can follow the map on the free All Trails app. The parking area on High Meadows Road has enough room for maybe three vehicles, and might fill up early on weekends. The trail starts somewhat unimpressively as a Forest Service road. There are several forks, so you might want to use a resource like the aforementioned All Trails hiking map to find your way. At 44.18189, -103.39276, hang a right and hike down into the canyon until you reach a fence and a sign that reads, “Closed to Motorized Vehicles.”

This is where you enter a Rip Van Winkle-ish world more reminiscent of the Catskills than the Black Hills — a pocket of moisture retention beneath a steep-walled spruce forest where bryophytes burst forth from your very exhalations. On our recent jaunt, the trail seemed to disappear before we reached the end, according to All Trails, but venturing further would have made for high impact hiking. Once you’ve entered Winkle-world, the joy is in leisurely strolling and contemplation.

Botany Canyon is a moderate (about 640 feet elevation gain) 5-mile, out-and-back hike.

Pilot’s Knob/Frog City Loop

The Pilot’s Knob trailhead, on the Centennial Trail, is about a half hour from Rapid City and can be combined with Forest Service 8089-B to make a loop trail.

Like the Botany Canyon trail, this section of the Centennial is a Forest Service road, and some people may wonder why, from a public relations standpoint, the Black Hills’ signature thru-hiking trail should be so marred, in places, by logging activity and burn piles. Nonetheless, there are some beautiful views of granite outcroppings, and a diverse sampling of ponderosa pine, quaking aspen, and old-growth spruce, droopy with age and frazzled green beard lichen.

The 8089-B section of this hike could be called Frog City, because of the abundance of Estes Creek ponds with their cacophony of frogsong. This might be the froggiest spot you’ll encounter in the Hills. With as many predators as enjoy them, they make themselves hard to spot, but you’ll hear them for miles, at least until the ponds dry out. At night, their song must lure hungry owls, skunks and muskrats to an amphibian feast.

You can find the Pilot Knob trailhead on Google Maps. The first junction of the Centennial Trail and the 8089-B is at: 44.16006, -103.55510. The Frog City loop is about 7.6 miles with 988 feet elevation gain.

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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A Park of Peace

By Paul Higbee

Trinity Eco Prayer Park features species native to the Black Hills and surrounding area.

Rapid City has 1,650 acres of parks, ranging from a long and wide swath of green along Rapid Creek to steep inclines up craggy Cowboy Hill (where a big”M” represents the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology campus) and specialty parks like Storybook Island and Dinosaur Park.

Every park has a story. Works Progress Administration laborers fashioned the dinosaurs from cement in the 1930s, and today the big reptiles oddly symbolize Rapid City like nothing else. The 1972 flood that killed 238 people led to development of the creekside greenway, representing both a memorial and a”never again” pledge to keep the floodplain free from residential construction. The”M” park (officially Hanson-Larsen Memorial) is a bit of wilderness in the midst of a city of 70,000, and features some 12 miles of hiking and biking trails with views of Black Elk Peak and the Needles.

Paddleboaters lazily float the waters of Canyon Lake Park, and Memorial Park near the Civic Center has a Veterans Memorial and a piece of the actual Berlin Wall. Sioux Park on the city’s west side is known for the William Noordermeer Formal Gardens while Wilson Park, a tiny greenspace in the West Boulevard Historic District, has formal gardens that were created as Japanese Gardens but modified after war was declared in 1941.

Such a rich and daunting history of parks didn’t deter Ken Steinken and his friends from undertaking a new project that embraces modern-day values of environmental sustainability and a livable downtown. The park, affiliated with Trinity Lutheran Church, isn’t city property but it welcomes the public — and city parks staff have been helpful in its development.

“There’s a sense of community here, and an interest in park-building within that community,” says Rapid City Parks and Recreation landscape designer Alex DeSmidt.”The Parks Department has such a wide focus, but groups come along that are focused on just one thing, like sports or in this case sustainability. Their work expands the park system even though they’re not under the jurisdiction of the city.”

Steinken knows there’s a lot more to park building than mowing a vacant lot and hanging out a welcome sign. There is hydrology to study, more than 100 plant species to consider, turf to haul and, of course, dollars to raise.

Trinity Eco Prayer Park occupies more than half an acre on St. Joseph Street, just east of Fifth Street. On the first day the mercury hit 70 in 2017, a handful of robins hopped across the grass, joggers and cyclists passed through, and a man reading a novel found a bench and stayed an hour. The park is, as a brochure promised,”a peaceful urban setting.”

Some Rapid Citians remember Ken Steinken as their former English teacher at Stevens High School. He is also a driving force behind the creation of the downtown park.

Toward evening the skyline isn’t defined by a sunset silhouetting the Black Hills, but by the glow of big, classic neon signs on the nearby Hotel Alex Johnson and the South Dakota Stockgrowers’ building. Rather than scents of ponderosa pine or creekside vegetation, aromas of burgers and fries waft into the park from a Hardee’s next door. The spot feels like an extension of the neighborhood — an eclectic mix of buildings that include Trinity, single-story specialty shops, Racing Magpie gallery and studios, coffee shops, a dance studio, the Pennington County Courthouse, the Stockgrowers headquarters, and beautifully repurposed brick automotive sales and service structures. One such building, directly across the street from the park, is now a collaborative co-working space called The Garage that houses small businesses and nonprofits. Another, two minutes away by foot, is the new Black Hills bureau for South Dakota Public Broadcasting.

