Tag: sully county

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Welcome to Agar

By Chad Coppess

Ted Asmussen and Lew Robbenholt enjoy reminisching about Agar and Ted’s great-grandfather W.J. Asmussen.

Agar is small, even by South Dakota standards, but the Sully County town in the middle of wheat country thrives. Insurance adjuster Lew Robbennolt, who works inside a former grocery store on Ash Street/Agar Road — the town’s de facto main street — thinks he knows why.”Number one is the soils are really good for growing,” he says.”Number two is transportation, which was the railroad and is now Highway 83. Number three is stubborn, tenacious people.”

Agar was established in 1910 by Charles H. Agar, who also founded Onida, the Sully County seat 10 miles to the south on Highway 83. Although Agar’s population peaked at around 200 people in the 1920s and 1930s, agricultural roots and a love for sports have kept the town viable.”Basketball wasn’t a sport in Agar, it was a religion,” Robbennolt laughs, even though it’s a legendary softball tournament that still comes up in conversation.

Fernando Valenzuela lent his name to the annual invitational”Fernando” tournament in Agar, unbeknownst to the Los Angeles Dodgers pitching phenom of the early 1980s. The Fernando was Agar’s biggest summer event from 1980 to 2000, according to Jay Mikkelsen. The weekend included a pig roast, car raffle and a”wild and wooly” street dance. As many as 14 teams would play in the tournament with spectators parked around the field.”Lots of windshields got broken,” Mikkelsen admitted. Eventually the players and organizers got older, and the tournament faded into legend.

Visitors to Agar today will find two restaurants in a town that once boasted two implement dealerships, two lumberyards and a motel.

Connie and Jay Mikkelsen serve comfort food at Millie’s Diner on Connie’s grandfather Mike Smith’s homestead.

The Bunkhouse Bar came into being when a cafe that was across the street burned down during harvest season. Farmer Stan Asmussen had a bunkhouse for harvest hands that needed feeding, so he quickly converted it into a cafe and bar, which has survived ever since. Laynee Brandt is the current owner, but she wasn’t even born when the Brandt family bought the Bunkhouse in 1982. Her mother Tamie does most of the cooking. Saturday night Mexican food specials bring customers from as far away as Pierre.

Newer to Agar is Millie’s Diner, opened in 2020 by Connie and Jay Mikkelsen just six weeks before COVID shut them down for a stretch. A rural post office known as Milford, which existed before Agar’s founding, inspired the diner’s name. The dining rooms and backyard are filled with antiques the Mikkelsens pick up wherever they travel. Between browsing the historical items and enjoying comfort foods like chislic, hot beef combos and homemade pies, Jay says people always seem to leave with a smile.

Ted Asmussen’s great-grandfather W.J. was known as”Potato Pete” for his large garden; his name is still painted on the last bank in Agar. W.J. was a farmer, rancher and well-known for finding a place that would grow grass even in the Dust Bowl days of the 1930s. Much of his money was made selling grass seed to the federal government for reseeding decimated areas of the Great Plains when the drought ended.

Yes, Agar may owe its livelihood to good soil and good roads as Robbennolt believes, but Potato Pete’s great-grandson would add one more reason:”Optimistic people.”

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the January/February 2022 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Oddities and Fun

By Katie Hunhoff

“I see nothing in space as promising as the view from a Ferris wheel,” wrote children’s author E.B. White. Colorful games and rides, people of all ages spending time together, laughing, eating, chatting with neighbors. Fairs are exhibits of our culture at its finest.

Late summer gatherings date back to the early years of our United States. Eventually the fairs evolved and became more elaborate. But they’ve always symbolized a last hurrah before school begins and winter comes.

One of our favorites is the Turner County Fair in Parker (Aug. 15-18). This year the fair turns 136, making it the oldest in South Dakota. Once inside the gates (free admission, by the way) you’ll find a fun little pioneer town to tour known as Heritage Park. It has a general store, church, school and millinery. Each is furnished with antiques and open to the public. Outside you’ll find a shaded stage which hosts non-stop music and entertainment throughout the four-day spectacle. If you’re wondering about food, you’re in for a treat. Local beef and pork producers run dueling booths that garner long lines at dinner, but another popular choice is a chislic booth organized by sheep farmer Bill Aeschlimann and some friends way back in 1983. Turner and Hutchinson counties are known as the home of chislic — a Russian tradition of beef, lamb or pork seasoned and grilled over an open fire. (Or, here in America, deep fat fried as we also do with Oreos and cupcakes.)

Other fairs are known for fun and games. The Potter County Fair (Aug. 6-9) in Gettysburg features Cow Patty Bingo. An open patch of grass at the fairgrounds is divided into squares, each of which is for sale. Once the squares are sold, a cow is turned loose on the grass. The owner of the square where the cow first leaves her mark wins the jackpot.

