This Midwest is Really the Old West
©2013 Text & Photos by LeeZard
Wednesday September 11 – Worthington,
Minnesota-Pierre South Dakota
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| South Dakota Sunrise |
My next destination is Pierre (peer), the capitol of South Dakota. It is a long haul, 240 miles on I-90 and another 30 on two-lane highway but there aren’t many decent-sized cities in North Dakota (state pop. 833,354 in 2012) and there is good camping nearby. I also like to visit state capitols; I still haven’t given up on interviewing a governor or two.
While the U.S. Census considers The Dakotas part of the Midwest, the rest of us – even the Dakotans – think of it as part of The Old West. The billboards along the way confirm that. In fact, I’ve never seen so many billboards. For miles on end there is one nearly every hundred yards and most of them tout some tourist attraction, souvenir shop or hotel with a Western theme. There are farms sprinkled along the way but they are few and far between; I rarely see a barn or house but the hay is rolled and ready to be hauled away.
Wherever I see an American flag today it is
flying at half-staff in memory of those who lost their lives on that tragic
9/11/2001. It is my generation’s Pearl Harbor; we will never forget where we
were when we first heard of the attacks.
Then, all of a sudden, appearing out of nowhere
I am in baseball player heaven, acre after acre, and row after row of tall
sunflowers. I can almost see the shells being spit out in dugouts from Little
League to the Majors.
At last I leave I-90 about 30 miles south of my
destination and there is nothing but wide-open prairie all around. I pass
through the smaller town of Ft. Pierre and cross the Missouri River to enter
Pierre, which is a mild geographic surprise. I did not know the Missouri flowed
through here.
The river is not the only thing that separates
the two towns. Pierre is in the Central Time Zone while Ft. Pierre is Mountain Time.
If you commute to work from Ft. Pierre to Pierre you have to get up an hour
earlier. That’s a long commute.
Thursday September 12 – Pierre, SD-Rapid City,
SD
Thirty-five percent of the work force in Pierre
is either city, state or federal government so I’m guessing while there may
have been some cuts, Pierre didn’t suffer during the recession as much as other
cities.
It is early morning and I am breakfasting in
Pier 347, home to the city’s only operating espresso machine and free Wi Fi.
Sitting at the table next to me is a small group and one man starts talking
about legislative sessions. My ears perk up. He is a tall, distinguished
looking white-haired gentleman and as he stands to leave I ask, “Excuse me sir,
are you a member of the legislature?”
“No,” he replies, “but I direct the legislative
staff. I’m Jim” That’s good enough for me. I explain my project and he is a
fount of helpful information.
“The legislature meets only in the winter,” he
explains, “so there aren’t many of us around.”
“What about the governor?” I ask hopefully.
“He might be around. We are probably the most
open state government in the country. Just walk on in to his office and ask to
see Stacy, his scheduler. If he’s there she can probably get you in for a few
minutes.”
Buoyed by this news I finish my espresso and
head straight for South Dakota’s magnificent state capitol building (Aren’t
they all?).
Inside, the capitol building, with all its
marble, gilded ceilings and shiny wooden trim, it’s like a giant mausoleum;
there is nobody in the lobby or under the rotunda, not even a State Trooper. I
find the governor’s office and two receptionists with warm smiling faces greet
me. There is no formal, authoritarian self-importance here. After explaining my
mission, one of the young ladies offers, “Have a seat and I’ll go get Stacy.”
Jim was right.
In just a minute or two a smiling Stacy comes
out with sincere apologies, “I’m sorry, the governor is in D.C. through
tomorrow but come with me. Let’s go see if the Lt. Governor is in.” Just like
that. Unfortunately, the Lt. Governor is likewise out of town but I am
nonetheless impressed with the helpful friendliness of the staff. I will later
find out that just about everyone else in Pierre is “not in.” I spend the next
90-minutes patrolling a virtually empty downtown with nary a useful interview
to be had. I make an executive decision to leave town.
Google Maps tells me Rapid City, South Dakota’s
second largest city (pop. 69,854 in 2012) is only 145 miles away – and, only 25
miles from Mt. Rushmore (on my agenda!). There is plenty of camping in the
area. Oh boy!
I head west on U.S. 14, across rolling hills,
the broad expanse of the South Dakota prairie and many more sunflower farms. I
will only have a short hop on I-90 and into Rapid City. In the meantime I am
entering, oops, leaving the town of Cotton (pop. 12!).
I get on I-90 and the hills become a little
bigger, their edges a little sharper. I am entering the Black Hills Country. I
can’t explain why but I’m not really looking forward to Rapid City. Maybe it’s
the name, if not boring, it sounds fictitious. I will learn quickly; Rapid City
is anything but boring.
Friday September 13 – Rapid City, SD
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| Sunset in The Black Hills |
The 1874 cry of, “There’s gold in them thar
hills!” led indirectly to the founding of Rapid City as a White man’s
settlement. Of course, The Lakota Sioux inhabited the land long before Western
Culture arrived. The Lakota call Rapid City “Fast Water Mni Luzahan” for nearby
Rapid Creek.
