We’ve fashioned some gigantic lakes, sculpted two mountains and assembled four walls with everything from mud, brick, straw, sticks and stones. An outside observer might accuse us of tinkering. But, truly, all we’re trying to do is give a little accent to the prairies and pine forests that were here before man.
In 25 years of exploring South Dakota with this magazine, our writers, photographers and contributors have greatly enjoyed their opportunities to tell about unusual and lesser-known man-made places. Here are 25 favorites that we’ve visited in our 25 years.
We are excluding obvious favorites like those sculpted mountains, the Corn Palace, the four Missouri River dams, the capitol in Pierre and the many grand buildings in downtown Sioux Falls. Excuse us for that. But we’ve written about them many times and we shall again. This is mostly a collection of places that you may not have heard about, and that you may want to enjoy in your summer travels.
1. Deepest Cut
For more than a century miners labored like so many ants in Homestake Mine’s vast Open Cut, between Lead and Deadwood, hauling millions of tons of Black Hills granite to the mills that revealed the gold hidden within. By the time mining operations ceased there in 1998 the gash was more than 900 feet deep.
The Open Cut was a mere flesh wound compared to Homestake’s underground operations. Tunnels radiated into the surrounding rock from several central shafts, one more than 8,000 feet deep, following veins of gold into the mountain.
High production costs and declining yields brought an end to gold mining at Homestake in 2001, but there is still treasure to be found in them thar hills. After several years of preliminary work and planning, the Sanford Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory, located at the old mine’s 4,850-foot level, was officially dedicated on June 22, 2009. Work at the lab will revolve around “mining” subatomic neutrino particles, the study of which will advance pure science and yield a treasure trove of knowledge about the universe we call home.
2. Best Grazed Hotel
Builder C.C. Gideon had a knack for using native materials in his Black Hills projects and it shows in one of his most famous creations — the State Game Lodge, a unique wood and native stone resort tucked into the Ponderosa pine forest of Custer State Park.
Gideon built the lodge not once, but twice. Penitentiary inmates comprised Gideon’s construction crew in 1919, and he was made a U.S. marshal to keep them in line. He sent many back to prison because of infractions, and one allegedly returned and torched the lodge months after its completion. So Gideon built another. It was meant to accommodate state personnel, but the lodge evolved into a hotel that attracted some of America’s wealthiest magnates and two presidents — Calvin Coolidge and Dwight Eisenhower.
Guests can still stay in either president’s room. The Coolidge suite contains two rooms with a king bed while the Eisenhower is one room with a king bed. We’re not sure why Coolidge got a better room. Both were Republican, so it wasn’t a partisan gesture. Perhaps it’s because Coolidge stayed the entire summer of 1927 while Eisenhower was there only a few days in 1953.
Life size portraits of Calvin and Grace Coolidge still greet visitors, who can dine on South Dakota specialties like buffalo, trout or pheasant and enjoy the park by strolling along Grace Coolidge Creek, which runs past the lodge.
3. Most Expensive Wheels
There aren't many ways to link Tom Mix and Elvis Presley. Maybe there aren’t any – other than the Pioneer Auto Museum, of course.
Dave Geisler and his family have gathered 275 automobiles, 60 tractors, 60 motorcycles and an assortment of oddities from music boxes to rocks at their one-of-a-kind museum in Murdo. The cars range from a 1902 jewel to a 1981 Trabant, a product of the late and unlamented East German auto industry. There’s also a Flanders, a Hupmobile, and a 1959 Cadillac El Dorado with tail fins as big as those on an F-14. As for Mix and Presley: Tom’s 1931 Packard convertible is just one building over from a 1976 Harley once owned by The King himself.
We were too polite to ask what the collection is worth, but when we visited Pioneer Auto Museum some years ago we crossed paths with a visitor from Utah who claimed there were a couple cars that could fetch $750,000 apiece at auction. He may have been exaggerating or just plain full of baloney, but we feel safe in saying that the most expensive wheels in South Dakota can be found in Murdo.