All of this, it’s important to stress, sits”east of Fifth.” For several years Rapid City has won acclaim for revitalizing its downtown, refurbishing historic buildings, attracting both retail and residents, and filling Main Street Square with year-round activity. But most of the rejuvenation happened west of high-traffic Fifth Street, and has only recently spread east of Fifth.

For a while it looked like the neighborhood’s redevelopment would be dominated by a 10-story combination retail/office tower, proposed for the very site where the park now lies. Members of Trinity Lutheran Church were concerned when they discovered that their church stood in the shadow of the tower. When the project stalled, they used a separate, long-established foundation to buy the land in 2005.

“We didn’t have any plans for the property,” recalls Steinken, a church member.”The foundation sprayed to keep weeds down. In fact, for two or three years after the spraying stopped, nothing grew.”

And so the half-acre lot sat bare, as far from park-like as imaginable. Churches can always use more parking, but there seemed to be an understanding that laying concrete would smother discussion of other possibilities. Once pavement goes down, it usually stays.

Gradually the idea of a public park emerged.”That put us on a kind of tightrope,” recalls Steinken.”The foundation that bought and still owns the property had gathered money over the years for benefitting the church.” While a park next door would certainly benefit Trinity, it would also welcome the wider community and, in fact, people unassociated with Trinity would vastly outnumber church-goers.

Pastor Wilbur Holz wasn’t surprised that his congregation thought that was fine.”A strong value this church has held for many years is its belief that that what God has given us should be used to bless others,” he says.”I think that describes the park.”

Even with that positive outlook, few could have guessed how quickly and seamlessly the park would fit as part of the neighborhood’s fabric.

Rapid City has a transient population. Inevitably the question was raised: Would homeless men and women stake out the park, sleep there and make it undesirable for parents and their kids? It hasn’t been a problem, partly because of the park’s open physical design, but also because of Trinity’s longtime relationship with the transient population. Members feed them (9,000 meals in 2016, reports Pastor Holz) and use that opportunity to form friendships.

Native plants and creative space have drawn people of all ages to the park.

“When you’ve worked with people and established a level of trust, they respect that,” Steinken says.”The park feels like an extension of the church to them.”

The park would also demonstrate good stewardship of the earth, a concept that intrigued Steinken and pulled him deeply into the project. He became the coordinator and, after ground was broken in 2014, found himself working with designers and builders and making hard decisions.”It was a weird situation,” he recalls,”because all I had was a little sourcebook about sustainable landscape construction. I’d ask myself, ‘Who am I to be doing this?'”

Describing Ken Steinken isn’t easy. He’s probably best known in Rapid City as a former Stevens High School English teacher (for two decades), but he’s also an author and former Rapid City Journal writer, works at the airport and has served as a ranger at Jewel Cave National Monument. It was there he noticed how many people love nature yet don’t really understand it, and that efforts to preserve nature sometimes keep the public at a distance.

Steinken and his wife, Penny, arrived in Rapid City in 1976. He came from suburban Chicago and she from the Boston area. Black Hills nature gripped them in ways that even the considerable charms of the Great Lakes and New England could not, and they built a good Rapid City life, raising two sons and a daughter. After retiring from teaching, Steinken found himself in the middle of the park project with its $440,000 price tag. Given his writing background it’s not surprising that Steinken can produce top-drawer press releases. He wrote one in November of 2011 and called a press conference announcing the park. Days later an anonymous contribution for $100,000 arrived.”The donor wrote a check, put it in an envelope, and just dropped it in the regular mail,” he remembers.

The team of church volunteers who came forward to help proved as valuable as the cash. Steinken found he could make calls and get friendly advice from the city Parks and Recreation Department, the U.S. Geological Survey and the Natural Resources Conservation Service, a branch of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“NRCS helped us with a plant species list, and information about how to plant those species,” Steinken says. Volunteers agreed the park wouldn’t be defined by Kentucky bluegrass. It would celebrate West River plant life, divided into four sections: Black Hills (switchgrass), shortgrass prairie (buffalo grass and grama), midgrass prairie (knee-high bluestem) and wetlands (prairie cordgrass).

“One of my advisors warned me that going that way would make it challenging to tell volunteers to go pull weeds,” Steinken says.”They have to know what’s supposed to be there.”

Cactus, it turns out, is supposed to be there. An area rancher offered buffalo grass from his pasture if volunteers came and carved out the sod. It was hard work, of course.”But in doing it that way, we got some cactus in the turf, too,” Steinken says.

Among the park’s signature concepts is modeling storm water gardening, drawing rainwater in rather than diverting it out, as urban development typically does. That form of gardening utilizes water naturally, prevents water pollution that occurs when the resource moves down street gutters, and lessens problem runoff during heavy rains. Steinken and his team thought long and hard about recommendations to install an irrigation sprinkler system, but eventually did. In 2015 plants were put in and the next year a water main broke, knocking the sprinklers out of commission for a long period in summer. The plant life did fine.

