Tag: roberts county

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The Winds of Destruction

By Katie Hunhoff

Sharon Weron was riding a horse home from a neighboring farm near Bowdle in 1955 when she got caught in the middle of a tornado. She heard a noise like an oncoming train and her horse began to run in panic.

Sharon doesn’t remember much after that, but neighbors reported that the tornado lifted Sharon and the horse off the ground and she was found in a ditch one thousand feet away. She was remarkably unharmed, except for some bruises and swollen ears, but she didn’t speak for several days. The horse survived, too, and both were fast celebrities. News people came from across the country to write the story. Sharon even became the star of a film that re-enacted her wild ride for a British cable TV channel. “It’s shown every tornado season,” she told South Dakota Magazine a few years ago.

Sharon’s impromptu tornado ride also garnered her the bragging rights for being transported the longest distance by a tornado by the Guinness Book of World Records. That lasted until 2006 when a teenage boy in Missouri was sucked out of a mobile home and propelled over 1,300 feet.

Tornadoes are not far from most South Dakotans’ minds whenever our summer days turn dark. On average there are 28 tornados per year in our state. The most tornadoes reported in a single day happened on June 24, 2003 when 67 funnels blew across our prairies in an eight-hour period. South Dakotans remember the record-breaking day as Tornado Tuesday.

The Fujita scale estimates the strength of a tornado based on damage wreaked by the storm. Most of the tornadoes that day in 2003 were weak, ranking as F0 to F1 on the F0-F5 scale. But one registered as an F4 and demolished Manchester, a tiny Kingsbury County town. Luckily there were no casualties.

Another storm in 1992 hit the tiny town of Chester. Citizens were evacuated for 19 hours after a tornado with winds measuring 113 and 157 mph damaged infrastructure, including a 12,000-gallon ammonia tank. Residents returned home after the gas dissipated.

The devastating May 1998 twister that leveled the town of Spencer and killed six people was one of the deadliest our state has endured. One hundred and fifty people were injured.

A June 17, 1944 Wilmot tornado claimed 8 lives, and injured 43. That storm is not listed on official records but is the deadliest in South Dakota history.

Seven died, all in the same home, on May 27, 1899 near Bijou Hills. A twister struck the Peterson farm, killing the father and six of the eight Peterson children. Neighbors rushed to help and found Mrs. Peterson in a muddy field, confused and injured. At first sight, rescuers thought she was an animal of some sort. Eleven-year-old Earl Peterson was found a half-mile away, alive but pinned in mud by a stick that had pierced through his clothing. Another son, Alvah, survived by seeking shelter in the storm cellar, huddling alongside a huge bull snake.

The editor of the Chamberlain Register wrote that seeing the wagons loaded with coffins on the day of the Peterson funerals “made even the most hardened persons contemplate the uncertainty of life, and the certainty of death” in South Dakota.

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Why They Don’t Let Dads Buy Prom Dresses

By Lee Schoenbeck

Ok — you think it’s because it just doesn’t sound like a dad thing. You can’t imagine saying,”Come along, Father, it’s time to go pick out the perfect prom dress. What shades of mauve do you think will be in this year and match the new shoes I plan to buy?”

Ok — you have a point. Dads can do many things, but making shopping trips that don’t involve Cabela’s, Scheels or Gander Mountain is probably not on the list. And maybe the reason dads don’t buy prom dresses is the same reason they aren’t invited off the parking lot at the mall, or along on any shopping weekend. Dads make sense. Dads are normal. Dads don’t get crazy at the scent of a corsage. Apparently, dads just don’t get it.

A PRE-PROM DAD

When my daughters were still young enough to love me, and ride around with Dad on a Saturday in his pickup, I remember telling them about those prom-dress-buying parents. I’d hear they’d spent a couple of hundos on a dress that was going to be worn once, and I’d think they were nuts. Certifiable. Unquestionable. Under-medicated. Nuts.

THE FIRST PROM DRESS

Ok — so when my first daughter was getting ready for her first prom I got all soft and thought,”What the heck. If my princess wants a hundred dollar dress for this big night — I’m all in.” Don’t go there. Don’t get soft on this one. They’ll lead you on like you are the greatest dad, who’s proven his unending love. The hook has been set. You are done. Here’s the reality: the only place they wear a hundred dollar prom dress these days are as blankets on streets near homeless shelters in New York. You have taken the bait.