4. Thatchedest
Emma Shay, an English professor at the Wessington Springs junior college, was inspired following her 1926 tour of England. When she returned, she and her husband Clark, a science professor at the school, built a Shakespeare Garden near the college’s administration building. When they retired in 1932, they added the Anne Hathaway Cottage, a replica of the home of Shakespeare’s wife in Stratford-upon-Avon. A project in 1995 added a thatched roof, the only roof of its kind in South Dakota.
Locals stage Christmas plays and summer Shakespeare productions on the grounds, and the cottage hosts weddings, tours and full English teas with cucumber sandwiches, fresh scones and tea cookies. Staff members are volunteers, so they appreciate a week’s notice and a $7 donation per person for teas.
5. Most Bull-Headed
Drivers see South Dakota at 75 miles an hour crossing the state on Interstate 90, but many slow down, gawk and even swerve as they pass the Montrose exit 25 miles west of Sioux Falls. It’s the 60-foot tall scrap iron longhorn bull that diverts their attention.
The bull is the centerpiece of Wayne Porter’s Sculpture Park, which comprises 10 acres of welded dragons, butterflies and other mythical creatures. Porter spends seven days a week at his park during the summer, working on new projects and greeting visitors. It’s an ironic venture for Porter, who told us in 2007 that he studied political science and history at South Dakota State University because he thought an art career would be too time consuming. He even tried sheep ranching in Hand County before turning to sculpture full time.
His creations make people laugh and think. There’s a boy on a sled, a man’s hand reaching out from a brain for ideas and vultures lined up like fence posts. Everyone’s favorite, though, is the longhorn, made from 8-inch square steel plates from abandoned railroad tracks.
6. Heaviest Bird
Most Chinese ring-necked pheasants measure two or three feet from beak to tail and weigh less than five pounds. They are dwarfed by the Tinkertown Pheasant, easily our heaviest bird.The Walters, proprietors of a country store along U.S. Highway 212 about 12 miles west of Watertown, built the concrete bird in 1950. They later added a concrete donkey they called Depression Nag. Pheasants were introduced to South Dakota over 100 years ago and legislators declared them our state bird. Each fall hunters flock here to bag their limit. Plenty of South Dakota towns claim to be the “Pheasant Capital.” Huron, Gregory and Redfield each boast giant, plastic pheasants to support the claim, but they’re lightweights compared to the Tinkertown rooster.
7. Most Melodious
Steel magnate Andrew Carnegie spent over $300,000 helping build libraries in cities across South Dakota. He was doubly generous in Vermillion, where he approved funds for a city library and another on the University of South Dakota campus. Neither still function as libraries (few of South Dakota’s original 25 do). The old city library is a law office, while the stately campus library, built in 1911, is home to the National Music Museum.
It housed the college library until 1968, when the new I.D. Weeks Library was finished. The W.H. Over Museum moved in and Arne Larson’s collection of 2,500 musical instruments followed in 1973. Larson, a Brookings music teacher, filled his home with violins, horns and other instruments. They found a permanent home when USD offered to house them. As Larson’s collection grew, the Over Museum relocated, and the building was renovated in 1980. Today it features over 14,500 American, European and non-Western instruments — the greatest collection of its kind in the world. Among its most rare possessions is a guitar made by legendary violin maker Antonio Stradivari. Only two are known to exist.
8. Most Dangerous
Missile silos were once buried under South Dakota’s short grass prairie west of the Missouri River. They housed 150 Minuteman II warheads that could have streaked 15,000 miles per hour over the North Pole and into the Soviet Union if the super powers had fought a nuclear war.
As it happened the silos were deterrents, and curiosities for ranchers and passers-by. Only one was ever launched; a 7-second test flight near Newell resulted in the missile landing harmlessly in a field. South Dakota’s missiles were deactivated when the Cold War ended in 1991. Most were destroyed, but the National Park Service preserved one silo and one control center as the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site near Philip.