Modeling solar energy is another important mission. Solar-generated light illuminates the park after dark and solar collector panels provide power for some park maintenance, including charging a cordless weed-whacker. A big test will come this summer when volunteers hope to see a cordless electric mower operate on electricity generated in the park. The project’s Black Hills Energy bill is impressively low each month, and surplus electricity generated is sold back to the utility.

Trinity Eco Prayer Park opened in June of 2016. By that point it had already won a sustainability award from Rapid City. Summer barbecues draw hundreds, with music performed in a shelter on the park’s south end. There are also quiet times of prayer and reflection.

Steinken thinks the myriad activities in this little half acre all point to similar questions:”How do we relate to the planet? How do we relate to one another? It’s very much the same thing.”

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the May/June 2017 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Local Experts’ Dining Tips

By Katie Hunhoff

Our readers seem to think that all of us at South Dakota Magazine are experts on every nook and cranny of our state. The truth is, we’re not. But we have friends and readers in every town and city, so we know who to ask about the best place to eat, hike, sightsee or learn about a place’s culture and history.

There’s nothing like a local’s perspective. That’s why we started a special department in every issue that we call”Seven Things I Love About South Dakota.” We ask South Dakotans to share some of their favorite haunts, and we’re always surprised at their suggestions. (See, I told you we aren’t experts!)

Our featured South Dakotans always have a favorite restaurant. Usually it is a little-known mom-and-pop place with a menu special that keeps people coming back. Here are a few favorites that I’m anxious to visit in our 2019 travels.

Veteran journalist Kevin Woster recalled good times at Al’s Oasis when he shared his favorite things about South Dakota.”Whatever leads up to the strawberry pie at Al’s Oasis in Oacoma is good. But it’s the faces and the memories that really fill me up. Al is gone, but I can see him at a table in his red cardigan, chatting with my now-departed mom as she adds half & half to make her coffee golden brown.” Woster grew up on a Lyman County farm and spent several years as a reporter for our state’s largest newspapers.

Architect Tom Hurlbert told us in 2017 about his favorite ice cream stop.”I worked for the Twist Cone in Aberdeen in eighth grade. I didn’t work at the main store, but instead they relegated me to Noah’s Ark, the old concessions building at Storybook Land. I put away about 6 feet of footlongs a week and ate my weight in ice cream. I still enjoy an Italian ice from the Twist Cone, but I lay off the footlongs now.” Hurlbert, co-owner and founder of CO-OP Architecture, lives in Sioux Falls now but he enjoys Twist Cone on summer visits back to Aberdeen.

Black Hills State University history instructor Kelly Kirk grew up in North Dakota, but fell in love with the Black Hills during family vacations. She likes to take friends to breakfast at Cheyenne Crossing in Spearfish Canyon.”The pancakes are fluffy, the skillets are filling and delicious, and the coffee continuously flows. And if you are going to truly enjoy the experience, a side of the frybread or wojapi is a must.”

Ashley Hanson grew up on a farm along Ponca Creek and returned home after attending technical school in Rapid City. She recommended a stop at Stella’s in Burke.”Stella’s has a great, juicy sirloin steak and delicious fried pickles with a little kick. There’s also a patio where live bands play throughout the summer.”

Darla Drew Lerdal, of the Black Hills Playhouse, thinks breakfast at Talley’s Silver Spoon in downtown Rapid City is the best — especially the eggs benedict with salmon.

Sean Dempsey of Dempsey’s Brewery in Watertown is an international pizza competitor, so you may be especially interested in his favorite dining spot. It’s Mama’s Ladas in Sioux Falls.”I love the beautiful simplicity,” he says,”a few choices of enchiladas, red or white sangria and seating for 15 to 25 people.”

We could go on forever, but this should be enough to tempt your palate and your sense of curiosity as you plan your road trips for the new year ahead.

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Writers of the Iron Road

By Michael Zimny

Wakinyan Chief works in Rapid City’s art alley.

As an art form, graffiti on freight trains evokes a wide range of responses. Some consider graffiti writers to be vandals, while others amass photos of work by their favorite artists. One objective reality about freight train graffiti that it is illegal. On the other hand, many large companies and municipalities now hire artists with a pedigree in illegal graffiti to do commissioned murals. Rarely, a writer’s trajectory could lead to commercial success. More often it can lead to fines and jail time.

Another given about train graffiti is that it does travel, and as such might be some of the most widely viewed art work in the nation, reaching people — if only peripherally — who may never set foot in an art gallery. South Dakota may not be a hotbed of graffiti, but encountering work by an urban artist in the isolated butte country of Harding County shows how built-to-roll these works really are.

Wakinyan Chief is a former graffiti artist. These days, you might find him spray-painting an installation in Rapid City’s art alley. The alley, and his piece, is sanctioned by the city. But growing up in Chico, California, Chief got his start doing illegal graffiti — under bridges, on abandoned buildings, and on the graffiti writer’s most mobile, and dangerous, platform — freight trains.

“What I really like about graffiti is that it’s free,” he says.”You don’t have to pay money to go into an art gallery. It’s for everybody. Anybody can go watch a train go by and it’s like a moving art gallery.”

A train with an “Under the Sea” theme passes near McLaughlin.