A THOUSAND MILE DRESS

So when it came time for my daughter and the Understanding One to find a dress, Dad of course recommended the big shop just down the road from his favorite hunting watering hole, Stan’s Bar. Oops, that’s the watering hole. The dress place, Jean’s Bridal Shop, is world renowned, at least in the part of the world that Dad drives around in. Jean’s got so many wedding dresses in that place, that single men get the nervous shakes just driving past it on Wilmot’s Main Street.

But it was not to be, because Dad knows nothing about fashion. Dad doesn’t realize that no prom dress shopping is complete unless you drive once to Minneapolis (and home) and then once to Sioux Falls (and home) in search of the perfect dress. But Dad’s doing the math on the miles. If this dress was a pickup, it would need an oil change before it ever got to a prom!

After its turn in the spotlight, the perfect prom dress joins its sisters in the closet.

CRISIS

So the first dress makes the drive from Minneapolis, only to appear the next week on the cover of the ad insert of the Argus for a department store with locations in Sioux Falls and Watertown! Seriously, same color and everything, which doesn’t mean much to a dad. But to The Understanding One and daughter, it means this dress has to go back. It is bad — it could pop up any time and spread a plague or something. So, as Dad smiles, daughter and The Understanding One head off to the local Wilmot shop and find the perfect dress — with two weeks to spare.

CRISIS REVISTED

Apparently dress shops keep logs of the proms where these expensive peacocks will show up — lucky Dad! A few days later the call comes that this new dress will appear, worn by somebody else, at the same local prom. This is apparently unacceptable and a violation of some teen honor code. Never mind that the prom is now about a week away and a blizzard is forecast to move into the area that night. Daughter and The Understanding One trek off through the Summit Hills for another chance at a dress at the Jean’s Bridal lottery (are you keeping track of these miles?)

CRISIS AVERTED AGAIN

Again, mysteriously, the perfect dress appears. No polka dots like the last perfect one, and not green like the perfect one before that, but perfect nonetheless. The prom dress gods have smiled on our family.

OK — SHE’S BEAUTIFUL

Well that night, through the glare of a thousand pictures, even Dad had to admit that the battle appeared to be worth the end result. Dads enjoy their daughters looking beautiful; they just think that blue jeans are all it takes. Dads see beauty unvarnished, but are willing to admit that varnished is pretty nice too. Just as Dad is basking in the proud role of some shared responsibility for the beautiful young lady, a reality flash hits — we’re going to have to do this again next year too!

PRELUDE TO A WEDDING DRESS

Two daughters through high school, and eight formals later, Dad feels like he’s got this licked. Each formal was an opportunity to see what lovely ladies we raised. In a few years the home mortgages for the dresses will be paid off, and life will go on. But nagging in the back of Dad’s mind is that Spencer Tracy movie, Father of the Bride, and Steve Martin’s remake — virtual documentaries of the challenges faced by dads of the bride. Post-prom dads wake up in a sweat with night tremors over what THOSE dresses will cost.

While I haven’t shared this yet with The Understanding One, this dad is encouraging his daughters to each look for a fine, outstanding young man, who owns a ladder and a sense of adventure — you wear blue jeans to an elopement, don’t you?

Lee Schoenbeck grew up in Webster, practices law in Watertown, and is a freelance writer for the South Dakota Magazine website.


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Elusive Monarchs

By Christian Begeman

September 26, 2009 was the date I first set foot in Sica Hollow State Park. I had heard of the park’s beauty in autumn and always wanted to go, plus I had just purchased a new camera. What better way to test out the new gear than exploring one of South Dakota’s most noted and mysterious places? I didn’t find any ghosts or spirits walking the trails, but I did witness beautiful and saturated fall colors due to recent wet weather. I found rich oranges, yellows and reds along the streams and horse trails. The new camera got plenty of work and the trip turned out to be very successful. Two photos I took that day were later published in the July/August 2010 South Dakota Magazine article”Ten Naturally Beautiful Places.” Getting my first full-page photo in a real and noted magazine was pretty exciting stuff for a country boy from Ziebach County.

