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Memories Atop Rose Hill

By Paul Higbee

It’s a steady climb, more than half a mile, from downtown Spearfish to the top of Rose Hill. I make the walk now and then for exercise. One day I got up there just as the sun broke through clouds, illuminating Lookout Mountain to the northeast in a shaft of light. To the west, Crow Peak loomed against spectacular, purplish cloud formations, and to the south Spearfish Canyon’s wide mouth gaped.

Had someone built a luxury hotel atop Rose Hill, those views alone would justify tacking $50 a night to room charges. Home lots up here? They’d be as expensive as any in the Black Hills and they’d all sell, even in this economy. But long ago Spearfish put Rose Hill to another use. Since November 1876, this has been the town’s cemetery.

For a long time I thought it unbelievably ironic that the first person buried here, a Mr. Blizzard, actually died in a blizzard. It reminded me of the stale, dark joke about how strange it was that Lou Gehrig died of the very disease that bore his name.

As readers swifter on the uptake than I may have guessed, this is what happened: a stranger carrying no identification perished in a snowstorm near Spearfish. The tombstone bore witness to the manner and date of his death. Local folks called the unfortunate drifter Levi Blizzard, which leads me to believe he was wearing Levi Strauss denim, produced beginning in 1873.

Levi Blizzard is one of only a few strangers buried at Rose Hill. You know a community is your hometown when you can’t walk 50 steps through the cemetery without anecdotes and emotions of every variety flooding your mind. My teachers, the first two businessmen who offered me employment, and the minister at my wedding are interred here. So are schoolmates who died young and tragically, kids I thought I could never possibly forget but almost have.

You find yourself doing a lot of math in your local cemetery, often with surprising results. I happened upon the graves to two men I thought were old codgers when I was a teenager and discovered each was in his 50s during those years — which gives me a clear idea of how teens view me today. On the other hand, I used to enjoy talking to a gentleman who lived on my street. A few years ago, I heard a story I knew he’d enjoy but I never got around to calling him. At Rose Hill I learned he died in 1999 — and that he would’ve turned 100 in 2011. He was my peer, never an old man, and I still can’t figure out how it’s been more than a decade since we spoke.

You know a community is your hometown when you can’t walk 50 steps through the cemetery without anecdotes and emotions of every variety flooding your mind.

I’m not implying anything spooky or otherworldly when I say I hear voices in the older cemetery sections. It’s just that these are the graves of historical personalities I’ve studied in depth the past couple decades, and I know their written words and adventures well. Daniel Toomey (1852-1941), a Brooklyn-born buffalo hunter, stood on this very hill in May 1876 and described what he saw below as”a pretty picture,” with”no sign of settlement, only a light fringe of oaks, ash, and elm with a few cottonwoods bordering the stream.” Toomey’s mortal remains now lie here, as do those of Irish-born Robert Evans (1840-1929), who wrote of traveling stealthily across Montana in”the year Custer was killed and we were continually looking for trouble.” Evans transformed the view Toomey described, turning Spearfish into a garden by digging a web of irrigation channels that still carry water today.

Rose Hill is the final resting place for Mary Kercheval (1833-1921), who historians believe was George Custer’s personal cook when he rode to Dakota, and for Harvey Fellows (1845-1929), the classically stoic stagecoach driver renowned throughout the West for adeptly handling the steepest trail grades and never injuring a passenger.

My favorite Rose Hill personality, though, is Fayette Cook (1850-1922). He stepped off a stagecoach in Spearfish in 1885, charged with building a viable institution of higher learning in a rough and tumble mining district. Within hours the Minnesotan feared school boosters had bamboozled him into coming west. Cook found the only campus structure to be”the poorest excuse for a schoolhouse, dugouts or sod houses excepted, that I ever saw. It was evidently planned, if indeed there ever was a plan, by someone quite unfamiliar with school architecture, but having some knowledge of stampmills.”

Still, Cook didn’t board the next stagecoach and return east. He went to work building a school that today is the state’s third largest university, and lived in Spearfish the rest of his life. Toomey, Evans, Kercheval and Fellows –all drifters and professional itinerants in one way or another — obviously stayed, too. Standing atop Rose Hill, taking in the vistas, you don’t have to wonder why.

Editor’s Note: Paul Higbee has written regularly for South Dakota Magazine since 1991, serving as the Black Hills correspondent. This column appeared in our September/October 2010 issue. To order a copy or to subscribe, call us at 800-456-5117.

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Can Tea Cure Health Care?

By Cory Allen Heidelberger

My Tea Party neighbors here in Spearfish hosted a Legislative candidates forum last night. In a strange combination of masochism and commitment to educating the public (hmm… redundant?), I grabbed my computer and camera and biked down to Hudson Hall to record the show.

No fireworks ensued. None of the Northern Hills Patriots stood up to raise real town-hall Cain the way Tea Partiers did at town halls in the summer of 2009, when conservatives were freaking out over looming federal health care reform.

The local Tea Partiers are still bent all out of shape over the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. In the response to the very first question, candidate Gary Coe from Lead expressed his displeasure with the two bills the South Dakota Legislature passed last year to comply what he and every Tea Partier in the audience calls ObamaCare.