He says his interest in graffiti started when he was about 13. He began by doing tags with sharpie markers. Then he graduated into aerosol. “I eventually convinced my mom to buy me spray paint. She was okay with it. So she took us to the store. She bought us a bunch of spray paint. Then she took us to this bridge where I wanted to go paint and said, ‘I’ll sit up here and I’ll look out and if I see any cops or anything like that I’ll honk.’

“But I didn’t know what to do. We just ran down there. Our adrenaline was pumping. I didn’t know what to write. My friend was like, ‘Just write your name, like your signature. But make it so no one can read it except for you.’ So, I wrote ‘WAK,’ W-A-K, like the first three letters of my name.”

He soon changed his signature, but graffiti writing became a passion, if one with consequences. “The deal I had with my mom was that once I got caught, I had to quit. I couldn’t quit. It became an addiction for me. I didn’t have a lot of self-esteem or confidence. It was like this other person that I created — that I could kind of escape from who I was.”

He did get caught, but by then he was hooked. He didn’t follow through on the deal with his mom, and he’s paid a price for that. “I have a few felonies as a juvenile and then I have three as an adult.”

All three felonies are for painting freights. And getting caught by law enforcement wasn’t the only hazard. “I had a lot of crazy experiences painting trains. Every train you paint, they consider it a felony, because the train companies say it costs more than four hundred dollars to paint over the train. So every train that you paint, that’s multiple felonies they’re going to charge you with. And so that was always pretty sketchy, cause we had to run from the cops a lot.”

Eventually, it looked like the consequences of his mental escape would lead to real jail time, or something worse. Chief gave up graffiti and left California for Rapid City. “Now I’ve found other escapes like exercising and Brazilian jujitsu, and doing sign painting and things like that. But I really think it’s important because I struggled with alcoholism for a really long time, and what I understand now is that alcohol was really just an escape from my reality. And I wasn’t okay with who I was, so I was trying to escape.”

“Famus” passes through Buffalo Gap.

Though he grew up in Northern California, Chief’s heritage is here. His father is Oglala Lakota. He plotted his own escape from California to be closer to the Pine Ridge reservation. Right now, he’s teaching some of his skills to young artists there through a program called Generations Indigenous Ways. He says kids there could also use a mental escape hatch. “What I realized is that’s really what kids need, especially on the reservation. Because that’s the reason why so many people drink and turn to alcohol and drugs. That’s all they’re trying to do is trying to escape from their reality.”

The alter egos that graffiti artists like Chief create — whether to escape from reality, or themselves — assert a certain kind of power, enhanced by the mysterious identities of the artists — as they travel across the wide open spaces, through big cities and one-horse towns.

Charlie Davis of Aberdeen is a long-time admirer of train graffiti. An avid railroad modeler — and member of the James Valley Model Railroad Association — he often scouts the Hub City’s railroad yards looking for work by his favorite artists, camera in hand.

Then he meticulously resizes the photos he takes down to model railroad scale decals, taking care to remove shadows and preserve original details. “This one here,” he says, “pointing to one of the decals, in rows on sheets of sticker paper, “I don’t know who that artist is. The picture was sent to me by a guy in Los Angeles, to make him a decal out of it. And he took the picture through a chain link fence. So I had to go in there and get rid of all the fence. And it took me about eight hours.”

Charlie Davis inspects one of his model boxcars, complete with realistic graffiti.

The work can be tedious but once the decals are applied to his own model railroad cars, his trains become miniature moving art galleries.

Through his years of observing, photographing — and often miniaturizing — work by graffiti artists, he’s become a fan of certain artists’ work. “One of my favorite ones is called ‘Mr. HBAK,'” says Davis. “‘HBAK’ stands for ‘Hell Bred A Killer.'”

Mr. HBAK often incorporates images from popular culture into his productions. One large-scale piece he did — which Davis has reproduced — features Oompa Loompas.

Graffiti is recognized as one of the four elements of hip hop, and in a way what Charlie Davis does is a kind of creative reuse, the way a producer might lift a sample, or Mr. HBAK might re-appropriate the Oompa Loompas. And his work has been recognized by at least a few in the graffiti community.

“Probably the most famous artist that I’ve seen here — and I call him an artist because they are — is Ichabod. And his graffiti usually has “ICH” or “Ichabod.” A lot of times you’ll have a skull and a hand with a finger sticking up in the air. He’s probably done five thousand cars by now.

“He actually contacted me about six years ago through eBay — which is where I sell my decals — and thanked me for making them available to modelers. So I sent him some. And he got them, and he told me they were great. And that’s the last I’ve heard from him.”

Not everybody in the worlds of railroading, or even model railroading, share Charlie Davis’ appreciation for train graffiti. “The railroads hate it, and a lot of modelers hate it. I get comments from modelers who won’t touch anything that has graffiti on it. And I’ve had people tell me at train shows that I’ve attended that I’m helping to promote vandalism and lawlessness because I’m selling these graffiti decals. But I tell them back, well, it’s the real thing. If you want to emulate the real world today, in addition to weathering your cars, you need to have some graffiti on them.”

One notable piece that Davis has scaled down encapsulates the divide between graffiti artists, the railroads and some railroad enthusiasts. “It’s on the whole side of a Burlington Northern Santa Fe covered hopper. It reads ‘Artists Making Foamers Mad.’ Well, I’m a foamer, I guess.”

