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One Sole At A Time

By Michael Zimny

Chad Scoular repairs boots and other leather goods inside a small shop in downtown Rapid City.

Chad Scoular is making a go of it in an endangered trade — shoe repair. “In the fifties, there were six shops in this town [Rapid City]. Now there’s one, and that’s us,” Scoular says.”The closest one is Sheridan, Wyoming. The others [in the region] are Vermillion and Sioux Falls.

“It’s getting to be a throw-away society. It’s getting tough to fix things too. It’s almost cheaper to buy a new pair than to go get it fixed.”

Fortunately for him, there’s a particular type of footwear, common in this region, that people like to hold onto for a while.

“Our primary business is cowboy boots. That’s what we love to do,” he says.

“I have a five-state market. And because we are so rural, everyone is a rancher. They wear cowboy boots. And cowboy boots aren’t cheap. They’re a tool. You have to have them to do your work. And if you get a good pair of cowboy boots that you like, it’s cheaper to get them fixed than to buy a new pair.

“There’s a lot of shoe repair places in New York and New Jersey, and you see them on Facebook repairing thousand dollar dress shoes. Well, we just don’t see that here. I’ll get a thousand dollar pair of cowboy boots in, but I just don’t see the dress shoes. But that’s okay, because I like the cowboy boots.”

Every repair has to meet with Scoular’s approval. That’s why he believes he has such a loyal customer base.

In addition to shoes, the shop fixes other leather goods. “Purses, you name it. If it can be riveted, stitched or glued — if we can fix it, we’ll do it.”

Scoular’s first forays into leatherwork were in his father’s basement shop outside of Denver, Colorado. (His father was a diesel mechanic who made saddles on the side.) “We lived on a small acreage and had horses and cattle and hogs and everything.” He grew up rodeoing — riding saddle broncs — and naturally gravitated towards building saddles, tack and chaps.

After high school, he left home to attend National American University in Rapid City, where he ended up working at Bob’s. “I always had an interest in shoes and boots and being a broke college kid, I needed some money. Bob had a sign in the door. He put me to work and taught me everything I needed to get started.”

Bob Wessel Sr. started Bob’s Shoe Repair in 1946. His son, Bob Jr., and wife Lori, took over in 1979 and ran the shop until Bob Jr. died suddenly in 2009. Scoular was doing other things at the time, but Lori reached out to see if he would be interested in taking over. He was.

At first, he had to learn fast. Bob had taught him some things, but not everything.

“I didn’t have anyone to show me how to run [the outsole stitcher], so I had to learn on my own. There were a lot of nights spent down here practicing. About ten thousand more pair and I’ll be good at it.”

Many of the machines and tools Scoular works with — like his Landis outsole stitcher — are antiques or aren’t made any more. “There’s fifteen hundred moving parts on this one machine. They used to have guys that come out once a year and tune up your machinery, but that went away thirty years ago. Now, you’ve got to fix them yourself and hope that nothing breaks because parts for these are expensive. But there’s not a whole lot of margin to make a lot of money to go buy new machinery, so you just use the old stuff.”

Scoular’s one hired hand is Clay Banyai, who is also somewhat of a leather artist.

The long nights have paid off (in a shoe repair kind of way). The community that supported the shop through the Wessel years has stood by it.

“I tell you what,” says frequent customer Shane, who stops in while waiting for a haircut next door, “there’s talent streaming out of these guys.” Shane is referring to Scoular and his only hired hand, Clay Banyai. He points out a framed, tooled-leather art piece Banyai created, featuring a pheasant, in the display case in front of the store. He particularly admires the detail on the three-dimensional pheasant head.

“It’s fun,” says Scoular of shoe repair. “It’s the type of job that everything is done with your hands. Everything that we touch has to have my approval on it before it goes out the door. If you want to have a quality product, you have to take pride in everything that you do. And that’s why we have a loyal customer base. I have people ship me stuff from Oregon, Florida, Minnesota, Colorado.”