Incumbent Sen. Tom Nelson of Lead and Rep. Fred Romkema of Spearfish, along with challenger John Teupel of Spearfish, tried to defuse the anger about South Dakota’s ObamaCare legislation. They said 2011’s Senate Bills 38 and 43 simply brought us into minimal compliance with federal law so we could keep receiving funding for necessary health care programs.

But the most useful answer came from Rep. Romkema. Echoing a response he offered on health care policy at a January cracker barrel in Spearfish, Rep. Romkema said that even if ObamaCare is bad, we face a crisis that requires fixing. He said we spend far more per capita on health care than any other nation, but we don’t enjoy notably better life expectancy or infant mortality (all true!). He cited a Russian expert who notes that the Soviet Union collapsed when the military budget reached 20% of GDP. This expert theorizes that when any sector of a nation’s economy starts gobbling up 20% of GDP, collapse is imminent.

In 2010, U.S. spending on health care was 17.9% of GDP. If ObamaCare doesn’t bring that spending ratio down, or if the Supreme Court overturns it or Tea-minded legislators repeal the law before it gets the chance to bend that curve, we’ll need some other solution to make sure the majority of Americans aren’t one illness or injury away from medical bankruptcy.

Rep. Romkema says he doesn’t know what that solution is. But he’s asking everyone who says we must repeal ObamaCare to tell him their solution.

Last night, I heard no such solution from my Tea Party neighbors. Just as in the town halls of 2009, the Tea Party finds it easier to play to fears and easy slogans–Stop Obama! Stop socialism!–than to craft serious policy alternatives.

The local Tea has some strong flavor, but I’m not convinced it will cure what ails us.

Cory Allen Heidelberger writes the Madville Times political blog. He grew up on the shores of Lake Herman. He studied math and history at SDSU and information systems at DSU, and is currently teaching French at Spearfish High School. A longtime country dweller, Cory is enjoying “urban” living with his family in Spearfish.

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Some Cells Will Be Filled

By Cory Allen Heidelberger

I attended a Republican candidates forum here in Spearfish the other night. (There are no Democrats running, so to get my political fix, I have to hang out with the other side.) One of the questions for our State Senate candidates was whether South Dakota has too many people in prison and, if so, what would the candidates do to reduce the prison population. Mildly ominous chuckles and suggestions rolled through the audience before the two candidates took their swing at what they admitted is a somewhat intractable problem. The candidates agree that to reduce our prison population, maybe we need better parenting and education.

This discussion got me thinking about one prisoner making the Lake County jail more crowded this spring. Carl V. Ericsson allegedly drove down from Watertown to Madison one January night and killed Norm Johnson, a man who taught me English at MHS. If anything could get me muttering to my neighbors about frontier justice methods of reducing the prison population, it would be the murder of which Ericsson stands accused.

The 73-year-old Ericsson allegedly shot the 72-year-old Johnson over a grudge from when they were MHS students over 50 years ago. Over fifty years ago. Ericsson and Johnson had lived more than twice as much life as they had when they knew each other in high school. After all that time, to let an adolescent grudge drive you to murder… well, you’d have to be nuts.

Ericsson appears ready to admit exactly that. According to the press, Ericsson’s lawyer has told the judge that Ericsson is ready to plead guilty but mentally ill. If that plea agreement holds, Ericsson will increase the state prison population by one for the rest of his natural days.

Ericsson probably isn’t the kind of prisoner my neighbors at the Spearfish forum had in mind. Asking how we could have kept him out of prison is as futile as asking how we could have saved Norm Johnson’s life. (Despair, if not madness, lies down that road: we’ve lost Norm, and we can’t get him back.) Ericsson’s parenting and schooling were just fine. His brother Dick became a successful attorney and city official in Madison. Carl Ericsson got a college degree, stayed married to one woman for 44 years, and had no criminal record… until one winter day, something cracked.

South Dakota’s prison population and expenditures are growing. I hope our candidates will spend this election year talking about why that’s happening and what we can do to change that. We can keep some prison cells empty by strengthening education, economic opportunities, and other policies to reduce the poverty and despair that drive some people to crime. We can identify offenders who may benefit from alternatives to incarceration. We can raise our kids with patience and love, not fear and hate.

But some people will still go wrong. I do not know what personal gesture or policy action we might have undertaken 5 or 50 years ago to keep Norm Johnson alive and to keep Carl Ericsson stable and out of stripes. No matter how hard we try, some prison cells will still be filled.

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Rockin’ the Spearfish Pavilion

By Paul Higbee

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the July/August 2002 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.

Spearfish singer Larry Bell and the Continentals played the Pavilion before finding success in Denver.

Early rock ‘n’ roll”was a whole new thing,” said Gary Mule Deer.”It was about being defiant, and of course parents hated it.”

Growing up in Spearfish, Mule Deer experienced big-name recording stars up close and loud, and they changed him forever. From about 1957 until 1964, Friday night meant rock ‘n’ roll dances in the city park Pavilion, dances that drew prime acts: the Everly Brothers, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chubby Checker, Buddy Holly’s Crickets, the Ronettes, Seals and Croft and the Ventures.

