Historical Weekend Web Roundup

Dec 9, 2011

By Laura Johnson

The McQuillen Creative Group recently created a video using film footage from the 1940s to tell the story of Aberdeen’s special treat for World War II servicemen passing through town on their way to war. Watching those images of smiling soldiers and industrious women bustling around the Milwaukee Depot got me thinking about other fragments of South Dakota life in bygone days that I’ve seen floating around the Internet. Here are just a few.

Films recording snippets of daily life in Depression-era Britton can be viewed at the Internet Archive. Ivan Besse recorded what he saw around town and created short silent films which he would screen for audiences at the Strand Theatre, where he was a projectionist. 

Bob Purse has an enormous collection of reel to reel tapes. He occasionally shares some of his finds on the blog of New Jersey radio station WFMU. One of the tapes in his archives features a fellow named Burl Thompson asking women in early 1950s Renner about their families and which side of the road they live on.  Apparently there’s less dust if you live on the south side. 

An excerpt from the book Six: a Football Coach’s Journey to a National Record by Marc Rasmussen appeared in our November/December issue. Here you can see footage of the record-setting Claremont Honkers football team in action.

Last week, Marc reminded us of the amazing resources available at the Library of Congress website.  Their prints and photographs collection contains images of South Dakota life taken in the 1880s on. Photos included cover everything from an 1888 all-Chinese firehose team race in Deadwood to a 1942 Timber Lake barbershop to the Porter Sculpture Park in Montrose in 2009.