I have returned to the park a handful of times since, the most recent being last weekend. Why would I make the three-hour trip before the colors of fall season have appeared, you may ask? This time, I went in search of a different kind of colorful phenomenon — the monarch butterfly. At the end of August and into early September the annual monarch migration south to Mexico comes right through our state. Sica Hollow, which is located on the edge of the Coteau des Prairies, is located on one of the main highways for these orange blazes of color as they make their way south.

Last year, on the first weekend in September, I went to Sica Hollow on a hunch. The last week of August, I had happened across 25 to 30 monarchs feeding on Maximillian sunflowers and ironweed in the Coteau Hills near Clear Lake while working on another project. I deduced that the migration was beginning and set off to Sica Hollow the following weekend. The hunch paid off. I was rewarded with a spectacle that would make most nature lovers’ pulses quicken. Around a hundred monarchs were fueling up on nectar in the upper hills of the park. I was able to get close enough to one of their roosting sites just before sundown to get a series of photos showing 20 to 30 butterflies crowding on the same tree branch. It is a sight I won’t soon forget. It is also a sight that I’m now realizing may be much harder to duplicate than I first thought.

You see, this time around I was skunked twice at the same sight. I only saw two monarchs at the park in two tries two weeks apart. It could be the drought and/or the unseasonably warm weather that is keeping the butterflies’ numbers low this year. It is hard to say. Whatever it is, it seems disappointingly ironic to me. I say that because I’ve seen single monarchs fluttering amongst the wildflowers in many of my other state park travels this summer.

South Dakota’s weather has never been what one would call predictable. The appearance of autumn’s colors on the fringes of Sica Hollow in early September is proof that things are off a bit this year. It looks to me like the prime fall color is around two or maybe even three weeks early this year. Looking back at the dates of my other visits to Sica Hollow demonstrates the differences. When I was there in late September of 2009 the prime color was just before peak. On my trip there in mid-October of last year, it was about a week after peak colors and this year I’m seeing fall colors start as early as Sept. 8.

One of the essentials to shooting good fall foliage is correctly guessing when the best time is to view the most turning trees. I try to catch it early rather than later as I don’t trust the notorious west wind from stealing the gold from the trees before I have the chance to photograph them. All in all, trying to outguess the weather is actually one of the fun things about nature photography. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. I’ve learned that when I guess correctly, I need to drink it in and enjoy it for all it is worth, because who knows if and when the particular beauty of that particular day will come around again. So happy hunting and may you fill your memory cards with all sorts of beautiful South Dakota fall color this year. Good luck!

Christian Begeman grew up in Isabel and now lives in Sioux Falls. When he’s not working at Midcontinent Communications he is often on the road photographing our prettiest spots around the state. Follow Begeman on his blog. To view Christian’s columns on other South Dakota state parks and recreation areas, visit his state parks page.



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Rediscovering an Old Friend

By Christian Begeman

The poetry of camping in the great outdoors calls out to many South Dakotans one way or another. I don’t exactly know why, but I do know that I have developed unexpected relationships with places in South Dakota. There are places that I find myself drawn back to again and again. Places that seem to always have a timeless beauty no matter what the season.

Just over four years ago, I first walked the trails of Hartford Beach State Park on the shores of Big Stone Lake in northeast South Dakota and we’ve been friends ever since. It was around that time that I decided to take what was then a hobby of mine, photography, a bit more seriously. From then until now I’ve been learning, shooting, traveling, trying new techniques, failing, shooting some more, all in an effort to get better at outdoor and landscape photography. Up until then I was primarily a sports photographer that dabbled in landscapes. I found myself facing a few difficult changes in my life that summer. As hard as those changes were, there was good that came of them, as the door to pursuing photography more seriously opened and I made the decision to walk through.

That first time I visited Hartford Beach State Park, I didn’t know what to expect. I hadn’t really been in northeast South Dakota very much before then. I didn’t realize how much unique beauty, rich history and simple peacefulness awaited me at the park. Hartford Beach is basically a picturesque portion of Big Stone Lake’s shore. Big Stone Lake is a long and narrow body of water that is situated in what is called the River Warren Valley, a prehistoric river created from large volumes of melting glacier water. As time moved on, Native American peoples called the region home. Visitors can see burial mounds and other markings that remain along the trails of the park to this day. In the time of the Civil War, a trading post was started that operated for ten years. The building is still intact along the park’s eastern boundary, with hiking trails leading away into the woods below.