When Waylon Jennings died, he was recalled almost exclusively as a country act. But there are those in Spearfish who remember him coming to town as part of the Crickets. Glen Campbell became a country icon, but first he rocked the Pavilion as part of the Champs, who hit number one in the national pop charts with”Tequila,” and who also claimed Seals and Croft as members.

“I never could dance, but I sat on the rail listening to some of the most remarkable performers of the time,” said Larry Bell.”And I talked with any of them who would take the time, because they were living the life I wanted. Conway Twitty had a big, big rock ‘n’ roll hit, ‘It’s Only Make Believe,’ and I asked him one night at the Pavilion about the pop music business. He was frank, told me it was full of people who’d screw you any way they could, so he was getting out and going country, which is exactly what he did.” Indeed, Twitty went on to record more than 50 number one country hits.

Spearfish’s Larry Bell in 2002, years after his musical debut at the Pavilion.

Bell never learned to dance, but he did form a rock ‘n’ roll act similar to that of his Pavilion idols, despite Twitty’s warning. Larry Bell and the Continentals played the Pavilion, and later went on to considerable success as a Denver band. Bell also worked on the road for the Everly Brothers, who told him they remembered their Spearfish gigs.

“It seemed like they all remembered Spearfish,” said Mule Deer, whose own Los Angeles-based music career often reunited him with Pavilion performers.”That’s because they’d try to get into town a day early to see Mount Rushmore, and the Black Hills made Spearfish memorable.”

Of course, the musicians themselves made Fridays memorable for their fans. Mule Deer has never forgotten Jerry Lee Lewis playing Spearfish as”Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” dominated the airwaves. Mule Deer and a friend sat outside the Pavilion listening to that song on the radio, then turned the radio off to listen to Lewis playing it live.

Spearfish fans stood respectfully still for the Ventures’ instrumental numbers, and Jerry Lee Lewis said he envied that. But Spearfish responded to Lewis’s music by dancing with all the energy it could muster.

Jerry Sternad of Spearfish booked the rock ‘n’ roll acts. The American Legion post, which was the responsible for the Pavilion and needed to make money there, contracted with him.”How did he do it? I don’t know,” marveled Bell.”But Sternad got people right at the peak of their careers.”

Performers arrived by car — typically”two Cadillacs and a U-Haul,” Mule Deer said. Fans drove in too, from all over the Black Hills and beyond, probably 1,000 to 1,500 on good nights, and maybe 2,000 for the biggest acts. Admission was a couple bucks, but not everyone tried to get in the wood-frame Pavilion. Big screened windows made the music audible for blocks, and lots of couples preferred staying in their parked cars and…well, listening.

It’s hard to beat the creekside city park’s summertime ambiance, with the piney scent of Spearfish Canyon on the wind; it’s those kinds of nights most often recalled decades later. But there were dances in the dead of winter, too.”It took a long time to heat that big building up,” Mule Deer said,”But eventually all the bodies would do it.”

Spearfish musician and teacher Lyle Berry played with a Black Hills group called Lyle, Doug and Paul.

Things sometimes heated up in other ways too, recalled Lyle Berry. He moved to Spearfish as a high school sophomore in 1956. While rock ‘n’ roll hits of years ago are often presented today as tame souvenirs of a more innocent time, in fact there was nothing intended to be tame or innocent about them.”Those dances were known as the place to go to get close to trouble,” Berry recalled.”They weren’t for young kids. Mostly it was a crowd already out of high school.”

There was always a supply of liquor in the parked cars, and Spearfish boys thought of the events as prime opportunities for meeting out-of-town girls. Not infrequently those girls came to Spearfish with possessive boyfriends. Booze and jealousy combined to trigger some nasty fights, a few of which are remembered even now in details which elicit winces. Quick fights of passion usually happened in the Pavilion parking lot. Big ones involving pairs of expert fighters or long scores to settle were moved a couple miles out of town, away from police interruption, after the music.

Berry, who went on to teach high school 31 years in Spearfish and Lead, marveled at how different life was for Black Hills kids then.

“I didn’t have much money, and neither did anyone else I knew,” he said.”It cost just a few dollars to get into the Pavilion, but you’d have to watch your money during the week to make sure you had enough on Friday. Of course, it was the only place to see that kind of entertainment, so it was really something to look forward to.”

Berry was yet another Pavilion kid who grew up to perform both solo and duet acts in Black Hills bars and supper clubs of the 1970s, and as part of a group called Lyle, Doug and Paul. Seeing one of his peers, Larry Bell, succeed on the Pavilion stage made it seem possible Lyle could play, too.

“Those dances were known as the place to go to get close to trouble.”


Friday night dances at the Pavilion, built in the 1920s, were popular long before rock ‘n’ roll. Buddy Meredith and his KOTA Cowboys played there, as did nationally-known and local big bands. Wilber Tretheway from Lead, who later would be credited with saving the Pavilion, led a much-loved big band. Another Lead man, Henry Phillips, brought the Henry Phillips and the Ambassadors band to the Pavilion regularly for ten years in the 1940s and 1950s.

Bob Phillips sometimes carried his father’s drums in and out of the building.”Spearfish really turned out for dad’s dances,” Bob said, just as it did for rock ‘n’ roll. Cowboy and big band dances continued after rock ‘n’ roll continued to share the spotlight.

