Stay away from me. I just got back from a West River week, and for three or four days straight I walked among prairie dogs. Then I returned home to learn that our p-dogs may have the deadly Sylvatic Plague, which can be transmitted from animals to humans. An infected p-dog has been found near [...]
A few weeks ago, our photograph of a boy playing basketball was chosen as a finalist in the Smithsonian photo contest and consequently quite a few of our loyal and faithful friends and readers pitched in to vote for our photo.
However, because we printed the photo in our Nov/Dec issue of South Dakota Magazine the [...]
I’ve just returned from a week of traveling northwest South Dakota, where the dry country is blooming. This hill-full of yucca overlooks the Missouri River. The prickly pear cactus have big yellow petals and all the wildflowers are pretty.
I traveled by car, but many in West River are anticipating the Fort Pierre to Deadwood wagon [...]
Thirteen South Dakotans will be inducted into the South Dakota Hall of Fame this fall in Aberdeen. We’ve been trying to get photographs of each inductee for our Sept/Oct issue. Yesterday, we visited Dr. Vernon Ronald Nelson in Sioux Falls. Dr. Nelson and his wife, Joyce, (pictured) live in Sioux Falls near Augustana college, [...]
Click on the thumbnail to enlarge photo.
Yankton aerial photographer Dave Tunge sent us this stunning view of Yankton after a rainstorm. If you look to the right, you can see Yankton’s new bridge alongside the old Meridian Bridge, which will be turned into a pedestrian walkway after the new bridge opens.
Tunge has won [...]
A few weeks ago former KELOLAND anchor turned blogger Steve Hemmingson commented on our tendency to celebrate “anniversaries of the adverse.” His post came as KELO prepared to air a special marking the 10th anniversary of the devastating tornado that destroyed the McCook County town of Spencer in May 1998. “People profess to not like [...]
One of South Dakota’s most passionate conservationists drowned in an unusual accident on June 7 in the Bad River southwest of Pierre.
Kevin Honness was a biologist with the Turner Endangered Species Fund in South Dakota for the last decade. His goal was to restore the swift fox to western South Dakota. A former Peace Corps [...]
I’m heading for Czech Days, where a Hunhoff is competing for Queen. Her mother is a Rokusek and her Great-grandma Hunhoff was a Vlasak so don’t count her out, but it may be a tough sell with a name like Hunhoff.
I’ve never been to Mardi Gras in New Orleans, but (based on what I’ve heard) [...]
Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.”
Charles Dudley Warner’s famous lament in the Hartford Courant of August 24, 1897 is mostly true, of course, But Charles never knew Ben Huset, a North Dakota farmer who dedicated much of his life to long-range weather forecasting. We recently saw a story in the [...]
Today Grant Peterson of 910 AM Brookings Radio welcomes Andre Larson, head of the National Music Museum in Vermillion. They’ll be talking about the early beginnings of the collection, as well as Andre’s trip to Italy with some priceless stringed instruments. Andre’s father, Arnie, was a music teacher in Brookings. He filled their house with [...]
John Milton, the late USD English professor, once lamented that South Dakota suffered from a lack of writers. He speculated that our culture was too young, too practical and too work-aholic to find adequate time for the arts. But he thought writers and artists were sorely needed to give our frontier communities a sense of [...]
Last week I wandered around the Lower Brule and Crow Creek reservations while traveling to and from Pierre. In my lifetime, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen so much water in those normally brown and dry hills — or so much green grass.
Sage brush, yucca and prickly pear cactus still grow on the buttes [...]
Name a city in South Dakota known for cowboys and dinosaurs. Readers who know their West River country will answer FAITH — the Old West town where the T-rex called Sue was discovered in 1990.
Faith is celebrating Sue’s unearthing this summer by hosting a traveling exhibit of Sue, the largest t-rex ever found. Stop anytime [...]
John Timm as Arthur “Cal” Mellette
John Timm of Sioux Falls is an expert on South Dakota’s “first family”, the Mellettes. He recently published a book titled “And the Last Shall be First,” sharing his years of research on Arthur Calvin Mellette, his wife Maggie, and their four sons.
As the last governor of Dakota [...]
Not so many years ago, a car was optional for people who lived in towns of about 500 or more people. That was enough to support a grocery store, a few cafes, a pub, a dentist and possibly even a family doctor. Not any longer. Today, people in towns three or four times that size [...]