In Aberdeen, at the Brown County Fair (Aug. 15-21), a fair staffer goes out early every morning to hide a stuffed monkey named Casey. The first kid to find Casey wins carnival tickets or another fair prize.

Visit the Corson County Fair in McIntosh (Aug. 12-14) to view turtle races — prizes go to both the fastest and slowest racers. Here’s a hint: painted turtles are faster than mud turtles, in case you didn’t know. Here’s another hint: snapping turtles can be dangerous.

Food competitions are popular attractions at our local fairs. Often attendees get to taste the results. The Custer County Fair (Aug. 11-14) in Hermosa features an ice cream crank-off. Power models are forbidden, guaranteeing an old-fashioned experience for kids who have never had an opportunity to make their own. A chili cook-off is one of the highlights of the Sully County Fair (Aug. 11-14) in Onida. The public can sample all the chili they can eat after the contest, for only $5.

Fairs are a fine way to celebrate our communities, but the food, games and exhibits aren’t as meaningful if people don’t show up to enjoy them. We hope you take the time to visit one of the dozens of fairs in South Dakota this summer.

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Taking Chances

By John Andrews

If you like rodeo, golf, art, windsurfing and playing poker, then you’ll feel at home in Sully County. It’s an interesting mix — maybe not one you’d expect to find in the middle of South Dakota — but the county’s small towns, prairies, Missouri River bluffs and the wind and waves on Lake Oahe provide the perfect setting for all those interests to converge.

Sully County was created in 1873 and named for Gen. Alfred Sully, who commanded cavalry troops during the Indian Wars of the 1860s. Following one particularly brutal battle near Whitestone Hill in 1863, several of Sully’s troops marched south and built Fort Sully just east of Pierre. Soldiers abandoned the fort in 1866 due to scarcity of resources and a new fort was built 30 miles upstream on land near the present-day Fort Sully Game Refuge. It remained occupied until 1894. A marker was placed there in 1929 and moved to the Sully County Courthouse in Onida in 1962 before water from Lake Oahe inundated the site. Farm Island Recreation Area lies on the site of Old Fort Sully now, and markers indicate its one-time location.

Onida’s Smoky Joe Mendel was once the world’s fastest man.

At one time, Sully County was a refuge for African Americans fleeing from racial persecution in other parts of the country. Norvel Blair, born into slavery in Tennessee, established the Sully County Colored Colony in the 1880s.

Blair’s sons Benjamin and Patrick arrived in Dakota Territory to scout land in 1882. They settled near the town of Fairbank, one of several towns to emerge in Sully County after its official opening for settlement in 1883. Norvel, his wife Mary, and their other children soon followed.

The Blairs wanted to share their freedom with other African-Americans. In 1906, Ben Blair and others met in Yankton and created the Northwestern Homestead Movement, designed to relocate blacks from Southern states to farms in South Dakota and around the Upper Midwest. The Blair family even pledged 1,700 acres upon which to build an agricultural college.

The group considered colony locations in four counties but only Sully County’s became successful, thanks to Norvel’s daughter Betty. She worked for a real estate company in Iowa and is credited with selling much of the land.

The Sully County Colored Colony had as many as 200 members, and remained a bustling community for over 50 years. By the 1950s only a handful of people still lived in the area. Today only scattered buildings and the Blairs, resting in their family cemetery, remain as a reminder of the sanctuary Sully County became for men and women seeking freedom.

Lake Oahe is a prime spot for windsurfing.

Onida is the Sully County seat and has a reputation of producing talented athletes. Professional golfers Curt and Tom Byrum grew up there as did Smoky Joe Mendel, who briefly held the title of”Fastest Man in the World.” Mendel was a student at Yankton College in 1931 when he ran the 100-yard dash in 9.5 seconds, which tied the world record. Mendel had been a track and field star at Onida High School. During his senior year he single-handedly won the state title for his team over Sioux Falls Washington.

You can still find speed in Sully County, but you need a surfboard and wetsuit. Several years ago we met Randy and Michelle Brich, who had built an energy-efficient home on a bluff overlooking Okobojo Creek. It provided fantastic views of the Missouri and an easy vantage point to monitor the winds. When they blow from the south-southeast (against the river’s current), conditions are perfect for windsurfing. Brich called the area”ground zero for windsurfing in South Dakota, and perhaps the entire Great Plains.”

The Sully County Courthouse anchors Main Street in Onida.

North of Okobojo is the Little Bend of the Missouri River. The Sully County peninsula that juts into the river is home to the Fort Sully Game Refuge, a state-owned wildlife preserve. It lies near the spot where Lewis and Clark camped on their voyage up the Missouri River on Oct. 1, 1804 and again on Aug. 24, 1806 as they returned.