Maybe one day the disposable epoch will end, shoe repair shops will spring up like Starbucks, and conspiracy theories will abound about Big Shoe Repair suppressing self-fixing shoes. For now though, even minus a revival, Chad Scoular’s place on Main Street seems secure.

“My goal is to make a hundred years. As long as things go the way they are, I think we’re gonna make it. After that I’m done.”

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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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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Painting Hay Camp

By Michael Zimny

Sandstorm.

Artist Grace French migrated from New England to Rapid City when it was still a dusty cow town known as Hay Camp and became a fixture on the local art scene — as both painter and educator. We recently sat down with Donna Fisher, secretary of the Journey Museum’s board of directors in Rapid City, to talk about one of the Black Hills’ earliest artists.

What is the Grace French story?

The Grace French story is really two things. One is tracing the career of a woman who came to Rapid City early. Rapid City was founded in 1876 during the gold rush, but the real centers of activity were gold towns. Rapid City at that point was called Hay Camp. It was a little market town on the front range, not where all the action was.

She was formally trained at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. At the time that was a very progressive school and women were able to study alongside men. In terms of art education it would have been considered cutting edge.

Grace French.

There was also a Normal School movement in New England that was very progressive in terms of training children in art. So she came with that experience.

She taught at the first university in the Black Hills, in Hot Springs, called Black Hills College. She lived with her mother [until she passed away in the 1890s] and sister in Rapid City and worked as both a painter and as a teacher, with a studio in her house.

You sent your kids up to art classes at Grace French’s — you wanted your kids to have culture. Everybody had piano lessons. If you were affluent enough you sent your kids up there, and the French sisters gave lessons to kids from families who couldn’t afford to pay.

She died at age 84 in 1942. Her ledger in 1939 shows that she was still sending a painting out to an exhibit. So she had a very long career as both a painter and a teacher.

As a painter — in the days before color photography, we have lots of black-and-white pictures from that era, but we really don’t have a sense of what the landscape and the color looked like, except for Grace. She was the dominant figure in the local scene.

In 2007, we did a big exhibit at the Journey Museum. When we started researching, we discovered stories that indicated her father was fairly wealthy and that his money had enabled these two women — Grace and Abby French — to live as artists. That was the popular lore, that he had stock in Homestake. What we learned through work with genealogists and [researching] family history was that her father was not a wealthy man. He was a mill worker when he died [in 1875, before the Homestake deposit was discovered]. Her mom was widowed when Grace was 17.

In fact, the French sisters were sturdy pioneer stock who were entrepreneurs, teachers and cultural influencers in Rapid City on their own.

Canyon Lake.

How did Grace French end up in the Black Hills?

She came out with her mother in 1885 from Boston. And here was this very progressive, thriving New England city — a heart of culture — and she must have loved it.

Her brothers and her sister came out to the Black Hills in about 1882 or 1883. The hysteria of the gold rush was fading but things were settling in, in mining expansion in the Northern Hills and Rapid City was a little merchant town with dusty streets and stagecoaches and freight wagons and lots of wood frame buildings. One brother had a sawmill.

Grace and her mother came out in September of 1885, by train to Fort Pierre, where they would have gotten onto a stagecoach because there was no train across the Missouri River. I always think of this woman who had just been walking along Commonwealth Avenue in Boston stepping off of that stagecoach onto a dusty, gravel street.

The brothers left within a couple of years. The mom and two sisters stayed and they built a house in Quincy Street that was up on a hill overlooking this little prairie town. She painted a lot of pictures looking down across Rapid City. We have sketches of important buildings that are gone now. We have a display of smaller works at the Journey, and probably the ones that best illustrate Rapid City history — the Alfalfa Palace, the early church spires, historically significant places.

Cold Spring.

What other subjects did she feature?

She was a superb portrait painter. She and sister were both fine china painters, which was a typical art form that was acceptable for women to get involved in. For about 30 years they both did and taught china painting. She did landscapes. She did lots of watercolors and sketches. She did a wonderful drawing of Needles Highway.