A group of disappointed but entrepreneurial
miners founded the city in 1876, originally calling it “Hay Camp.” With its
location on the eastern slopes of the hills, they marketed it as “Gateway to
the Black Hills. According to Wikipedia:
“Although the Black Hills became a popular tourist destination in the late 1890s, it was a combination of local efforts, the popularity of the automobile, and construction of improved highways that brought tourists to the Black Hills in large numbers after World War I, Gutzon Borglum, already a famous sculptor, began work on Mount Rushmore in 1927 and his son, Lincoln Borglum, continued the carving of the presidents' faces in rock following his father's death in 1941. The work was halted due to pressures leading to the US entry into World War II and the massive sculpture was declared complete in 1941. Although tourism sustained the city throughout the Great Depression of the 1930s, the gasoline rationing of World War II had a devastating effect on the tourist industry in the town, but this was more than made up for by the war-related growth.”
Farming, of course, was always part
of the local economy. Later came Ellsworth Air Force Base and the population
almost doubled. In the early 21st Century the Black Hills region was
enjoying a manufacturing boom. The Great Recession un-boomed the area but did
not kill it. Two major factories closed their doors during the recession and
put several hundred people out of work. It more than doubled the ridiculously
low unemployment rate to a little more than four percent, hence the relatively
minor impact on the area. This is where I came to like and respect the people
and the city, despite its contribution to the deterioration of the Sioux
Nation. More on that in a moment.
Destination Rapid City, a very
involved and active private downtown development group, refused to roll over.
Dan Seftner is president of Destination Rapid City. He displays a can-do
attitude that breeds success. He points out other times such as when the big
box stores were sucking the life out of downtowns around America. “It’s no
different today. If you were heavily leveraged to begin with and could not take
a setback then you were in trouble. If you weren’t, you could take advantage of
things and make them work for you on the other side of the coin.”
That is not just Seftner’s theory;
it is a truism taught in Economics 101 and the results are evident everywhere
in downtown Rapid City. Virtually every place I’ve visited so far has had its
share of closed and empty downtown stores. There is not one empty store here
that I can see. It is a vibrant downtown. “I’d say we are at least 95 percent
leased in the downtown area,” says Seftner.
The mid-morning streets are
spotlessly clean and crowded with locals and tourists. There are numerous cafes
and
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| John Adams |
restaurants with sidewalk seating, countless Western-themed shops, art
galleries, native crafts stores and amazing public art, much of it privately
funded. For example, there are all those presidents.
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| Thomas Jefferson |
About 15-years ago a group of
businessmen decided to use Rapid City’s proximity to Mt. Rushmore for an
ambitious project; they would seek private funding to create bronze statues of
every U.S. president and place them on downtown street corners. Thus, Rapid
City became the City of Presidents. The statues, either life-size or about
two-thirds scale, are remarkable likenesses of our nation’s leaders and the
tourists love ‘em. Throughout the morning I see families taking photos of
themselves next to their favorites.
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| James Madison |
Now, let’s talk about the Native
Americans in and around Rapid City. I spoke with a local NPR news producer who
told me the presidential statues initially created quite a controversy because
there was nothing to honor the great Lakota Chiefs. “We are currently standing
on Sioux Treaty Land,” he points out. Indeed, the only thing I saw even close
to honoring the Sioux was an unlabeled statue of a Lakota woman and her child.
Can you say “tokenism?”
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| Lakota Mother & Daughter |
Aside from the slights and tokenism
to the Lakota, there is much to like here. For one thing, there are many
Starbucks, always a factor for moi and, I just love Rapid City’s downtown. In
addition to the busy streets, restaurants, shops and presidents’ statues there
is an abundance of other public art, most of it pleasing to the eye. You can
almost feel the heart of this city thumping.
Sidebar:
Joisey and Coney Island in Rapid City?
And, finally, there are
unique individuals to be met – to me, they add color to the fabric of a vibrant city.
There’s “thirty something”
Susan Ricci from Wayne, New Jersey of all places, owning and operating a small
downtown museum dedicated to the American Bison. Not only that, for a while she
owned a bison ranch. Really?
This Italian/Jewish Jersey
Girl has been in Rapid City for 16-years. “I moved out here because I wanted to
work with the Native American Tribes,” she says, “and I got hired by, of all
things, a tribal bison preservation organization. They work with tribes all
across the country to restore the herds on their land.
“They hired me to do office
work but their development director quit and they just told me I was the new
development director. Then, I met and fell in love with a buffalo herd manager
from Montana and we had a little buffalo ranch here in South Dakota.”
“Oy vey,” I think to myself,
“her mother must’ve plotzed; It’s a shonda (a shame in Yiddush)!!!!”
Okay, it’s one thing to meet
a bison-lovin’ Jersey Girl in South Dakota but how about a street cart vendor
selling Nathan’s Famous (of Coney Island) Hot Dogs on a street corner? There he
was a 25-year young chap joyfully pushing the tube steaks.
“This used to be a part time
thing for me,” says Doug Christiansen, “but I made some bad choices at my other
job and they let me go so I started doing this full time. Best decision I ever
made!”
I’m astounded. “How the hell
did a 25-year old Rapid City boy end up selling Nathan’s Hot Dogs here on a
street corner?”
“I saw a guy selling ‘em on a
street corner and asked him if he wanted another guy selling ‘em on another
street corner. Now I’m the only guy selling hot dogs on a street corner. We
roll this thing around during the day to different locations and we’re doing
great.”
“But how did he come by
Nathan’s?” I press. “I know they’ve become a chain but they are usually
associated with Coney Island and New York.”
“I know and I’ve never been
out of Rapid City but everyone knows Nathan’s as a brand now,” he sagely
explains.
Ironically, when I hit the
local Safeway to stock up for the next week, I see a whole section of
refrigerated Nathan’s Hot Dogs in the deli section. Without hesitation I buy a
couple of packages.
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