Visitors can peer into the underground silo and see the control room where two-member teams worked 24-hour shifts. Surely all the little red buttons have been disconnected, but be careful just in case. Headquarters is along Highway 240 — the Badlands Loop Scenic Byway — at Interstate 90 exit 131.
9. Our Liveliest Cemetery
Most of us are content to spend as little time as possible in cemeteries, even if we don’t believe in ghosts. Yet each year thousands of people plunk down a dollar and wander through Mount Moriah Cemetery in Deadwood, a truly unique final resting place.
Mount Moriah opened in 1871, and, fittingly for a mining town, the first funeral was for James DeLong, who died in a mine accident. Scores of the poor and nameless lie unremembered in paupers’ graves, but visitors mostly come to read the gravestones that are the very chapters and pages of Deadwood’s colorful history.
Seth Bullock, the sheriff who did more than any other man to civilize the rowdy mining camp, is buried in Moriah. Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane, who scarcely knew each other in life, lie forever side-by-side. Preacher Henry Weston Smith, who strove mightily against vice while he lived, now rests from his labors among many who never made time for his services while they were above ground. And now, perhaps, have the leisure of eternity to wish they had.
10. Gateway to our Loftiest Thoughts
Father Anthony Helmbrecht came to Hoven in 1908. Like many other settlers, he dreamed his little burg would grow into a great city — with a twist. He didn’t dream of railroads and commercial enterprises coming to town: he hoped to see a bishop in residence, and resolved to build a church worthy of His Excellency.
Helmbrecht proved an able salesman, and he fired his mostly German-American parishioners with the same dream. They dug a colossal hole, 64 feet wide by 161 feet long, then built up the basement walls with more than a thousand loads of sand and stone from nearby fields. It took 13 years, but on Easter morning 1921, they celebrated High Mass in the grandest edifice most of them had ever seen.
No expense was spared for St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church, from the massive oak doors to the two-ton bells, which ring out from twin spires that can be seen for miles. It is impossible to sit in the nave with sunlight streaming through stained glass windows and not have one’s thoughts lifted upward. Nor to marvel at the determined farmers and townspeople who brought Helmbrecht’s audacious dream to life.
11. Pinkest
Major John Pickler, South Dakota’s first congressman, was the ultimate town booster, though some people in Faulkton resented him for it. When the Faulk County seat was moved from LaFoon to Faulkton, Pickler donated land for a courthouse square and insisted the county build a grand, brick courthouse though nearly everyone else wanted to use the old wooden one.
Another lasting example of Pickler’s big thinking is his house, known as the Pink Castle. Begun as a claim shanty in 1882, it underwent several expansions. By 1894 the Victorian mansion, painted pink by Faulkton artist Charles Greener, featured 20 rooms, including a lighted tower and one secret chamber for shelter during Indian attacks and severe storms.
Family lived there until 1955, and then it was abandoned for nearly 30 years. When the local historical society began restoring it, they found original furnishings, books and correspondence. The historical society still maintains the home, which is open for afternoon tours between Memorial Day and Labor Day.
12. Fewest Corners
If the devil really does like to hide in square corners, perhaps the safest place in South Dakota is inside the 1880 Town’s Round Barn. It isn’t perfectly round, but the 14-sided structure, built in 1919, creates a near circle with wide corners free of any evil presence.
1880 Town creator Richard Hullinger spent three days and thousands of dollars moving the barn from a farm south of Draper. Inside there are antique buggies, toys and a working, turn of the century saloon piano from Deadwood.
We counted less than 40 round barns in our travels during the 1990s. Pennsylvania Shakers believed round barns gave the devil no corners, but South Dakota farmers just thought the design was strong. Others liked it because they could drop hay through a hole in the center of the loft while cattle or sheep stood with their heads to the center and their tails outside.
13. Prettiest
Professor Sam McCrory just wanted to help students learn about plants when he envisioned a research garden on the South Dakota State University campus. He began a small plot but his dream wasn’t fully realized until 1965, a year after his death. Campus expansion moved McCrory’s garden to the corner of Sixth Street and 22nd Avenue, today the site of the prettiest 70 acres in South Dakota.