Just as Spearfish appreciated local country and big band groups, it got behind rock ‘n’ rollers with local or regional connections. Both Mule Deer and Bell said Myron Lee and the Caddies of Sioux Falls were hugely popular in Spearfish.”Myron Lee was a great saxophone man,” Bell said.”At least in our area, he really introduced the sax.”

Like Bell, Mule Deer eventually made it onto the Pavilion stage.”I mentioned how the musicians remembered Spearfish because of the Black Hills,” he said with a grin.”Well, maybe they also remembered because there was always a kid bugging them to sing with them. Me.”

After a Los Angeles music career, Gary Mule Deer once again lives in Spearfish, home of the hall of his youthful dreams.

The kid had talent. He learned guitar by picking his way through Johnny Cash and Crickets numbers. One night after Buddy Holly had died in an Iowa plane crash, the Crickets called Mule Deer up to perform”Summertime Blues” and”Mule Skinner Blues” with them. Mule Deer became friends with the Crickets and the Everly Brothers, both of whom played Spearfish often. He also formed a bond with the Ventures, partly because he ran Spearfish’s Vita movie theater.

“My dad bought the Vita and had me running it in 1963,” Mule Deer said.”The Ventures loved movies, so after their Pavilion shows I’d run a special showing of whatever we had playing, just for them. I’d pay the projectionist a little extra, and we’d even have concessions. It became a Spearfish ritual for them.”

Mule Deer’s rock ‘n’ roll friends encouraged him to polish his music, and before long, he had his own band, the Vaqueros, opening Pavilion shows. By 1965, Mule Deer’s career made Los Angeles his official residence, although more nights than not he was on the road. From time to time Mule Deer crossed paths with Pavilion alumni. When he and Jerry Lee Lewis played Lake Tahoe, Lewis began calling him”Spearfish” in honor of that association. The Ventures, never forgetting the movies and popcorn, set Mule Deer and his California band up with a line of guitars.

Back in Spearfish, the Pavilion turned quiet. After the Beatles toured America in 1964 and 1965, promoters saw the biggest rock ‘n’ roll acts had potential for filling not just dance halls, but arenas and stadiums. Spearfish dances got smaller and smaller, and more modern venues took shape in the area. Within a few years, the Pavilion was more likely to host a Boy Scout jamboree on a Friday night than big-name entertainment.

By the mid-1980s the building had fallen into disrepair, and might have been lost, except that former big band leader Wilbur Tretheway had moved to town and become mayor. He dubbed himself”the begging mayor” because he was prepared to plead for labor and materials to save the building. He succeeded, and today the Pavilion, more sturdy and comfortable than ever, bears the late Tretheway’s name.

No historical marker relates the fact that rock ‘n’ roll Hall of Famers once strutted across the tiny stage. Gary Mule Deer, Larry Bell and Lyle Berry — the Spearfish kids who found rock ‘n’ roll life more than a fleeting fantasy — all live in Spearfish again, though Mule Deer is proof you need to be careful what you wish for. The guy who wanted to travel still spends many nights on the road performing.

But for a few weeks each year he’s home in the Hills, close to the big white building where so much began.

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Tubing Rocks

By Rebecca Johnson

Looking for a unique activity this holiday season? Rock out on the slopes in Lead at Ski Mystic Deer Mountain‘s Zero Gravity Tube Park. You can tube under the stars on Thursdays from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. Local bands perform in the lodge and the music is pumped outdoors.

“We just wanted to created a venue with a lot of action,” says co-owner, Mark Brockman.”When you combine the thrill of tubing in the park at night with live music, it’s just awesome.” The cost is $25 or $20 with college ID. Tonight (Dec 22nd) features Letta People, the rock/blues band from Rapid City, and on the 29th you can hear Don’t Touch Me from Spearfish.

The Zero Gravity Tube Park is new this season. Tubing was always a popular attraction at Ski Mystic so Brockman and co-owner Alicia Salas decided to expand to what was formerly a beginner’s ski slope. “It’s probably one of the biggest [tube parks] in the country,” says Brockman.”We have a 1,000 foot tube lift with a 250 foot vertical drop.” The park is also open during normal ski hours from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. And it’s family friendly — children ages three and up are welcome.

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True Heroes and Sort-of Heroes

By Paul Higbee

Black Hills people should make time this Veterans Day weekend to visit the Herbert Littleton monument in Spearfish.

No place tops the Black Hills when it comes to memorializing heroes in granite or bronze: Crazy Horse, Washington, Lincoln and the rest on mountains, and every U. S. president on Rapid City street corners. We even have beautiful monuments for sort-of heroes. A couple for Wild Bill Hickock come to mind.

The Littleton monument honors a true hero, and a local one, at that. One of eight South Dakota Congressional Medal of Honor recipients, Herbert Littleton lived in Spearfish and then Sturgis as a kid. As a young man — still a teenager, in fact — he worked for a Rapid City electrical appliance firm. Littleton joined the Marines just after his 18th birthday and found himself two years later at Chungchan, Korea, in the middle of a hot war. In the dark, early morning hours of April 22, 1951, he threw himself on top a grenade tossed into his company’s shallow foxhole. That fast action cost Littleton his life, and saved the lives of many other Marines.