For a photographer, the park is full of variety and many opportunities to find unique images. It is easy to find wildflowers in the warm months of the years on the high hillsides, and it is just as easy to lose yourself in a heavily wooded trail on the lower hills along spring-fed streams leading to the lake. There is a large swimming area for water enthusiasts as well as a fishing dock. It is a particularly beautiful place in the fall when the trees turn to gold and red. When I was first there in 2008, the fishing dock was of the old wooden variety. A storm had just passed and the clouds hung low and flowed into unique shapes and colors as they fled eastward. I spent a lot of time sitting at the end of the fishing dock simply listening to the waves and watching the storm move on while thinking about life and the road ahead of me. I suppose you could say that natural world I looked out on that evening was a mirror of my life at the time as well. Maybe that is one of the reasons I like going back to visit. It offers a time to reflect, a time to take measure of life’s goodness and a time to rediscover an old friend.

Christian Begeman grew up in Isabel and now lives in Sioux Falls. When he’s not working at Midcontinent Communications he is often on the road photographing our prettiest spots around the state. Follow Begeman on his blog. To view Christian’s columns on other South Dakota state parks and recreation areas, visit his state parks page.



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The Cottonwood Slough

By Bernie Hunhoff

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

Marvin and Connie Piotter felt their 400-acre Roberts County farm was unusual when they bought it in the early 1970s, and they later found out why.

“Sometimes I would make a cup of coffee and go out above the lake at 4:30 or 5:00 in the morning and listen to the world wake up,” said Connie. She listened to the songbirds, saw ducks and geese lifting off from their overnight stay and spotted deer as they looked for daytime nesting places. Nature also has a violent side. She once saw a bald eagle lift an adult Canada goose off the lake and fly away with it.

The Piotters’ native grass pasture is on the southeastern border of Lake Bde-Sake (Dakota for”Dirty Water”), but Marvin and Connie eventually learned that the lake has other names. Eons ago, the 11-mile stretch of water was part of Lake Agassiz, the world’s largest glacial lake. Only archeologists and Roberts County residents are likely to know that. Local people call the area Cottonwood Slough or Dry Run.

The lakes eventually drain into Jim Crick below the Piotters’ farm; Jim Crick flows south for a mile and feeds into Lake Traverse, which flows northward into North Dakota and the Red River Valley.”They drink our water in Grand Forks,” said Marvin.

Canadians far to the north might also drink rainwater and snowmelt that begins to collect in the Cottonwood Slough, because the slough constitutes the southern tip of the massive Hudson Bay watershed.

All the rest of South Dakota drains into the Gulf of Mexico, via the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. The two watersheds are separated by one of the North America’s five great continental divides — ranges of hills and mountains that send the continent’s waters to the Pacific, Arctic and Atlantic oceans, and to Hudson Bay and the Gulf of Mexico.

Roberts County citizens are familiar with the geology of the divide, but only a few probably recognized the watershed’s international importance before the National Park Service sent scientists from the University of Colorado to study the site. They concluded that the wetlands were a buffer zone that divided the tall grass prairie from the eastern deciduous forest country.”It is among the top natural areas in this part of the country for concentrating and production of waterfowl,” they concluded,”and one of the best natural riverine wetland complexes remaining…”

Scientists found the rare piping plover, a tiny bird listed on the endangered species list. Further exploration indicated that Native American artifacts and burial sites lay in the hills above the lakes. In 1975 the National Park Service declared the lakes a Natural National Landmark.

The landmarks program identifies unique geological and biological lands owned by either public or private parties. Less than 600 have been found in the entire United States. Cottonwood Slough is one of a dozen such sites in South Dakota. Some others include Sica Hollow, a prairie forest northwest of Sisseton; the Castles, a series of sandstone spires in Harding County; the Fort Randall Eagle Roost, west of Wagner; the Mammoth Site in Hot Springs; and Bijou Hills, north of Platte.

Mike Gallagher, a now-retired NPS staffer who was involved with the National National Landmarks program, said Roberts County farmers and landowners who surround Cottonwood Slough have done an excellent job with the property.”This is a perfect example of what we hoped to achieve. The goal wasn’t to have public ownership of these unique land features, but to work with private owners to preserve and protect the land.”