McCrory Gardens features trees, shrubs, grasses and flowers that are, or could be, part of South Dakota’s landscape. People find serenity among the tulips and pasque flowers, and some even get married there. But above all it remains a research garden where students and professors learn about native and non-native plants.
Honorable Mention: Another place to find serenity is the Japanese Gardens in Sioux Falls. City employee Joseph Maddox built the Gardens between 1928 and 1936, but they fell into disrepair when he left to start his own greenhouse. In the 1980s city leaders recruited one of Japan’s leading landscape artists to revive the gardens, which are once again a peaceful oasis in South Dakota’s biggest city.
14. Biggest Fakes
Seven dinosaurs have prowled Rapid City’s skyline since 1936 with nary a hint of trouble. A curmudgeonly tourist visited, muttered “They’re fakes!” and left in a huff. Thank goodness for that — if they weren’t fakes we’d need a really tall fence.
Emmett Sullivan built Dinosaur Park as a Depression-era Works Progress Administration project. He also worked on Mount Rushmore, designed Dinosaur World in Arkansas and built the big green dinosaur that greets motorists at Wall along Interstate 90, so he had plenty of experience creating huge, imitation people and animals. The park includes a stegosaurus, an apatosaurus, a triceratops and the popular Tyrannosaurus rex, plus a few others.
The dinosaurs were concrete gray until 1960 when they were painted green with white bellies. Maybe that’s why the tourist was nearly fooled.
15. Most Operatic
How many opera houses does a prairie town really need?
Watertown had three, but the Goss Opera House is the only survivor.
Charles Goss laid the foundation at the corner of Maple and Kemp in June 1888, two months after his store burned down on that very spot. He planned a grand hotel, but, despite derision from city leaders who didn’t see the need, Goss decided to build a grand entertainment hall. He divided the first floor into storefronts while the second and third floors contained the 1,500-seat opera house, which townspeople consistently filled upon its opening in 1889.
Performances in the opera house ended 70 years ago, and the Goss building had numerous uses over the years, including a stint as a roller skating rink. In 2007 attorney David Berry toured the opera house, abandoned for 40 years, and began reviving Goss’s dream. He bought the building and started a major restoration that re-opened the opera house for performances in 2009. Goss’s building also includes Charley’s Restaurant, an emporium, coffee house and the Joshua Spies Fine Art Gallery.
16. Warm & Wettest
Plains Indians camped in the stonewalled canyon of Fall River County around warm and healing waters they called “wiwilakahta,” or “hot springs.” Tribes considered the soothing springs so important they waged war over them (the Sioux defeated the Cheyenne in the 1840s in a clash atop nearby Battle Mountain).
When settler Fred Evans arrived in 1879, he considered the 87-degree water a moneymaker. Other homesteaders claimed it eased rheumatism, stomach troubles or whatever ailed them. Evans envisioned a warm water resort like those in the East. In 1890 he built a dome over several large springs and created Evans Plunge, the world’s largest natural warm-water indoor swimming pool.
Evans’ venture may have been the unofficial start of the Black Hills’ tourism industry. Today, families visiting the Southern Hills usually stop at Evans Plunge for a soak in hot tubs or a ride down one of three water slides into the big pool.
17. Most Controversial
Prudes shield their eyes as they pass Fawick Park in Sioux Falls, but art lovers appreciate our full-scale bronze replica of Michelangelo’s Statue of David.
Thomas Fawick, an industrialist who invented the nation’s first four-door car in a Sioux Falls garage, donated replicas of David and Moses to the city and Augustana College in 1971. David was immediately controversial because he’s nude. As a preventative measure, David was placed facing away from the street and trees were planted to obstruct the view.
A more liberal attitude toward sculpture as art prevails today. Public nudity is still discouraged, but Michelangelo no longer gets the blame for society’s coarser side.
18. Earthiest Buildings
Renewable and recycled building materials are all the rage these days, but the concept is old hat in South Dakota. The Lakota constructed their lodges from buffalo hide and Black Hills pine. Many white settlers spent their first years in a soddie, a snug home with walls of sod strips laid one atop the other. I guess you might call that green?