A train model by Charlie Davis.

“Foamer” is slang for rail fans.

“But, what it’s doing is saying that the graffiti writers are making the foamers, that don’t like graffiti, angry cause they’re defacing their stuff.”

Charlie Davis may be a foamer, but anger isn’t what he feels when he sees what he feels is a well-executed piece of train graffiti. “I don’t have any idea how many pictures I have, but I would guess at least twenty thousand. For being in an area that doesn’t have the huge volume of train traffic that they have in the Twin Cities or Fargo, for example, and other places, we do get an interesting variety of graffiti that comes through here.”

Davis’ own models include numerous cars by his favorite graffiti writers, like Mr. HBAK and Ichabod, and an occasional one-off by artists unknown.

For his part, Wakinyan Chief doesn’t see as many trains in Rapid City as he did in Chico, but he has lucked out in a way. “I ended up getting to live right next to the train tracks,” says Chief. “They opened up a line that used to be dead. Now I get to see trains coming between here and Minnesota all the time. I see my friends’ trains a lot. And then I see a lot of writers that I know, new writers that I never saw.”

Nowadays, he sticks to legal artwork, but despite the dangers, he still reminisces about his days as a writer. “I always thought, when I was younger — I was sneaking out and painting rooftops and stuff — what are all the other kids my age doing. And they’re probably all at home, doing homework, watching TV, playing video games or whatever.

“I’m out here cold, in the rain, sneaking out, might get arrested. There are drug addicts and homeless people. And I’ve seen all kinds of crazy stuff go down. I still think that graffiti writers are the most dedicated artists there are. Because they have to go out and go through all these extremes to just make it happen. And it’s for everybody. Anybody can see it.”

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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A Beardless Hobo & Other Homecoming Traditions

By John Andrews

I cannot grow a beard. Whenever I try, it looks like those photos we all have of our children the first time they grab a pair of scissors and give themselves, or their favorite doll, a haircut: bald spot here, 3 inches of scraggly growth there.

That’s why I sadly never took part in one of my alma mater’s most time honored homecoming traditions. The One Month Club at South Dakota State University is for students who want to look their hobo-est by the time Hobo Day arrives. Exactly a month before the homecoming game, men stop shaving their faces and women do the same with their legs. It’s all in good fun and a fine way to show school spirit, but I could never compete with my classmates who looked like the guys in ZZ Top after 30 days.

It’s homecoming season at colleges and universities around South Dakota, and when I thought of the One Month Club I wondered what unique traditions students observe at other schools. So I asked around.

One that warms my Scandinavian heart happens at Augustana University in Sioux Falls, where the students nominated for Viking Days king and queen don Norwegian sweaters. It seems appropriate for a school founded by Lutheran Scandinavians, and practical, too. I bet those sweaters take the chill off the cool October morning air on parade day. Incidentally, to celebrate Augustana’s 100th year in Sioux Falls, the school unveiled its version of the popular Monopoly board game called Augieopoly. One of the game tokens is a Norwegian sweater modeled after one owned by the late Dr. Lynwood Oyos, a longtime history professor.

Dakota Wesleyan University in Mitchell crowns not one king and queen, but two. In addition to the royal pair that reigns over Blue & White Days, two members of the freshman class are chosen Beanie King and Beanie Queen. They perform many of the same duties as the homecoming court, but wear blue and white beanies, festooned with optional decorations. The tradition began in 1926 and included all members of the freshman class, but over the years has been whittled down to just two.

Students at Dakota State University in Madison enjoy a citywide scavenger hunt. The Student Services department hides a small statue called the Traveling Trojan somewhere on the DSU campus or around Madison. Clues are given on local radio and on the school’s Facebook page. Whoever finds the statue receives a prize package.

West River students incorporate the Black Hills in their homecoming traditions. During Swarm Week at Black Hills State University in Spearfish, students make an annual pilgrimage to a giant letter H that sits on a mountainside near campus. Visitors to Rapid City may have noticed a similar M on a hillside above the city. Students at the School of Mines make a homecoming trek to whitewash the M, a tradition that dates back to the very first M-Day on October 5, 1912.

Alumni of other colleges and universities surely have their own favorite homecoming traditions. Hobo Day will always hold a special place for me. I’m pretty easy to spot watching the parade along Main Avenue or at Dana J. Dykhouse Stadium for the football game. I’m the clean-shaven one.

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Beyond the Chair

By Michael Zimny

James “JJ” Janis wants people with disabilities to come out into the open and talk about them, but he also wants people to see beyond the mechanized wheelchair that helps him get around. The Chair is Not Me is the title of a book of poems and prose he’s just published, which he hopes will spark a dialogue between diversely abled communities.

“My primary purpose is to foster an understanding between the diverse ability community and those that don’t have a disability,” Janis says.”It’s getting better but we need to do more work and by we, I’m talking all of us.”

Janis was born with cerebral palsy and grew up on the Pine Ridge reservation and in Rapid City. In his poem “My First Taste of Freedom,” he recalls that as a child, before he had a wheelchair, he sometimes got around in a little red wagon, “powered by my cousins’ legs.”