The bluffs have changed since Lewis and Clark passed through, not just because of the Missouri River dams. Man has molded them in many ways, including a world-class golf course. Sutton Bay in the northwestern corner of the county is a private retreat that offers hunting, fishing and an 18-hole golf course designed by internationally acclaimed architect Graham Marsh. Membership comes by invitation only, so cross your fingers if you hope to one day enjoy its breathtaking views of the Missouri.

Michael Moore paints the landscapes of Sully County.

If it’s not in the cards, you can enjoy the scenery of Sully County through the landscapes of Michael Moore. He splits his time between California and a farm 10 miles west of Agar, which he and his wife purchased in 2001 without ever having been to South Dakota. Moore is also a championship poker player. He won $220,000 and a gold bracelet at the 2013 World Series of Poker in Las Vegas.

Raising rodeo stock has different pressures than playing cards for a small fortune, but the Sutton family has been doing it successfully in Sully County for decades. It began in 1926 when the Ed Sutton family staged a rodeo on their home ranch. Sutton saw the opportunity for profitability and joined a touring rodeo company.

Moore, who lives west of Agar, is also a champion poker player.

In the 1950s, James Sutton partnered with Erv Korkow. Their stock was selected to perform at the first National Finals Rodeo in 1959. Today, through five generations, the Sutton Rodeo Company has produced rodeos at every level: 4-H, high school, college, Indian National Finals, South Dakota Rodeo Association and Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association.

They pride themselves on the high quality of their bucking stock. Given enough time, maybe they’ll learn to ride a surfboard, play Texas Hold’em or swing a five iron. They can do it all in Sully County.

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

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Freedom in Sully County

By John Andrews

February is Black History Month. Every Tuesday this month, we’ll introduce you to black pioneers and leaders who helped shape South Dakota. Today we feature the Norvel Blair family and the Sully County Colored Colony.

The Sully County Colored Colony became a haven for African-Americans seeking a road out of the racially oppressive Deep South in the late 1800s. Credit for the thriving rural neighborhood goes largely to Norvel Blair and his family.

Blair was born into slavery in Tennessee. Records are sketchy; some indicate he was born in 1825, others in 1814. Nevertheless, he was emancipated in 1863, and after the Civil War he reunited with his wife and their seven children on a farm in Illinois. The Blairs became prosperous, but in 1880 a mob burglarized their home and riddled it with bullets. Not long after, his attorney and a judge swindled him out of some property. He presented his case in a memoir called Book for the People! To Be Read by All Voters, Black and White, with Thrilling Events of the Life of Norvel Blair. He decided to move his family west after local officials barred him from a polling place while he tried to vote in an election.

Blair’s sons Benjamin and Patrick arrived in Dakota Territory to scout land in 1882. They settled near the town of Fairbank, one of several towns to emerge in Sully County after its official opening for settlement in 1883. Norvel, his wife Mary, and their other children soon followed.

Fairbank thrived until it was bypassed as the county seat and the railroad chose Pierre for its Missouri River crossing. The town disappeared almost overnight, but the Blairs were unaffected. They had built a successful farming operation that didn’t depend upon the strength of the town. Blair had brought a string of Morgan horses from his farm in Illinois, and he became a renowned breeder of racehorses. One horse named Johnny Bee was listed as the fastest horse in the state from 1907 to 1909.”Racing horses is a fine sport for any man as it teaches him how to be a good winner and a good loser,” Blair said,”and if you can’t be both you should never race horses.”

The Blairs wanted to share their freedom with other African-Americans. In 1906, Ben Blair and others met in Yankton and created the Northwestern Homestead Movement, designed to relocate blacks from Southern states to farms in South Dakota and around the Upper Midwest. The Blair family even pledged 1,700 acres upon which to build an agricultural college.

The group considered colony locations in four counties but only Sully County’s became successful, thanks to Norvel’s daughter Betty. She worked for a real estate company in Iowa and is credited with selling much of the land.”Like most land agents she was pretty good at embellishing a tale,” recalled Fern Barber, who taught rural school in the area in the 1950s.”She went back east to recruit buyers and even got them to believe there weren’t any flies in South Dakota.”

The Sully County Colored Colony had as many as 200 members. It was a bustling community for over 50 years, with locally prominent families like the McGruders (who bought a 1,200-acre ranch from Betty Blair in 1905), the Days and the Figgins. But hard times in the 1930s drove many to larger cities like Huron, Pierre and Minneapolis. By the 1950s only a handful of bachelors and a few members of the McGruder family still lived in the area. Today only scattered buildings and the Blairs, resting in their family cemetery, remain as a reminder of the refuge Sully County became for men and women seeking freedom.