Not many of us could tolerate a home made of dirt, but we can at least see what a real soddie was like at Prairie Homestead, located just off I-90 near the east entrance to Badlands National Park. Mr. and Mrs. Ed Brown homesteaded on the site in the 1880s and made their home in the structure, which would have melted back into the ground if not for the efforts of Keith and Dorothy Crew. They restored the soddie in 1962, and worked to get it placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Honorable Mention: “Green” construction can also be found in the Strawbale Museum at Carthage. When the local Historical Society outgrew its old museum and no other suitable building could be found, the members decided to build one of truly unique design. Bales of straw were stacked like bricks to form thick, highly insulated walls, which were then coated with stucco inside and out. Lumber for the roof and interior fittings were recovered from an old barn in the neighborhood.
19. Steepest Climb
We can thank Charles Coughlin, a 1909 graduate of South Dakota State University, for the breathtaking view, atop the Coughlin Campanile. The Carthage native was treasurer and general manager of Briggs and Stratton (founded by fellow State College alum Stephen Briggs) when he donated $20,000 for the project in 1928. Upon completion the following year, it created a gateway to campus with the Sylvan Coolidge Amphitheater and Lincoln Memorial Library.
It stands 165 feet tall. The 180 steps lead to a viewing platform, where you can see campus, Brookings and nearby farms. Chimes play on the half hour and musical selections are interspersed throughout the day. The songs are controlled electronically, but they can be played manually on a keyboard in the old library, now the Lincoln Music Hall. A rotating light makes the Campanile visible for miles.
When we visited in 1993, university president Robert Wagner spoke poetically about the red brick and Indiana limestone sentinel. “The Campanile looks to be a beacon, a place that tells people the world is going to be all right,” he said. “That’s what a university should be — a beacon telling people that the world is going to be all right.”
The Campanile has been the site of dances, rallies, marriage proposals and races. Troy Bouman, a 1994 graduate, ascended in 32 seconds, a record that still stands. Challengers are welcome, but you need a key to enter. Find one at the Tompkins Alumni Center or University Police Department, just across Medary Avenue.
20. Most Hard-Headed
Mount Rushmore honors four presidents, but all 44 can be found 40 miles away at Presidents Park, the creation of painter and sculptor David Adickes. His 20-foot busts of each president are chronologically arranged along manicured trails that cover 53 acres of Black Hills forest. Each concrete and steel head is hollow, but the artist doesn’t say if that’s a pun on politicians.
Presidents Park is five miles southwest of Lead-Deadwood on Highway 85. Turn at the 20-foot Abe Lincoln.
21. Our Most Expensive Trail
History will soon come full circle for the Meridian Bridge, which crosses the Missouri River at Yankton. When it opened on Oct. 11, 1924, more than 3,000 people walked from South Dakota to Nebraska, an easy jaunt that contrasted sharply with the ordeal it once was.
Strollers gave way to cars and trucks the next day, and so it was until the bridge closed in 2008. Since then the unique structure has been silently rusting away, but hopes are it will once again carry sightseers,walkers and runners across the Missouri. Plans call for converting the Meridian into a footbridge, part of a trail system connecting Yankton’s riverfront with a nature preserve on the Nebraska side.
When the structure was built it was touted as Yankton’s million-dollar bridge, which was an understatement: the actual cost was $1.17 million. Restoring and refurbishing may run around $5 million, which works out to about $3,500 per foot and surely qualifies the Meridian as our most expensive place to take a stroll. And among our most unique.
22. Fishiest
Trout thrive in the lakes and cold streams of the Black Hills, but they are not South Dakota natives. Two Rapid City men brought cream cans full of trout from Colorado to Cleghorn Springs in 1886. South Dakota’s first U.S. Senator, R.F. Pettigrew, saw promising potential for trout in the Black Hills and wrote a bill in 1890 to build a hatchery. In the spring of 1900, the D.C. Booth National Fish Hatchery’s first crop of brook and cutthroat trout was released into Black Hills streams.