There were two collections [of small works, paintings and drawings] given to the Journey Museum — one by David Strain, the godfather of Rapid City history who wrote Black Hills Hay Camp. He featured his own collections of her work in that book.

She also did big, impressive oil paintings. Abby painted with her. They would go out in their buggy and do plein air paintings by the creek or Canyon Lake. That buggy was still in a little shed in the back [of the house on Quincy] when Grace died in 1942.

When she died, her [large oil paintings] were crated and stored by her executor with the stipulation that if Rapid City ever had an art museum these paintings should be given to the museum that formed. When the Dahl opened in 1975, a truck pulled up in front and they started unloading these big crated paintings. And they’re now in the Dahl [permanent] collection.

Dark Canyon.

Do you think there’s a lot of her work out there in private collections around the region?

It drives me crazy. Yes, the bulk of her stuff. There’s a photograph of Grace as an elderly woman in her home and she had paintings from floor to ceiling.

The other thing that drives me crazy — she studied with probably the leading china painter/teacher in America, Franz B. Aulich, in Chicago. Those little pieces — it’s what you did, you had these pieces of china painted by the French sisters. But it was something that fell out of fashion. World War I came and the porcelain wasn’t imported from Europe any more.

A china plate design by Grace French.

But also styles were changing. If you think about the 1920s, it was a very different era from the 1900s — ladies sitting around drinking tea ‡ la Downton Abbey kind of thing. All of a sudden instead of the elegant, quite proper world, we had flappers. Oddly, the sisters wore long skirts and 1900s-era blouses, and their long hair twisted up in a bun, long after everybody else didn’t.

What other social activities was she involved in?

[The French sisters] were founders of the Christian Science church here. They were also super active in the Women’s Christian Temperance Union — which was not only an anti-alcohol thing. The Temperance organizations were very involved in the vote for women.

Women could vote in school board elections, but even that was considered very controversial. And early records show that five women voted in the first school board election [in which women were allowed to vote]. One of them was Alice Gossage, the editor of the Rapid City Journal, and two of the five were the French sisters. That’s strong evidence that they were pretty spunky ladies.

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 Rapid City Treasure

Story by John Christopher Fine

Entrepreneurial storekeepers Chris and Trevor Johnson operate Rapid City’s eclectic Clock Shop.

Photos by Mike Wolforth

To appreciate the Clock Shop and Presidential Pawn in downtown Rapid City, you need to know about Chris Johnson, who grew up 200 miles to the east in Highmore.

“We were not far from where the Arikara ran buffalo over a cliff. In a family of seven boys and six girls, there was plenty of fun,” Johnson says.”Dad would pile us into the station wagon and we’d have a picnic at the buffalo jump 11 miles east of Highmore. We’d chase each other around the hills. Dad would show us how to find arrowheads and buffalo teeth. That’s how we spent our Sundays.”

The Johnsons weren’t wealthy, and gold was the furthest thing from their minds. Mr. Johnson was a high school history teacher and a carpenter. Mrs. Johnson baked bread for local restaurants, and for her children.

Years later, while working in the mailroom for the Rapid City Journal in the 1980s, Chris helped his in-laws, Tom and Jean Uhrich, start a shop called The Clock Shop, a spin-off to their jewelry store.”There was a large calling for clock repair,” Chris says.”I helped him put it together in the basement of his store across the street from here.” He started working full time for them in 1993 and bought the store eight years later.

Clock and watch sales sank with the recession of 2008, but a funny thing happened.”People asked if we still bought gold. Because my father-in-law did as a jeweler, I knew how. I just didn’t pursue it. In the recession, clocks were considered luxuries. My son Trevor was just getting involved in the business. We were not doing well selling fine watches and clocks. We had advertised $2 watch batteries for years, so as people came in for a watch battery we started handing out a business card that read, ‘We Buy Gold.'”

Chris Johnson and David Peck, the shop’s clock repairman, have dealt with a wide variety of merchandise, including a rare 1964 Harley Sprint motorcycle.