“We didn’t go very fast or far if people didn’t eat their morning eggs.”

Disabled people’s voices are rare in the media landscape, and consequently some of the issues they face aren’t widely discussed. Janis wants to change that with poems like “Unsung Heroes,” dedicated to direct support professionals (DSPs).

DSPs help disabled people, in countless ways, to go about their daily lives — taking them to appointments or visits with family and friends, helping them eat, shower, groom, get dressed. They are indispensable to the people they serve, not only because of the support they provide, but also because of intangibles like relationships and moral support.

“Their influence can ripple throughout our lives,” Janis writes.

DSPs are not highly valued by the market. They often receive at-or-near minimum wage pay. Turnover is high.

This places stress not only on the DSPs, but on the people they serve. “When I have somebody leave after a year, two, three, and even four years, it’s like a board pierced my heart,” Janis says. “When we lose someone, even if they’re just going to a different job, it’s like the loss of a family member.”

As an advocate, Janis is working to bring more attention to the work DSPs do. As a writer, he’s hoping to bring the issues faced by his community into the mainstream. He’s not shy about reaching out to high-profile people. He sent a book to George H.W. Bush. “I wrote him a letter thanking him for signing the Americans with Disabilities Act,” Janis says, “and told him about how civil his administration was compared to what was going on today.”

“When [President Trump] was running, he mocked a news reporter [who] had cerebral palsy, and it was kind of a disgrace. So, I was going to send one to President Trump to let him know that people with diverse abilities can do something, and he shouldn’t do that.”

The Chair is Not Me — which is illustrated by a group of diversely abled artists — is opening doors. Janis and some of the artists have been invited to present a show at the Dahl Arts Center in Rapid City next summer.

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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Rekindling a Memory

By Paul Higbee

Writer Paul Higbee (left) toured the B-17 crash site with Harold and Greg Stone, who have used decades-old reports to pinpoint the spot on Rapid City’s east side where the bomber went down.

On a September day in 1943, a pair of 12-year-old boys set out on foot across Rapid Creek and into fields familiar to them, immediately east of Rapid City.

Although they knew Rapid Valley’s countryside, this was no routine hike. An airplane had crashed here the night before and they decided to investigate. Sure enough, the boys found smoldering remains–not big pieces of wings and fuselage but bits of debris blown across hundreds of feet. Surprised to find no one about, they picked souvenirs before encountering two military policemen who told them to leave. The MPs had been rerouting traffic along old Highway 40, which ran right through the crash site, and apparently weren’t expecting gawkers who hiked cross-country. The policemen didn’t confiscate the souvenirs and had no way of knowing they were chasing away the individual who would rekindle South Dakota’s memory of this tragedy seven decades later.

The crash, late on the evening of September 6, 1943, took the lives of all 10 Army Air Corps men aboard. They were flying a heavy four-propeller bomber, the mighty B-17 Flying Fortress, and were part of the 398th Bomb Group. Their peers in the 398th would shortly complete Rapid City Army Air Base training and make their way to England, serving under General Jimmy Doolittle in the Eighth Air Force, and pounding Nazi targets in 1944 and 1945.

The Army Air Corps quickly investigated the Rapid City crash and determined the crew had been well rested, the ground crew fully competent, and found no indication of in-flight mechanical failure. But the report noted that western South Dakota’s rugged terrain could present challenges. Rapid City, the investigators noted,”is practically surrounded by hills and the path of the airplane was over the hills located between the city and the Air Base.”

It’s likely that pilot Orville Prater, flying at night, lost sight of the base’s lights, obscured behind a ridge as he descended. Perhaps at that moment he pulled his plane up because he thought he was about to hit the ridge, or maybe he spotted radar towers on a hilltop and decided they were too close. Either way he pulled the B-17 almost straight up, went into a stall, and then dived.

“I would say he went up 200 feet before he fell off, directly right down on the nose,” witness Harry Rothermal told investigators. He added that he was the first on the scene.”I went down, parked within 500 feet of the crash. There was intense heat and bullets whizzing all around … there were no signs of life. Just total wreckage.”

Customers exiting a late movie at the Elks Theater, two and a half miles away, heard the explosion after impact.

Harold Stone, one of the boys who walked to the wreck the next day, heard nothing. He was at his family’s home on St. Joseph Street, between the Elks and accident site, when the B-17 crashed a few minutes after 11 p.m. Later, Harold’s older brother came home and reported what happened.

“That family sacrificed itself entirely for the war effort,” says Harold,”and just as much so as if he had died at Normandy.”

When Harold visited the crash site on a September morning 69 years later, he said time had stripped some details from his 1943 memories. The smell of the smoldering ruin — intense or waning? He can’t recall. His friend Chuck Coyle, the other boy to walk to the site, never forgot how each of the four propellers churned into the ground to form pits. Probably so, but Harold doesn’t remember that. And his souvenirs are long gone, perhaps tossed by his mother when he served in the Army during the Korean War.

But never faded or lost were Harold’s questions that stemmed from his 1943 visit. Who were the airmen? What went wrong? Most haunting is a question that can never be answered: What raced through the flyers’ minds, as they knew they were falling without enough altitude to pull out of the dive?