His heroism is described on a plaque that’s part of the Spearfish monument. When the monument was unveiled, then-governor Bill Janklow said,”People will read it and they’ll say they can’t believe he did that.”

True. Yet what intrigues us about heroism, after we mull it over, is the realization that there’s something in human makeup that makes the ultimate sacrifice possible. It’s been proven again and again on battlefields, and during natural disasters. Lots of people, some among the last anyone would expect, are capable of true heroism.

Strangely, when we use the term”hero” loosely, we’re often talking about actions beyond the capabilities of 99 percent of the population. Like slam-dunking a basketball against defenders who stand seven feet tall, or muscling a football through a wall of 300-pound monster men.

Sort-of heroes typically hit the public consciousness in a blaze of hyped expectation. By contrast, true heroes usually emerge without fanfare. I heard lots of folks sharing stories and observations about Herbert Littleton at the monument unveiling ceremony, but no one claimed to have expected heroism from him, or to have heard anyone predict it. Here was an average-sized kid who played a little high school football at Sturgis, dropped out of school before graduation, joined the Marines in hopes of getting his education back on track, and planned to marry his sweetheart from Idaho. He served as a radio operator in Korea, and minutes before his death was sternly scolded by a lieutenant for gabbing needlessly over the airwaves.

In short, Herbert Littleton was not substantially different from most 20 year olds in 1951, or from the 20 year olds who now cruise the streets he knew in Spearfish, Sturgis and Rapid City.

Knowing Littleton was a normal guy until the last moments of his life somehow enhances his heroism. It might even make us think about our own capabilities differently — and those of contemporary young men and women we know.

The Herbert Littleton monument stands in the Indian Springs section of Spearfish City Park, at the intersection of Canyon and Dakota, under the three flags of the United States, the Marine Corps, and the state of South Dakota.

Paul Higbee has written regularly for South Dakota Magazine since 1991, serving as our Black Hills correspondent. Paul and his wife Janet live in Spearfish. This column originally appeared in the November/December 2000 issue. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.

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Mountain-made Furniture

By Paul Higbee

Greg and Harold Stone in their Rapid City shop where they create over 200 pieces of buffalo leather furniture yearly.


Step inside the Dakota Bison Furniture showroom and you’ll know instantly that you’re not in a generic chain store. The rich buffalo leather scent hints of the wild Black Hills. The sound of workers confirms that the furniture you see was built just a room away. That doesn’t mean the wingback chairs, sofas, love seats, and ottomans all stay in South Dakota. Greg Stone, the third generation of Stones to build furniture in Rapid City, says Black Hills aficionados from coast to coast buy the furniture.”I’d estimate we’ve shipped to 75 percent of the states,” he says.”But we don’t have our furniture in stores anywhere else. It’s like Black Hills Gold jewelry used to be. You can only buy it in the Black Hills.”

And every piece is handcrafted and one-of-a-kind.”Because of patterns in the leather, every piece is different,” notes Harold Stone, Greg’s dad.”Buffalo furniture would be hard to mass produce.”

Only a handful of furniture makers operate in the Hills. Not surprising for a region that has always nurtured individuality, most local builders are known for singular products or niche markets. While Black Hills furniture may be shipped anywhere, like Stone’s products, there’s a market close at hand: people who move to the region not so much for careers as for a Black Hills lifestyle. Furniture can be an expression of that lifestyle.

The first Stone to build furniture in Rapid City was Hans, a Norwegian immigrant who started in 1933.”Furniture building wasn’t something he brought over with him,” says his grandson, Greg.”He got started by doing upholstery work, and it was an evolution from there. When you do upholstery, it’s easy to start taking ideas from the furniture you work with and to develop ideas for building your own things.”

A bedroom set by Perdue Woodworks in Rapid City.

Greg says the basics of sofa or armchair construction are simple. There are mainly four wooden pieces: seat, back, two arms. Of course, cautions Harold, that construction had better be solid.”If you’re shipping it around the country,” Harold says,”and you’re worried the frame might not hold up, you’re in trouble.” After a frame is completed, the builder has decisions to make about springs and foam. Then the real craftsmanship comes into play in working with the surface material.

For more than 60 years the Stones took pride in high quality upholstered furniture with fabric or cow leather surfaces. Then, in the late 1990s, bison rancher Duane Lammers stopped in with some buffalo hide. Could the Stones build him a customized chair with that leather? They did, and while the chair was still in their shop, another customer wanted something similar. The little company was quickly transformed.”It was a nice thing to come along in the twilight of my career,” says Harold with a smile.”I was at the age where most people retire.” Instead he remains part of a production workforce of five, producing what’s been called”instant heirloom furniture.”

These heirlooms should survive a few generations, says Greg. He believes buffalo leather has about twice the durability of cow leather. Customers remark that they find the surfaces soft to the touch, and often they are drawn by the furniture’s oversize design — a Stone trademark.