Timing is nearly everything. Gold prices were soaring and there was an opportunity to sell unwanted gold scrap and jewelry.”It was just like our childhood,” Chris says.”You learn to survive. The survival instinct brought about my desire to buy historic items. I have to pinch myself to realize that we not only survived the worst economic time but flourished. Trevor pushed me to start the pawnshop. He said a pawn shop does well in a good economy, and flourishes in a poor economy.”

But the Johnson family pawnshop, at 610 Seventh St., in Rapid City’s bustling downtown, is different. Customers are often offered a free book on how to escape debt.”We feel that every day there is something important happening here,” Chris says. As many as 400 people visit the store daily, and the Johnsons now buy and sell $5 million a year in gold and silver bullion.

But they aren’t hoping for higher gold prices.”Rising gold prices have a direct correlation to an unstable economy and uncertainty,” Chris says.”I have no hope for gold to go up. I would much rather have a good economy. Gold bullion serves better as an insurance policy for money than a growth investment. We don’t hoard it. We buy it and sell it.”

Chris credits Trevor for having a good business mind.”I am more of a romantic,” he says.”Money, like life, is fleeting. An old person told me long ago a bit of philosophy that I stick to: I’d rather regret what I did in life than what I didn’t do.”

So he steps into the window of the Clock Shop and takes a key out of the drawer of a clock.”I found this in an antique shop. The glass was missing. It is an original Samuel Whiting clock. It has the original case and movement. I sent the doors to be gilded. Whiting was an apprentice of Simon Willard, patent holder of the banjo style clock.”

Chris Johnson’s collection includes original negatives from President John F. Kennedy’s funeral in 1963. The photographer’s girlfriend brought them to the shop in 1982.

The clock may have stopped running 150 years or more before he found it.”My uncle was a clock maker. Later on in his life we talked about it. He said, ‘Take a clock built in the early 1800s. Get it started. The clock says thanks old buddy, you got me going again.'”

Then Chris shows us a miniature dog preserved by a taxidermist that might have been the smallest dog in the world. And a Salvadore Dali drawing. And the Icebox Nugget, thought to be the largest undisputed placer gold nugget from the Black Hills in existence.

Chris’ brother Ron, who also works at the shop, goes to the vault and brings back a plain manila envelope. Inside are 190 35mm negatives shot by photographer Robert Tobin at President John F. Kennedy’s funeral in 1963.

“You see John John saluting,” Chris says.”Look at this negative. We believe it to be the original of the photograph published in Life.” But most of the pictures have never been published.

Tobin was murdered in 1982. The Rapid City woman who brought the negatives to the Johnsons identified herself as the photographer’s girlfriend.

“You just really don’t know what’s going to come into this store,” he says. But one thing is predictable: at the top of the hour, the Clock Shop resonates with melodious gongs, chimes and cuckoos from the clocks. It is a wonderland of warm sounds, perhaps as comforting as was Mrs. Johnson’s bread, baking in the oven at Highmore many years ago.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the September/October 2014 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Pennington Revisited

By John Andrews

Ten years ago, Jerry Wilson, the former managing editor of South Dakota Magazine, wrote an article about the incredible geographic diversity found in Pennington County. Its western edge begins in the heart of the Black Hills. As you travel east, the second largest city in South Dakota — Rapid City — sprawls along the eastern foothills. The landscape gradually gives way to ranch country, the Badlands, the Buffalo Gap National Grassland and the Lakota culture of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, which sits directly across Pennington’s southeastern boundary.

We last visited Pennington County several months ago for a family vacation, and you’ll not be surprised to learn that all of those characteristics remain true. The Badlands haven’t disappeared and the Black Hills are still there, though there have been some monumental changes since the county was created in 1875. In its 142 years, Pennington County has become South Dakota’s prime tourist destination, with millions of travelers making plans to visit every year.

Badlands National Park protects over 240,000 acres of rugged landscape that spills into Pennington County.