The Cottonwood Slough begins just east of the little town of Victor, near the North Dakota border, and meanders below farmsteads and cattle pastures before narrowing into the crick and then into Lake Traverse. The Cottonwood valley is about a half-mile wide and constitutes 5,400 acres in total. Its tiny lakes, marshes and potholes are rimmed and intersected with a thick growth of cattails and rushes. The foothills on both sides are thick with cedar, cottonwood, ash and box elder trees.

“The park service just raised our pride in what we already loved,” Connie said.”It should remain wild and natural. I’d hate to see it built up with resorts and lodges.”

Living by the lakes has been entertaining and educational for people like the Piotters.”When we first moved here, I remember watching some young Indian boys playing in the water,” Connie Piotter said.”They would grab onto the gills of these huge carp in the shallow waters, and then they’d ride them a little ways before they’d fall off. It was something to see.”

Several species of fish swim up from the Red River (upriver is south for this country), and they spawn in the Cottonwood Slough.”First come the northerns,” said Marvin.”Then it’s the bullheads and the carp.”

Ducks and geese visit by the thousands in spring and autumn.”It’s not always pleasant to live along the flyway,” Connie said.”The geese have been so thick that they’ve turned the hills white with droppings. We tried to grow sunflowers but the blackbirds just decimated them. There was nothing left to harvest.”

Eagles, rarely seen in Roberts County 30 years ago, are now common. A few are starting to nest in the trees. They are a noble sight, but pesty.”We had cows calving near the slough, and the eagles would fly down and eat the afterbirth when a cow had her calf,” Marvin said.”That would cause the cows to go nuts, but the eagles never did bother the calves.”‘

The Piotters graciously share the hills and lakes with others who show an interest. In fact, they’ve signed an agreement with the National Park Service”to protect, use and manage the site in a manner which prevents the destruction or deterioration of its nationally significant problems in managing the area.”

The Piotters raised four daughters and two sons on their Roberts County land, and both of the sons — Matt and Daniel — farm with them.”We want to preserve it for them and for our grandchildren and beyond,” Connie says.”We always knew it was special.”

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Small Town Saturday Nights

By Katie Hunhoff

Music has been connecting people since a caveman made a flute some 50,000 years ago. Small towns in South Dakota are using the power of music to strengthen community ties.

In the 1990s the small town of Peever in northeast South Dakota badly needed to replace their community center. The old hall held only 70 people and was falling apart. But Peever is not a wealthy town. The streets are gravel, the buildings worn and most of the citizens are retired or wage-earners.

But Peever’s people know how to sing and strum the guitar, so monthly jamborees were held to raise money. “I’d say per capita Roberts County has more musicians than most any place in the country,” Don Backman, a retired dairy farmer told us awhile back. The musicians donated their time and a freewill donation was taken at the door. “We just asked people to give what they wanted,” Backman said. “If they were really short, they could take a little out.” Despite the generous spirit of the jam organizers, they had enough money for a new hall within a few years.

Soon the Glacial Lakes towns of Revillo, South Shore and Roslyn started similar events to raise money. South Shore donated jamboree earnings to the Salvation Army after the organization helped their town following a wind storm. Revillo raised enough for a new community center. And in the 1990s South Shore hosted country music concerts to restore Punished Woman’s Lake.

Peever, after 16 years, stopped their jamborees in the spring of 2010, but Wilmot picked up where they left off and began the Whetstone Jamboree. Several of the Peever musicians show up to carry on the tradition. Edean Landmark was a favorite musician at Peever and now his daughter, Wendy Landmark, is a regular at the jamboree circuit, including the new one in Wilmot. “What’s fun about it is that it is a family show and the strong community involvement. People come from miles away to enjoy our local musicians. There is a lot of local talent.” Wendy grew up singing country music in Peever, but now sings the blues with the Watertown band “The Bluezz’l Do.”

A typical jamboree starts with a featured band. After the band plays a few numbers, it turns into a house band and performers take turns doing two songs each. Young, old, experienced and inexperienced musicians are all welcome to take the stage

“I like the opportunity it gives young people to get that feel for performing in front of an audience as well as with a backup band,” says Cheryl Rondeau-Basset, an organizer of the Whetstone Jamboree.”I hope it encourages young people to be interested in music. Music is something you can enjoy all your life.”