More than 200 furniture pieces are made annually.”We’re small enough that we often get to know our buyers,” says Greg.”Some of them will come with photos of furniture they like, and ask us to make something like it using buffalo. We’re happy that very few come back to us with complaints. I guess you could say we like meeting our customers, and then not meeting our customers.”

John English makes his own furniture and also teaches others the trade at the Black HIlls School of Woodworking.

There’s not much exposed wood in a Dakota Bison Furniture piece. But an hour north of Rapid City John English creates — and helps others create — furniture that’s all about wood. He is one of South Dakota’s best-known woodworkers, building pieces and explaining exactly how he did so with readers around the world, usually in American Woodworker magazine. He’s authored or contributed to several books. Born and raised in Ireland, English realized his dream of living in the American West with his family. He isn’t fazed by the fact that most quality hardwoods for furniture grow in the eastern United States. English’s friend, Rod Schaeffer, trucks in walnut, cherry, maple, oak, and other varieties from Pennsylvania and English stores them in Spearfish.

“The Black Hills is mostly a softwood region, and that wood is used primarily for building construction,” English says.

To be sure, there are Black Hills woodworkers who build much-loved furniture entirely from Black Hills woods. That includes builders who like a knotty pine look and those who manufacture rustic log pieces. A South Dakota material English thinks deserves more respect than it gets is cottonwood.”Cottonwood has to be dried for five or six years,” English says.”I think it’s gotten a bad reputation because of people who cut it one year and try to build something the next.” Other local woods English likes for accent components in furniture are juniper, diamond willow, and Russian olive.”But you don’t want those woods for the main component, because they aren’t cut straight and won’t stay straight,” he warns.

Some of English’s furniture creations are sold at Gallery 97 in Belle Fourche, located on the ground floor of the old city hall building. Upstairs English runs the Black Hills School of Woodworking, where people make their own high-quality furniture (along with other wood creations).

“Someone walks in with a picture from a magazine, or something they drew on a napkin, and we show them how to use all the tools,” says English.”We put a strong emphasis on hand tools.”

About 40 percent of his visitors are women. End products have included dining room tables, cabinets, tall boys, toy chests, and much more.”Most people do three to five projects, and then they’re weaned, ready to work on their own,” English observes. The very best products may be juried and deemed suitable for display downstairs at Gallery 97.

Eric Shell displays an oak table he designed and created at English’s Belle Fourche school.

That’s what happened to a stunning oak table created by Eric Shell, who lives at Upton in Wyoming’s strip of the Black Hills. The local oak Shell used is spalted. That means the wood began to decay when the tree died, and the slow process of decay resulted in random color streaks.”I like to take structured designs and blend them with natural materials to give my work a contemporary Western flavor,” Shell wrote in a placard displayed with the table.

Natural yet contemporary — if there’s a credo for the Black Hills’ most creative furniture makers, that may be it.†

The bulk of mass-produced furniture Americans buy has traditionally come from the East Coast, where the hardwoods grow. In recent years Chinese products have claimed a big share of the market. A Rapid City company keeping 115 South Dakotans employed in these competitive times is Perdue Woodworks, producing particleboard and medium density fiberboard furniture.”We make competitively-priced bedroom furniture — chests of drawers, night stands, bookcases,” says Richard Perdue. His father, Don, started the operation in Montana in 1970 and moved it to Rapid City in 1987. Last year about 220,000 pieces of furniture were trucked to 3,000 retail outlets.

Dakota Textiles of Sturgis established an unusual market niche and is betting that its high industry standards will keep demand steady. The products: small upholstered sofas, easy chairs and ottomans that accommodate young children. The furniture pieces aren’t toys. They conform to the same construction expectations as their counterparts for adults. Workers with disabilities from Black Hills Special Services Cooperative work alongside non-disabled staff to build, pack, and load three-piece sets for shipping. That production arrangement began in 1987, and since then the furniture has gone to all 50 states and a handful of nations overseas. Much of it goes to day care centers, preschools and pediatric waiting rooms.

Marlene Lawton and Thomas Vaughn put finishing touches on a piece of children’s furniture at Dakota Textiles in Sturgis.

“Right now we have seven fabric colors available,” says production coordinator Taylor Carlson,”and we’re willing to customize colors if someone wants to buy their own fabric.”

While people often call the miniature furniture cute, make no mistake. It’s also Black Hills tough with solid frames of locally harvested pine.”I saw one of our sofas fall off a moving pickup once,” recalls Bob Markve, who set up the production shop in 1987.”It bounced down the highway. We picked it up and the only damage was a little scabbing of the fabric.”

Recently a day care center brought back two Dakota Textile furniture sets for new upholstery after 16 years of daily use. In other words, the toddlers who originally climbed all over these sofas and chairs were off to college or into careers by the time the furniture started looking worn.”We rehabbed it for free,” says Carlson.

Good for another generation.†

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the March/April 2010 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.

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Spinoffs from Sturgis

By Paul Higbee

The rumble of motorcyclists attracted by the Sturgis Rally fades with the pages of the calendar. But listen carefully and you may hear another motorcycling sound across South Dakota: the year-around hum of manufacturing, engineering research, and bike adaptations.