Tourism likely wasn’t on the minds of territorial legislators when they created Pennington, Lawrence and Custer counties in one fell swoop, but current governor and county namesake John Pennington saw the move as way to help his friends and line his pockets. The governor named several of his closest allies in Yankton to lead offices in the new county rather than fill those positions with people who lived in the area. The slight became worse when the new officials chose to stay in Yankton instead of moving west. Rumors of corruption escalated even further when Pennington selected Sheridan over Rapid City as the new county seat. It was believed that Pennington held real estate near Sheridan, and its value was sure to increase with the town’s elevated status.

Locally elected officials soon replaced Pennington’s appointments, and the county seat was eventually relocated to Rapid City. But the governor remained unpopular in the Black Hills until William Howard succeeded him in 1878. Shady as his dealings may have been, we do hold a soft spot for Pennington since we publish South Dakota Magazine in his home, an 1875 brick Italianate building on the east end of Yankton’s Third Street. It’s the only territorial governor’s home remaining in South Dakota. Readers are welcome to stop by for a tour when they’re in town.

Our trip into Pennington County began on the Badlands Loop Road, a 31-mile detour off Interstate 90 that provides several scenic overviews of a landscape millions of years in the making. The kids enjoyed venturing out onto short trails, taking note of the”Watch for Rattlesnake” signs. Every now and then they would head off-trail, skipping over narrow chasms and climbing precarious points.

Mount Rushmore draws nearly 3 million visitors every year.

The Badlands Loop Road met Interstate 90 again at Wall, which meant a stop at Wall Drug. We spent a couple of hours perusing the many shops. I don’t think the kids believed that it all began with signs for free ice water, enticing motorists to stop at the town’s tiny drug store. I was impressed by the huge collection of original Western paintings that hang throughout the complex.

Our first morning in Rapid City began with coffee at the historic Fairmont Creamery building. Constructed in 1929, the space has undergone extensive renovations and now hosts several businesses, including Pure Bean.

Fully caffeinated, we made our way to Mount Rushmore, the grand jewel of tourism for Pennington County. Roughly 3 million people visit the national memorial every year. I’ve written a few stories covering different angles of Mount Rushmore, but it was nice to simply view the granite heads from the observation deck and to stroll along the Presidential Trail through the pines and see the sculpture from new perspectives.

Ellie Andrews served time in Presidential Pawn’s fictitious jail.

Back in Rapid City for the afternoon, we explored the lively downtown district, anchored by the new Main Street Square. Children laughed and splashed in the fountain while families lounged in the green space. We strolled the vibrant and ever-changing Art Alley, where business-owners gladly allow the drab back halves of their buildings to become colorful street paintings. We saw the world’s smallest taxidermied dog inside Presidential Pawn and enjoyed a meal at the Firehouse, Rapid City’s original fire station converted into a restaurant and brewpub.

For part of our trip, we stayed at Newton Fork Ranch, a former working ranch that has been converted in a series of cabins set about a mile outside of Hill City. From here, we had easy access to Prairie Berry Winery, the Miner Brewing Company and the 1880 Train, which travels round trip from Hill City to Keystone along the old Chicago, Burlington and Quincy line.

We took advantage of other popular stops in Pennington County. We traveled through Bear Country and saw mountain lions, timber wolves in captivity, and bears as they sauntered past our car. There were doubts about whether or not some in our party would be able to successfully navigate the crooked cabins of the Cosmos Mystery Area, but once the surroundings stopped spinning and the nausea became tolerable, everyone completed the tour. The Cosmos is a very weird place where tennis balls appear to roll uphill, and uneven ground proves to be completely level. Two college students discovered the peculiar place in 1952 as they searched for land on which to build a summer cabin. They immediately noticed the unusual forces and created demonstrations that have confused visitors ever since. But it really isn’t for everyone. Several people on our tour seriously struggled with balance and a few even mentioned headaches.

Joe Andrews enjoys a leisurely ride on the 1880 Train.