Later, as Harold discovered the degree to which Rapid City had forgotten the crash, a new question formed:”What if you were a family member, maybe a nephew or niece to one of those airmen, and you knew he died here, but you visited Rapid City and found no marker or record?” he asks.

Rapid City forgot in part because none of the flyers were local. Newspapers made only brief, passing reference to the accident — typical of coverage of such incidents in the middle of World War II, when every day brought casualty news. In fact, the crash happened during the very week that the United States and its Allies began the dramatic invasion of Italy.

By 1943 no one doubted that air power would prove central to the war’s outcome, much more so than anyone could have predicted just a few years before. The issue of Time magazine on newsstands the night of the crash optimistically noted that bombers”may decide the war before an Allied soldier sets foot on western European soil.” If that was the hope (although one that proved sadly naive) then the nation understood the need for swift preparation of military pilots and aircrews. Americans knew that training fatalities were as inevitable as combat deaths. In fact, the previous June a B-17 flew from Rapid City to a Badlands gunnery range, caught fire, and broke up in flight, killing all nine aboard. Also in June, three B-17s flying in formation over Miner County collided in flight, killing 11. Those planes had taken off from the Sioux City, Iowa, base, and the 11 fatalities make the crash the deadliest South Dakota aviation accident to this day. All totaled, there were 120 fatal B-17 accidents in the United States in 1943, claiming 789 lives. Most of the time crews were novices, working to rack up flight hours. By no means was the B-17 considered unusually dangerous. Small fighters had accident rates many times that of the B-17, but often just a single pilot was aboard when a fighter went down.

Time moved on, the war ended, and Harold grew up to fight another war. He came home to Rapid City and in 1953 started a successful furniture manufacturing enterprise, a company that evolved into Dakota Bison Furniture. At age 81, Harold is still found in the plant or on the showroom floor daily.

“I went down, parked within 500 feet of the crash. There was intense heat and bullets whizzing all around … there were no signs of life. Just total wreckage.”

The Rapid City crash wasn’t the only World War II aviation tragedy to touch Harold. In 1944, in Nebraska, his brother-in-law Earl Endres was badly burned in a B-26 accident that killed other fliers. A few years ago Harold learned that his brother-in-law’s accident was well documented online. He wondered whether a few mouse clicks would answer his questions about the Rapid City crash.

He found information, all right, but it took more than a few clicks. An initial Internet search was just the beginning of a two-year journey Harold and his son, Greg, have taken to bring the night of September 6, 1943, out of darkness.

“We learned there’s an industry called aviation archaeology,” says Greg, who runs Dakota Bison Furniture with his father.”Several years ago the government sold its old crash reports to private companies, and we started with one of those companies. I think it cost us $40 to buy the report, which was written within a week of the crash, and runs about nine pages.”

The report says the doomed B-17, Army 25226, was among several to take off that evening for night flight training. It left the runway at 8:06 with instructions to”fly locally” until midnight. But at 9:45 all planes were ordered by radio to return because of anticipated stormy weather. Apparently Army 25226 had flown a considerable distance because it wasn’t until 11:03 that it approached Rapid City from the southwest and received landing instructions. After that no further word was heard from the plane, but seven minutes after the instructions were given, says the report,”the Control Tower operator observed a brilliant flash of light which appeared to be an explosion and a crash,” a few miles distant. While bad weather was, indeed, on its way, it hadn’t hit yet and visibility was good.

The report includes photos of the crash site, almost certainly taken the same day Harold and Chuck visited. Best of all, though, is the list of names of those aboard. The airmen came to South Dakota from Alabama, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Ohio, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania. Orville Prater, the pilot, was a second lieutenant who had earned his wings just four months before at age 21. There were three other officers: copilot Walter Duma, navigator Steven Kosciow, and bombardier Bryant Grover. Everyone else’s rank was sergeant–engineer John McCarty, assistant engineer George Barton, radio operator Frank Heuser, assistant radio operator Thomas Cox, and gunners Robert Vanhatta and Paul Eisenhart.

Knowing the names after nearly seven decades represented a big step forward, although learning more about the men and perhaps even seeing photos of them proved labor intensive. A 1973 fire in St. Louis destroyed most of the individual military records Harold and Greg hoped to examine. But from the crash report they knew the fliers’ home counties. Then they contacted libraries in the county seats and asked for help finding obituaries. In most cases the librarians delivered.

For example, Harold and Greg learned copilot Duma of Cleveland was Harry and Katherine Duma’s only child.”That family sacrificed itself entirely for the war effort,” says Harold,”and just as much so as if he had died at Normandy.”

Harold and Greg also discovered that Sergeant Heuser of Chicago had a brother who learned of the crash while serving in England, and that Sergeant McCarty was older than most Army Air Corps aviators. McCarty, age 30, left behind a widow in Akron, Ohio.

Oddly enough, given Harold’s visit in 1943 and the report’s site photos, pinpointing the exact crash location has been difficult. New roads, tree belts growing and disappearing and industrial development changed Rapid Valley. Old Highway 40 is East Centre Street now, paralleling modern-day Highway 44, a stone’s throw away. With the site definitely pinpointed, Harold thinks, a nearby marker could be erected like one along Highway 34 in Miner County recalling that B-17 crash.