Musicians interested in performing should arrive 30 minutes early to sign up. The audience is treated to coffee, snacks, door prizes and a few jokes from the announcer.

The same spirit of sharing music and bringing people together inspired similar gatherings in two small Black Hills towns. Weekly bluegrass jams in Rochford and Rockerville are laid back rituals with no admission fees. Any musician can join, but only with an acoustic instrument.

“They just enjoy each other, teach each other and share each others’ music,” says Betsy Harn, owner of the Moonshine Gulch Saloon in Rochford.

In southeast South Dakota, Doug and Judi Sharples have transformed Gayville’s old grocery store into a little Branson. The Saturday night entertainers — which often include the popular Poker Alice Band and the McNeills from Springfield — especially focus on old time, folk and country music.


Glacial Lakes Jamborees

Roslyn: First full weekend of the month on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. Roslyn Creamery Company.

Revillo: Third Sunday of the month. Community Center.

South Shore: Fourth Saturday of the month. Community Center.

Wilmot (Whetstone Jamboree): Second Saturday of January, April, July, October and December in 2012. Community Center.

Black Hills Jams

Rochford: Every Sunday afternoon at 3 p.m., Moonshine Gulch Saloon.

Rockerville: Bluegrass jam every Thursday at 7 p.m., Gaslight Saloon.

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Pieville, South Dakota

By Ruth Steil

Dr. Seuss has Whoville. Casey has Mudville. And Peever had Pieville, thanks to Char’s Cafe. Char Jarman and her husband, Allen, opened the place in 1977 with the help of their 13-year-old twins, the youngest of eight. “They finished growing up at the cafe and helping and hating every minute,” Char said with a chuckle when we visited her two years ago.

Char baked a few fresh pies every day, but she outdid herself on Wednesdays when a dozen or more would go in the oven. Somehow, it became a habit for her and the community. “I never did anything to promote it,” she said, with a bit of wonderment. “It just happened.” After South Dakota Magazine featured Pie Day, the weekly tradition grew even more.

The last time we were there on a Wednesday, the pie menu (nothing but a handwritten scrap of paper) listed apple, blueberry, sour cream raisin, pecan, pumpkin, coconut cream and cherry. “In the winter we’ll only use seven or eight pies,” she said. “But in the summer we’ll need 16 because the cafe will fill up in the afternoon.”

For a town of 235, that’s a lot of fruit and sugar. Many customers had a slice with their lunch and took one or two more “to go.”

Char wouldn’t divulge her piecrust recipe. She said it wasn’t a secret, but she didn’t want anyone to say it didn’t turn out for them. “I just make it the way I make it,” she said. “I use all-purpose shortening, flour and water.”

For more than 30 years, she and Allen served three meals a day to friends and neighbors. At the break of day, Char started the pies and the daily specials. Allen peeled carrots and potatoes. Char called it “chopping and dropping,” a term she picked up from her favorite TV chef, Rachel Ray.

Char Jarman and Char Almanza, in Char’s Cafe at Peever, South Dakota.

Over 40 people worked for the Jarmans through the years, and Char remembered them all. She made a list of their names for the cafe’s 30th anniversary in 2008. Ellie Landmark had been a cook and waitress for 28 years.

Char’s is a long, narrow cafe in the style of old-time main street businesses. The building dates to 1902, and as with all old buildings, it needs constant attention. “If it wasn’t for my husband, there wouldn’t be a Char’s Cafe,” she said.

The cafe’s bright, over-stuffed green booths provided homey seating for coffee drinkers and diners. A high, pressed-tin ceiling harkens back to the building’s early days.

Several shelves of groceries — cans, boxes and jars — line the cafe’s north wall, behind a long wood bar. The Jarmans stocked stocking groceries when the town’s store closed. Old photographs of Peever hang on the cafe’s south wall. They show farmers stacking hay and threshing, and a scene from a local fire.

Char’s Cafe was as much a fixture of the little Roberts County community as the town water tower. So you can imagine the townspeople’s distress when the cafe succumed to fire in 2011. Thankfully, we still have Char’s mouthwatering recipe for Sour Cream Raisin Pie.