Today trout are reared in long, narrow pools surrounded by tidy lawns, stone walls, a rustic wood bridge and historic buildings. There’s also a replica railcar like those used long ago to bring trout to area waters. Visitors can get an underwater view of a pool filled with trout and kids can buy small packs of pellets to feed them. The hatchery’s museum contains the largest collection of fishery history and artifacts in the nation.
Honorable Mention: More than a dozen species of sport fish — including walleye, smallmouth and largemouth bass, and trout — are also raised on the other side of the state at the Gavins Point National Fish Hatchery in Yankton, but perhaps its most important task is raising fish threatened with extinction.
Pallid sturgeon have swum the Missouri River since dinosaurs roamed, but the river dams destroyed much of the fish’s habitat. The federal government declared pallids endangered in 1990, and the hatchery began raising them in 1992. Today 2,800 young sturgeon, raised with help from biologists, swim in giant tanks. The hatchery’s brood stock is so genetically diverse that should sturgeon ever go extinct, the species could be reintroduced.
23. Classiest Old Hotel
As the vice president of the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad, Alex Johnson thought Rapid City deserved a first-class hotel, so he designed an 11-story Germanic Tudor building at the corner of Sixth and St. Joseph. Since it opened in 1928, the Hotel Alex Johnson has housed presidents and Hollywood’s elite in an environment that couples extravagance with a South Dakota touch.
There’s little doubt you are in South Dakota when you enter the lobby, lit by a war lance chandelier. The fireplace is built with huge Black Hills stones. Brands from West River ranches are burned into the mantle. Bison heads are mounted on the walls, as are busts of men in war bonnets, a tribute to the Lakota people.
Six presidents stayed there. Charlton Heston was a guest while filming a western, and the cast and crew of Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest took a floor while filming in town and at Mount Rushmore.
Honorable Mention: An equally impressive hotel stands in downtown Aberdeen. Many of its guest rooms have been converted to larger condominiums, but the Ward Hotel’s original dark woodwork adorns the lobby and detailed plasterwork beautifies the second floor grand ballroom. Alonzo Ward built his hotel in 1894. Fire destroyed it in 1926, but he rebuilt. Today it features a few guest rooms, an art gallery, restaurant and pub.
24. Wildest
Don’t be startled to hear the roar of an African lion or the deep growl of a black bear in the woods near Spearfish. They’re supposed to be there, and Mike Welchynski (left) is taking good care of them.Welchynski founded Spirit of the Hills Wildlife Sanctuary in 1999 as an escape for exotic animals victimized by illegal breeding farms and abusive carnivals and circuses. Welchynski grew up surrounded by animals in the woods of Manitoba and created an animal sanctuary there. When he met Spearfish residents Johanna Meier and Guido Della Vecchia, touring Canada with the Black Hills Passion Play in 1998, they convinced him to establish a sanctuary in South Dakota. Today more than 300 cougars, African lions, tigers, camels, tropical birds and other creatures (like dogs and cats) live on 200 acres of rocky Ponderosa pine forest. The playful, harmless critters roam free, but the more dangerous wild animals live in spacious cages.
25. Most Cosmopolitan Convenience Store
You can call Big Bat’s in Pine Ridge a convenience store, but it’s the closest thing to a mall you’ll find in Indian Country. There’s gas, oil and junk food — all convenience store staples — but also a huge dining room where real meals are served three times a day and art by Lakota artists like Donald Montileaux. Murals tell important Lakota stories. There’s the White Buffalo Calf Woman, ancestral twins fathered by an eagle, the acquisition of the horse and the evolution of pow wows.
Bat and Patty Pourier opened the store in 1990. Fire destroyed Bat’s in 2001, but the Pouriers invested $1 million and rebuilt the grandest convenience store in South Dakota.
From the March/April 2010 issue of South Dakota Magazine. Call 1-800-456-5117 for a copy of the issue or subscribe online!
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