That sounds like a busy trip, but we truly only scratched the surface of things to do in Pennington County. We missed the amazing museum at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, and Reptile Gardens just south of Rapid City. We could have spent a day at Pactola or Deerfield lakes or made the pilgrimage to the top of Black Elk Peak, the highest point in South Dakota and the tallest peak in the United States east of the Rocky Mountains. When we were there, the promontory was still known as Harney Peak, in honor of Gen. William Harney, a 19th century military commander stationed in the area. But in August 2016, the U.S. Board on Geographic Names changed the moniker to Black Elk Peak for the legendary Lakota holy man whose vision quest atop the mountain was immortalized in John Neihardt’s classic book Black Elk Speaks.

Missing out on all of those other activities simply means another trip is in order, perhaps in the summer of 2017. And I bet the ponderosa pines, the rugged Badlands, doughnuts and coffee at Wall Drug and the four granite faces of Mount Rushmore will still be there, waiting for us.

Editor’s Note: This is the 32nd installment in an ongoing series featuring South Dakota’s 66 counties. Click here for previous articles.

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Reaching for New Heights

Mark Rafferty is a young rock climber, photographer and artist from Rapid City. Last November, serious injuries from a 40-foot fall near Tucson sidelined the teen, but he returned to climbing this spring. Here are some recent photos from his climbs in the Black Hills. See more of his work and follow his blog at www.markcrafferty.com.

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Our Fair Tour

By Katie Hunhoff

South Dakotans wave farewell to summer with the colorful sights, delicious foods and dizzying rides at local or state fairs. This year South Dakota Magazine is travelling to some of our favorite fairs to celebrate the magazine’s 30th anniversary.

We will visit with readers, serve Forestburg watermelon slices and soak up South Dakota’s fair culture. Our schedule began with Parker’s Turner County Fair on Wednesday, Aug. 19, then Rapid City’s Central States Fair Aug. 21-22. Finally, we’ll visit the State Fair in Huron Sept. 6-7, where we will have the honor to be on stage with legendary performer Sherwin Linton. We won’t be singing, but will have some good South Dakota stories for the audience.

Linton has performed for over 30 years at Huron, as well as other fairs around the country. Three times a day on the state fair’s Centennial Stage, fans sit under tall shade trees and listen to Sherwin, his wife Pam and their longtime band “The Cotton Kings.” Linton plays over 250 concerts a year and, amazingly, has never missed a performance in his 50-plus years of entertaining. His perfect attendance placed In the next issue of the magazine we recount a Sherwin Linton story that Bob Glanzer wrote in his new book, You Can’t Unring a Bell. Glanzer helped plan and produce the state fair for 26 years and from 1980-2002 was the superintendent of the grandstand stage and show events. During his tenure he met Minnie Pearl, and confirms she was just as funny backstage as she was onstage. He drove Red Skelton to the Sioux Falls airport and was treated to two hours of stories and humor. Skelton bought him breakfast and tipped him $50 for the drive.

One story that stood out in Glanzer’s mind was a meeting between Sherwin Linton and Johnny Cash. It was during the state fair’s bicentennial year in 1976. Glanzer was standing backstage before Cash’s performance. Cash looked at his manager and said, “Do you notice anything different about me tonight?” His manager didn’t notice anything unusual about Cash’s all-black attire. Cash then told him to look at his feet. He was wearing two left boots. The manager asked Glanzer to find a pair of size 13 black boots and gave him $100. Glanzer took off for the midway, where he knew Geiger’s Western Wear was selling western clothes and tack. The largest black boots were size 12, so Glanzer bought them and ran back to stage.

Cash squeezed his size 13 feet into the size 12 boots and went on stage to perform two shows. At the end of his second show, Cash told the audience the story of his two left boots and how the new boots were too small. He spotted Sherwin Linton in the audience and invited him on stage.

As Glanzer recalls, Johnny gave a nice tribute to Sherwin, took off the boots and told Linton to try them on. He then asked Sherwin,”How do they fit?”

Sherwin replied,”I could never fill your shoes, Johnny!”

Cash replied, “Oh, yes you can!” Linton went back to his seat wearing the new trophies of the concert and Johnny finished the show in his stocking feet.