Char Jarman’s Sour Cream Raisin Pie

Ingredients:
1 cup raisins
2 1/2 cups cultured buttermilk
3 egg yolks, reserving whites for meringue
3/4 cup sugar, for filling
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
3 tablespoons flour
Pinch of salt
2 tablespoons butter (heaping)
1/3 cup sugar, for meringue
Baked pie shell

Cover raisins with water and simmer in a heavy saucepan until water is almost boiled down and raisins are tender. Mix buttermilk, egg yolks, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, flour and salt with wire whip in separate bowl, then add to raisins. Continue to cook and stir with wooden spoon until well thickened. Add butter. pour into pie shell.

Whip egg whites until fluffy then add sugar. Finish beating until stiff peaks form. Arrange on top of pie, touching edges of crust all around. Bake until golden brown in a 350 degree oven.

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The Muskegon Disaster

Remembering a deadly storm on Big Stone Lake

By John Andrews

The Muskegon was hailed as the finest boat ever on Big Stone Lake in 1909.

Just beyond the South Dakota border in Ortonville, Minn., lies a 100-year-old boat in such fine shape it almost begs for an outing on Big Stone Lake. But 94 years ago, that boat sat battered on the lake, the victim of the worst nautical tragedy in the history of the state.

Nobody paid much attention that infamous day — July 10, 1917 — as the skies grew darker around Big Stone Lake in extreme northeast South Dakota. The nine people who stepped aboard The Muskegon, an excursion boat docked at Hartford Beach, were probably thinking mostly of fun and relaxation. Summertime meant the Chautauqua season was in full swing, and people flocked to see the performances. To transport freight and keep up with the people wanting to attend the Chautauqua, The Muskegon and other boats on Big Stone Lake were busy. Captain Peter Luff of The Muskegon had set off toward the sister cities of Big Stone City and Ortonville, on his second trip of the day.

Rain began to fall as the boat approached the Brick House, about seven miles north of the cities. The crew closed the windows and pulled the side curtains in the back of the boat. Passengers noticed an ominous black ball forming in the sky, and the wind grew stronger. Rain pelted the boat, while wind gusts from the quickly forming tornado created massive waves. As The Muskegon neared Skeleton Island, the wind ripped the flag from the front of the boat and stuck it deep into the island’s rocks.

Eleven-year-old David Mengelt, a passenger on the boat, said the twister appeared to suck the water out of the lake. Crew member Ole Tranberg agreed.”It seemed as if there were two storms and they met right where we were,” he recalled.”On one side it seemed as if the water was all swept away, while on the other side of the boat the water seemed to come at us like a solid wall.” Captain Luff tried to get the boat to shore, but he was no match for the powerful wind and water. The Muskegon capsized.

When The Muskegon first arrived on Big Stone Lake eight years earlier, a local newspaper called it”the handsomest boat ever on Big Stone Lake.” It was built by Minneapolis millionaire Tom Shevlin and owned by M.W. Savage, who used it mostly as a pleasure boat on Lake Minnetonka. Captain Luff, co-owner of the North Star Boat Line with Fred Sanburn, bought it on a trip to Minneapolis in 1909.

It had a 60-foot hull, an 11-foot beam, a 75-horsepower steam engine and a capacity of 150. It was fully cabined and was finished in handsome mahogany and lush upholstery. The Ortonville Herald Star said the purchase”represents an investment that demonstrated the faith that Messrs Sanburn and Luff have in the lake business.” Now, the finest boat to ever cruise Big Stone’s waters was being torn apart.

After The Muskegon turned over, Tranberg crawled on top of the boat. He saw Captain Luff and passenger Albert Nelson in the water. He called for them to follow him to shore.”I grabbed Albert and pulled him toward the boat but the waves tore him from me,” Tranberg remembered.”Again I got hold of him only to meet with the same success. I turned around to look for Pete but he was not in sight. Albert seemed to have no strength with which to help himself and he disappeared.”