Harold hopes to find someone with a high quality metal detector because he believes plane fragments were buried on-site rather than hauled away. Hunting for buried plane parts would make Harold and Greg serious amateur aviation archaeologists, indeed. Still, even without that kind of search, the pair is reasonably certain they’ve found the ground where the plane hit. There’s no doubt that when they visit they’re at least standing within the debris field, thanks to an examination they did with a photo in the crash report. The black and white picture shows a line of hills and a building with a distinct, sharply slanted roof in the distance behind the debris. They found the building still standing and lined it up with the hills, but just in the nick of time. Soon after Harold and Greg got the report, the old building was torn down. The owner, of course, didn’t know its relevance to local aviation archaeology. By the time it was gone, Harold and Greg had taken their own photos matching site lines in the report’s photograph.

Speaking of photos, the librarians who found obituaries also found a few portraits of the airmen. There they are, smiling across the decades, in uniform. They knew when the photos were taken that the war might lead them to places of mortal danger in Europe, North Africa or the Pacific. Death in South Dakota would have crossed no one’s mind.

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

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Reminders of Our Outlaw Days

By Katie Hunhoff

Cuthbert DuCharme’s cabin stands in a Geddes city park.

People who ventured into Dakota Territory during the 1800s were either bravely adventurous or very desperate. The faint of heart did not leave family, friends and comforts of home for a dangerous and uncertain existence. South Dakota remains the center of the American frontier, where remnants and reminders of territorial history still surround us.

Furthermore, descendants of some of our most colorful characters still live here. Several years ago, South Dakota Magazine featured an article on outlaws. We wrote about a man who had lured investors to the Hills by switching mineral samples. The suckers realized they had been duped when miners processed 3,000 tons of ore and extracted only $5 in gold. It’s a good story, but one of our readers took offense. “My grandfather was not a crook!” wrote a nice lady from West River. It turns out her ancestor was also a pillar of the Rapid City community.

Other reminders of our outlaw past remain in every corner of the state. In Geddes the cabin of fur trader Cuthbert DuCharme sits in the city park. DuCharme, called “Old Papineau” because of a talent for making whiskey (Papineau is French for pap water, or whiskey), lived along the banks of the Missouri River. His roadhouse boomed when Fort Randall was established, and wild parties were held every night.

On the other side of the state, a tree used to hang three accused horse thieves still stands on Skyline Drive in Rapid City. The tree died long ago, but the trunk is now embedded in concrete, a grey reminder of an era when hangings were punishment for a crime that might not merit a prison sentence today.

One of those killed that night was a teenager. His two traveling companions admitted their guilt, but declared to the very end that the boy was innocent. Some Rapid Citians felt there was a curse on their city because of the boy’s hanging.

Yes, our past is hard to escape. A new gravestone now marks the Gregory County burial site of Jack Sully, the famous Robin Hood of the Rosebud country. The shackles worn by Lame Johnny on his last stagecoach ride (vigilantes stopped the coach and hanged him) are now split between the State Historical Society in Pierre and the 1881 Custer Courthouse Museum. Potato Creek Johnny’s 7.75 ounce gold nugget can be seen at the Adams Museum in Deadwood. And you can still sleep at Poker Alice’s house in Sturgis.

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Put it on the Board

By Michael Zimny

A few local artists are etching their mark on the Rapid City art scene — in chalk.

Chalk art is an integral part of the mise en sc’ne of today’s American metropolis. At least in certain neighborhoods, chalkboards are one of the many types of space where the interests of local businesses and local artists converge — where artists take something fairly mundane, like the price of a cup of coffee, and make it into something beautiful.

For some residents of Minneapolis or Denver, chalk art may begin to fade — among the crush of symbols — into visual ambience. Not so much in Rapid City where the medium still feels new.

Rapid City native Christie Harris does chalk gigs for local businesses — like Klinkeltown and Essence of Coffee — when she’s not working as the studio manager at Canvas 2 Paint, a community arts workshop and studio.

She free hands drawings with a pencil outline, then emboldens them with chalk. She enjoys creating something unique to a particular place.”It’s a completely custom — to that business — piece of art,” says Harris.”You could order some kind of vinyl sticker or something, but it’s not handmade. You don’t see those little quirks.”

Laurel Antonmarchi is a freelance graphic designer. Chalk art is part of her toolkit for making it as an artist. SDPB recently caught up with her as she was touching up, and making permanent, a chalk mural at Cranky’s Bike Shop. A native of Armour who studied art at Black Hills State, Antonmarchi has also hosted a chalk art workshop for kids in Main Street Square.

“I like chalk because I can get my hands dirty with it,” says Antonmarchi.”It really gives a human element to the atmosphere.”

The quirkiness can be refreshing in a town dominated — outside downtown — by the familiar iconography of big box stores and chain restaurants. Chalk art’s origins can be traced back to the madonnari of 16th century Italy — artists-for-hire who often paid tribute to a famous personage in Christian circles. Sacred motifs are steadily losing ground to the gods of commerce. Today’s apple is symbolic only of Applebee’s. But chalk artists still manage to inject a little humanity into our transactional day-to-day.

“I love all the little imperfections,” says Antonmarchi.”It shows that a real person made it.”

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.