No one says the motorcycle industry is recession proof. A motorcycle is a luxury purchase for most buyers, but good bikes generally hold their value over time and are smart investments. Also there are high-end bike collectors, both in the United States and abroad, for whom the current recession is mostly rumor, and whose latest two-wheel purchase exceeded what most of us spent for our homes. Some South Dakota manufacturers have grown about as fast as companies could ever hope in recent years, and if sales slowed during the economic downturn of 2008 and 2009, it felt like a mere bump in the track.

Company leaders say there’s an advantage in basing a motorcycle company in South Dakota. It’s a place bikers warmly associate with spectacular rides, freedom, annual reunions, and residents who are anything but buttoned-down. Plenty of industry leaders are transplants that seem to understand South Dakota’s mystique better than its natives do. Something else — base your company in South Dakota and lots of customers will stop every August for face-to-face hellos and consultations.

So get your motor running, head out on the highway, and meet some people who make biking a 12-month enterprise in South Dakota.

Brian Klock spent 15 years building a Mitchell bike business called Klock Werks. His bikes began to set records at Bonneville after he designed a new windshield during a Discovery Channel Build-Off contest.

Mitchell

How do you set a world’s speed record on Utah’s Bonneville salt flats? You need the right engine, the right rider, and as Brian Klock learned to his great benefit, you need the right windshield.

Over the past 17 years, Klock built up Klock Werks, a company that earned a great reputation producing parts for customizing bikes. Fenders, handlebars, gauges, exhaust systems — about 350 parts in all — are shipped everywhere, mostly with pre-drilled holes so buyers can build or rebuild their bikes themselves. Klock Werks won a loyal customer base, especially among Harley-Davidson owners who ride baggers. Baggers are long distance bikes with compartments, or bags, for stowing travel gear. Klock Werks products told the biker world that baggers could be stylish.

But could a bagger go fast?

Brian and Laura Klock

When the Discovery Channel invited Klock to participate in a biker build-off a few years ago, he decided to create the WFB (Way Fast Bagger). Part of his design was a new windshield. The standard issue windshield on this Harley bike, he discovered, moved air so that the bike’s front end actually rose a bit at high speeds. The lift slowed the bike and resulted in less stability and even a wobble. Klock’s new windshield, now sold as the Flare, directed the wind downward — a plus for rider comfort, safety, and speed. Klock won the build-off and took the bike to Bonneville in 2006.

He recruited a highly trusted rider, Laura Ellifson, for the salt flats time trials. A year later she and Klock were married.

Laura hit 147 miles per hour, a record for her type of machine, in land speed racing at Bonneville in 2006. The WFB name stuck, only now the initials stood for World’s Fastest Bagger. Laura broke her own record at Bonneville in 2007 and again in 2008 when she was clocked at 153.593 mph. She believes that unofficially she has reached 160 mph.

What’s it like to fly like that across the salt on two wheels?

“You learn to challenge yourself and your machine, and you learn to handle your fears,” Laura says.”You look straight ahead, pick a spot and keep focused on it, and you don’t look down at the track because that can be intimidating. In this kind of racing you hold your speed over the course of a measured mile, so it’s different than drag racing where you hit your speed and then back off.”

She attracted lots of admirers, some of whom have her posters tacked to their garage walls, and she’s in demand as a speaker. But Laura is not the hard-driven competitor some of her fans might guess. What she loves about salt flats racing is the comradery and the chance to showcase Klock Werks innovations (however, Laura does take great pride in the fact that she and her bike racing teenage daughters, Erika and Karlee, were the first mother and daughters trio to simultaneously hold records at Bonneville).

Brian and Laura Klock first met at Bonneville, where Laura’s daughters Erika and Karlee also hold records.

Showcasing the Flare windshield’s attributes at Bonneville was a big step for Klock Werks. The windshield was perfected at the A2 Wind Tunnel in North Carolina and is now the company’s best selling product. It deserves much of the credit for the way Klock Werks grew in recent years from five employees to 20.

“It costs under $200, takes just a few minutes to install, and it really improves a ride,” says Makel Juarez on the sales floor in Mitchell.

Sturgis

If you own a pre-1930 Harley Davidson, there are two things you should know. First your source for parts is Competition Distributing of Sturgis, because no one else in the world builds such an extensive line of Harley components for 1905 through 1929 models. There are 1,620 parts available, most for Harleys, and some for other vintage bikes as well.

Second you should know there are more people like you than you might guess. Competition Distributing has a customer base of 14,000. Seventy-five percent of those buyers are European. Some days 150 parts shipments leave the shop on Lazelle Street in Sturgis. That’s where”seven workers do the work of 14,” says Lonnie Isam, company owner.

Isam notes a key difference between motorcycle collectors and people who collect cars.”Motorcyclists love their engines, just the opposite of lots of car collectors who tend to love the car’s body,” he says.”So with these bikes we start out with lots of motors and not so many chassis.”

If there’s a look that distinguishes pioneer bikes, it’s the box-shaped flat gas tanks. The very first, not surprisingly, resembled bicycles with motors attached, because that’s exactly what they were. But the machines soon acquired identities completely separate from bicycles.

“The engineering is so obvious on these early bikes, and I’ve learned to respect the way the engineering evolved quickly, especially from 1905 to 1920,” Isam says.”We rebuild complete bikes here a few times each year, and we go through the exact process that the first bike builders did.”