Tranberg returned to the boat and saw Mengelt through a window. After several tries, Tranberg finally pulled the unresponsive boy from the wreckage.”At first there seemed to be no life, but after working with him for several minutes he became conscious,” Tranberg said.”I told him to hold onto the boat and I grabbed a couple of life preservers. One of these I put on the boy and told him to hold onto the boat, that I was going to start for shore and if I got there would return to him; if not some one else would come and get him. I started for shore. At first I could not see land but after being in the water for some time sighted it and after swimming for what seemed to be an hour, I landed on Manhattan Island. Going to Cap Day’s house, I notified the authorities at Ortonville. Then I got a launch and returned for the boy, who was badly chilled from exposure.”

Soon rescue boats from Ortonville arrived. They pulled two bodies from the cabin, but persistent rain and wind made further recovery efforts impossible. The next day about 50 volunteers hauled The Muskegon to shore. They searched the hull for bodies, but found none. Volunteers continued the search on Thursday. By 5:30 p.m., all the bodies had been found. The story written for the July 12 issue of the Ortonville Journal reported the bodies were still missing, but shortly before it went to press editors squeezed in an update informing readers of the news.

Among the dead were Albert Nelson; Patrick Weatherly, a boy from Ortonville; Isabelle Larson, of Ortonville; Larson’s two nieces, Bessie and Hazel Erickson, of Audubon, Minn.; Barney Sweeney, a local barber; and Captain Luff. When searchers found Luff’s body his pockets were full of silver dollars he had collected from the passengers.

After the 1917 disaster, The Muskegon was towed ashore, restored and returned to the lake. Today it is dry-docked near the Big Stone County Museum in Ortonville.

There had been other shipwrecks on the 26-mile-long lake that separates northeastern South Dakota from western Minnesota, but none as devastating as The Muskegon‘s demise. The event had an impact on C.F. Foster, who wrote a song memorializing the boat shortly after the wreck:

Out from the port of Hartford
Down past Sylvan Beach
Gliding across the water
Ortonville for to reach
Born by the gentle breezes
Caught in that terrible gale
Cometh a voice of mourning
A sad and mournful wale
Staunch was that boat Muskegon
Precious the freight she bore
Gaily she loosed the anchor
Less than an hour before
Gaily she swept the harbor
Joyful she rang her bell
Little thought we of sunset
It was told so sad and nil
Oh! ‘Twas the cry of children
Weeping for father gone
Children so gay in the morning
Fatherless at the set of sun
Mothers for husbands weeping
Brothers also likewise
Those were the ties severed
In those seven people’s lives
Lost on this boat Muskegon
Sinking to rise no more
Number of death seven people
Who failed to reach the shore.

Despite the finality of Foster’s song, The Muskegon did rise again. After the wreck the boat was towed to a livery at Big Stone City, where it remained in storage for many years. In October 1927, Frank Douthitt, owner of the Big Stone Canning Company, added The Muskegon to his fleet of boats. The Big Stone Headlight reported that two locals — Joe Creese and Jack Luff — planned to spend the winter reconditioning the boat.”The Muskegon has been in storage for a number of years but is in pretty good shape, and when Joe gets through with her, she will be like new,” the paper said.

Under Creese’s guidance, workers spent the next two years rebuilding The Muskegon. They removed the old steam engine and lowered the deck to make it more stable. Renamed The Golden Bantam, it was officially christened and launched from the Creese Boat Yard in June 1930.

The Golden Bantam was roughly the same size as The Muskegon and was “staunchly built and finely tuned in every respect,” according to the Big Stone Headlight. Finished in mahogany and oak, it boasted electric lights and three compartments with velvet seats that could be turned into bunks.”Every convenience that can be found at home is present on the craft,” the Headlight said, including toilets, a stove, cupboards and a refrigerator. Appropriately, the paper called it the”finest craft ever seen” on Big Stone Lake. Not everyone could enjoy The Golden Bantam‘s amenities, though. The boat was for Douthitt’s private use only.

The Golden Bantam cruised Big Stone Lake for the next 30 years. In 1960, the boat was placed in dry-dock north of Big Stone City and was used as a lake cabin. In 1985, it was donated to the Big Stone County Historical Society and Museum, which already had a significant exhibit of Muskegon photos, artifacts and old news articles.

Today the boat is docked outside the museum, a scant few hundred yards from the lake. Freshly painted and well preserved, it looks as seaworthy as it did that fateful day in 1917.

EDITOR’S NOTE — This story is revised from the May/June 2008 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order this back issue or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.