South Dakota Magazine is proud to be a part of South Dakota’s fair tradition this summer. Look for our green ’49 Chevy delivery pickup and stop by for a slice of watermelon. And if you see Sherwin Linton, ask about Johnny’s boots.

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Amazing Aerobatics

Ellsworth Air Force Base hosted the Dakota Thunder Air Show this past weekend. The free, two-day event included aerobatic shows, working dog demonstrations and a Lamborghini and Ferrari race. The U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds headlined the weekend, with a choreographed routine designed to demonstrate the skills that F-16 Fighting Falcon pilots must possess. Nearly 33,000 attended the show and concurrent open house. Photos by John Mitchell.
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Fancy Dancers

Each Tuesday this summer, Rapid City’s Main Street Square and the Alliance of Tribal Tourism Advocates host the He Sapa Center for Performing Arts Northern Plains Art Market. The event includes American Indian artists, jewelry, dance and storytelling and continues through September 1. In July, young dancers from the Wanbli Ska Drum and Dance society performed traditional native dances. Photos by Joel Schwader.
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South Dakota Road Adventures

By Katie Hunhoff

We have a feature in our current South Dakota Magazine (July/August) on traveling Old Highway 16. At first I wanted to title it “Highway 16: The Perfect S.D. Road Trip” but my fellow editors talked me out of that. It sounds like the perfect road trip to me, but probably isn’t for those who don’t want to go off-roading for a few miles here or there. Our photographer nearly collided with a longhorn cow in Haakon County.

Luckily, we have several other summer travel recommendations for those who like their roads more civilized. Here are some basic recommendations for road-tripping 16, and a few other highlights from our summer travel issue.

Highway 16 covers a 400-mile stretch between our east and west borders, connecting Sioux Falls with Rapid City and several smaller communities along the way. It was part of a 1,600-mile passage between Detroit and Yellowstone National Park that was linked nearly a century ago. A group formed in 1919 to promote the journey in South Dakota, which intersected at times with Highways 14 and 20.

Take time to travel the back roads that are now Highway 16 and you’ll find many remnants of its heyday, including places that made the transition to Interstate 90 such as Wall Drug, the Pioneer Auto Show in Murdo and Reptile Gardens. There are also some great restaurants, like Al’s Oasis, Hutch’s in Presho and the Back 40 near Kimball, a renovated Highway 16 gas station.

For a complete guide to 16, see our July/August issue. Or, like the article’s author, you can play it by ear and see if you can piece together the old roadway on your own. Old 16 enters South Dakota from Minnesota as 262nd Street at Valley Springs, just east of Sioux Falls. The highway is easier to find on the other side of the state because it is still known as U.S. Highway 16.

Our current issue also highlights our state’s 13 National Natural Landmarks, any of which would make a great summer road trip. The U.S. Interior Department began the program in 1962 to highlight our country’s biological and geological diversity. “The sites help tell the story of our nation’s natural heritage through representations of different features,” says Heather Eggleston, a regional National Natural Landmark coordinator. “Those included in the program are the best examples of those features still in existence.”

South Dakotas 13 designations include glacial lakes and sloughs, timeworn buttes and prehistoric rock. Some of the 13 landmarks are well known, such as Bear Butte, and others were a surprise even to our staff, such as Red Lake (Brule County), Buffalo Slough (Lake County) and Snake Butte (Jackson County).

Snake Butte is 23 miles south of Interior on the Pine Ridge Reservation. It features one of the world’s best collections of sand calcite crystals. In fact, South Dakota is one of only a few places on the globe where the crystals are found. They form when water containing dissolved calcite seeps through sand beds. Over time, the calcite forms crystals that surround the sand, between 15 to 20 inches in length. The butte is located in a beautiful sloping and wide-open area of the Pine Ridge, which is worth the drive itself.

South Dakota sweeping landscapes, amazing geological diversity and friendly communities make it an ideal place to get on the road and see what adventures you’ll find. We hope our summer road recommendations inspire you to hit the road — but if it’s Highway 16, be sure to yield to the longhorn cattle.