He never forgets the historical significance of his work.”These motorcycles,” he says,”are our thoroughbreds, our roots.”

Isam grew up riding motorcycles in and around Seattle, then owned a Harley-Davidson dealership in Houston. In the 1970s, he says,”Harley-Davidson wasn’t cool, was having some labor problems, and you could pick up a dealership for just about nothing.” Isam and his wife, Marianne, ran the Houston shop for 34 years and at the same time were buying up struggling tool and dye companies there.”So I had equipment to make bike parts,” Isam recalls. If he made one part, he discovered, it made sense to make additional pieces as well. Sooner or later someone would need them.

Like so many others in the bike industry, Isam came to know the Black Hills through the rally and eventually bought property there. After the Isams sold their Houston dealership in 1999, they began thinking of a life in South Dakota. It was the right move.”In Sturgis,” Isam says,”I’ve forgotten what stress is.” He’s a new South Dakotan loyal to his adopted state–when he subcontracts work, he looks to Black Hills manufacturers and estimates that 80 percent of his company’s revenue remains in South Dakota.

It’s somehow appropriate that Carl Herman Lang’s 1905 Harley Davidson sits in this shop that’s dedicated to the integrity of vintage Harleys. Lang was an early Harley-Davidson investor, patent holder, and the very first dealer. It’s believed the company turned out five bikes in 1905–this one and only four others. If there’s a Rosetta Stone in the Harley world, this is it.

Spearfish

Ken Hines relocated from South Carolina to Spearfish to become president and CEO of Lehman Trikes, which bills itself as”leader of the three world.” A former Blue Angels pilot, Hines now enjoys more leisurely motorcycle rides.

“I only rode 900 miles this past weekend,” he laughs.”If you’re in the motorcycle industry and you find yourself in the northern Black Hills, what could be better?”

His company originated in Canada in 1985 and named Spearfish its United States assembly and distribution center in 2004. Initially there were four Spearfish employees, but seven years later more than 130 workers are spread throughout four buildings.

“We take a partially assembled two-wheel motorcycle, add a wider differential that will accept two rear wheels, and then we add those wheels,” explains Paul Pankonin, operations manager.”And the framework gets a new body and paint.”

Ken Hines moved to Spearfish to become President and CEO of Lehman Trikes, but soon fell in love with the Northern Hills and the great biking routes. Lehman Trikes were designed for safety in the 1980s.

The Lehman story began in the early 1980s. Linda Lehman told her husband, John, that she wasn’t comfortable with their child riding on the back of a two-wheel bike. So for safety John created a three-wheel motorcycle. The customized machine won Linda’s appreciation and lots of attention wherever the family traveled. The Lehmans had struck gold and decided to mass-produce trikes, originally at Westlock, Alberta.

Today in Spearfish there are two assembly lines in a thoroughly modern, beautifully lit, and well-ventilated plant. Product demand keeps day and night shifts busy. One line culminates in a trike built for Harley-Davidson as a Harley product, and the other line turns out Lehman’s own products. About 130 dealers handle Lehman Trikes, across North America and Europe, and in Japan. Dealers who want Lehman kits for assembly in their own shops are invited to Spearfish for a four-day training session. Dealers are also invited to Spearfish for the rally each year, and can use the Lehman parking lot adjacent to Interstate 90 for demo rides and sales.”We open the factory for tours during rally week, too, but we never sell directly to the public,” Hines says.”Only through our dealers.”

It’s not only rally traffic and great Black Hills rides that have Hines singing South Dakota’s praises.”We love our workforce here,” he says,”and this is a state where the governor will come and visit for half an hour, and he knows your name and all about your business.”

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

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Finding Crow Peak

By Rebecca Johnson

The Black Hills of South Dakota are a hiker’s dream — as long as you can find your trailhead. My husband and I learned this lesson on our first visit to Crow Peak last summer. We got up early feeling optimistic about our day. We’d hike the trail near Spearfish in the morning and then have the afternoon to do whatever we wanted, maybe even hike Harney Peak if we felt ambitious.

Google Maps had driving directions, but we found a hiker’s blog that gave the gps coordinates of Crow Peak.”What a great idea,” we thought and entered them into the Garmin. Do not try this! Our navigator took us on a winding trip through gravel logging roads, continually shouting”recalculating.” We soon realized it was trying to get us to the actual peak and not the trail. Even worse — we hadn’t realized we were nearly out of gas.

We reset our destination point as our hotel, but the Garmin insisted we were not even on a road. Resigned to the fact that we had been led astray, we turned it off and used our brains to get us back to Spearfish — placing bets on whether we would run out of gas. Luckily we didn’t.

We found the trailhead three hours later than planned and it was totally worth the hassle. The hike was beautiful and the view at the top was amazing!

Do not let my story discourage you. The Crow Peak trailhead is actually easy to find — take Hillsview Road from Main Street in Spearfish and head west. From there, take Forest Service Road 214 approximately 7 miles southwest of Spearfish. There is a small parking area. No sign is immediately visible but a small green gate opens to the trail. I encourage you to give it a try!