The Characters of Isabel

By Chad Coppess

Ryan Maher provides groceries and supplies for a wide area of the state from the Occidental General Store.

The high school closed in 2009, the local newspaper has merged with nearby Timber Lake and the grocery delivery truck doesn’t make it to town anymore. None of that stops the people of Isabel from keeping this tiny Dewey County community alive.

Isabel was a daughter of a railroad executive when the tracks reached here in 1910. “This was the end of the track,” says local entrepreneur Ryan Maher. “They were going to continue on west, but it never happened.” He said the town of Faith in Meade County is named for Isabel’s sister.

Maher still lives on the Cheyenne River Reservation ranch where his family homesteaded in 1910. He recently completed the town’s latest restoration project of the 1914 Occidental General Store. Along with rebuilding a rotting floor and utilities infrastructure, Maher scavenged cabinets from a school in McLaughlin, the nearby abandoned Firesteel Store and freezers from a store in Gettysburg. Now his former co-op store built by area homesteaders supplies groceries for a large area of West River ranchland residents.

Ashley and Braden Fischknecht run The Branding Iron.

The grocery trucks only go as far as Timber Lake, 20 miles east, so Maher makes the trek with a pickup and trailer to stock his store. “That’s when it’s 120 out or 40 below through snow and sleet.” He’s learned to keep milk and other items in the pickup with him to keep them from freezing on winter trips.

“It’s 150 miles to bigger towns and the closest Walmart is Pierre or Bismarck, but still a store like this shouldn’t exist economically,” Maher says. “The big winner in having this store open is the city’s sales tax.” Along with being a state legislator, Maher is also a city councilor, so he knows where the taxes come from and how they are spent.

In the Post Office next door to the grocery store, you’ll find Maher’s mother and postmistress Marcia. “It’s amazing how people survived,” she says of life on the prairie. “Our characters make our little town unique.”

There are plenty of stories about those characters, like Yank Robinson, an alcoholic blacksmith who, when his arm wouldn’t function to raise a glass, would wrap a towel around it and raise it with the other arm.

In the 1960s or ‘70s August Shutz welded a nickel on a bolt driven into the concrete sidewalk just to watch people try to pick it up. Coin collector Hans Gugenschlager chiseled it out. Marcia Maher remembers Gugenschlager as an eccentric bachelor who had money buried in his shack. “He would come into church and warm his hands over the candles in the windows and I realized he didn’t have heat in his shack,” she says.

Then there was Jack Reich, a motel owner, insurance salesman, one-time mayor and artist who overcame numerous physical challenges. In addition to being born breech, which caused nerve damage and limited the use of his arms and hands, he was involved in a car accident in 2002 that killed his wife and left him in a wheelchair. Despite those limitations, he studied art at South Dakota State University after finding that he could draw by holding a pen in his mouth. His oil paintings, many of which can still be found around town, are a tribute to the West River countryside that he loved.

Reich’s nephew, Christian Begeman, has become one of the state’s respected photographers. His Prairie Sanctuaries Facebook page, on which he posts beautiful photos of country churches, has more than 15,000 followers. He credits his upbringing on a farm near Isabel with his passion for capturing those rural scenes.

Begeman graduated from Isabel High School in 1991, where his father, Charles, served as superintendent. His mother, Barb, was the longtime publisher of the Isabel Dakotan. He now lives in Sioux Falls and works for Midco, but memories of small-town Isabel are never far. “When I tell people about learning to water ski, I always recount summer Sundays at Isabel Lake, which is a WPA dam on Firesteel Creek about three miles north of town,” he says. “It was just large enough to pull a water skier, provided you stayed in a never-ending figure eight.”

Postmistress Marcia Maher remembers the characters that helped define life in Isabel.

Isabel’s big annual event happens during the first weekend of August and includes a rodeo, parade and all-school reunion. Locals refer to it simply as “the celebration,” Begeman says. “During the centennial, there was a three-day wagon trail ride which I took part of as the photographer. It wasn’t until I was on that adventure that I realized how the town sits on one of the highest hills in the county. Some things you just don’t see until you look at them from a different angle.”

The Lindskov family has been involved with the rodeo for decades. Posters promoting the 1960s events decorate the walls at the family’s Premier Equipment on the south edge of town.

After founding the family ranch in 1934, Bill Lindskov purchased the Isabel Automotive Company in 1951 and four generations of Lindskovs have worked at what is now Premier Equipment, a New Holland agricultural equipment dealership. They also own dealerships in Mobridge, Eureka, Huron, Bowdle and Sturgis.

Lindskov’s LT Ranch is one of West River’s largest, and an annual bull sale attracts buyers from around the world. With around 1,000 Charolais and 600 Angus cattle feeding, the ranch encompasses plenty of prairie habitat for pheasant, sharp-tail grouse and partridge. Lindskov’s Firesteel Creek Lodge provides upland bird hunting on more than a quarter-million acres north of Isabel and has sister lodges in Timber Lake and Utah.

Monte Lindskov, Bill’s son, is proud of the family legacy in Isabel. “You just hope the town is around for a few more generations at least,” he says.

Ninety-four-year-old rancher Paul Stradinger is proud that several generations of his family have made a living in the Isabel area. “My parents homesteaded two miles east of here and I was born there,” he said from his dining room table. “I knew the people that were here, the old cowboys. Now my sons have taken over the ranch.”

Like Maher, Stradinger knows the tiny town is remote. “It’s about 50 miles to the nearest stoplight and if I go to the VA hospital in Sturgis, I’ll only see three stop signs,” he grinned.

Several generations of Paul Stradinger's family have ranched in the Isabel area.

Stradinger’s grandfather came to the area from what is now Ukraine and homesteaded southeast of Isabel. His mother’s family came from Holland. His parents most likely met at a local barn dance.

“In the ‘30s there wasn’t any money,” Stradinger says. “Hamburgers smelled so good, but we didn’t have ten cents to buy one. People are getting sparser, and ranches are getting bigger. But the town is in good hands. They are keeping it alive.”

Ashley and Braden Fischknecht are one of the newest families in Isabel. They purchased the former Sparky’s Bar last fall and renamed it The Branding Iron. “We moved to South Dakota five years ago from Utah,” Braden says. “We just kind of picked a spot on the map.” They owned the cafe in Bison, 60 miles west, before coming to Isabel.

Updates have been made to the cafe and bar, with more planned. The Fischknechts are looking forward to their first summer season, the annual August celebration and the traffic heading to and from the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. They have already discovered that GPS navigation often routes travelers from Minnesota through Isabel on their way to the Black Hills. “Instead of sending them on the interstates, people are wandering through here and need a place to eat,” Braden says. “It works out pretty well for us.”

Isabel was once the end of the track, and even today lies somewhat off the beaten path. But you can still find a hot meal, buy a sack of groceries and maybe hear a story or two about the colorful characters who give it life.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the May/June 2024 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.