Life on the open road in the Dakotas

Part 3: Crazy Horse and Pierre, South Dakota’s tiny capital

I had already fulfilled a kid’s lifelong dream by finally visiting Mount Rushmore, the national memorial in South Dakota’s Black Hills, and my next stop was supposed to be Pierre, the state capital back to the east. But since coming to Mount Rushmore, I had learned about a tantalizingly new—to me, at least—tourist site not far away, less than 20 miles by road: the Crazy Horse memorial.

The still-in-progress Crazy Horse Memorial, 17 miles from Mount Rushmore, South Dakota. Public domain photo

When it is finished, the Crazy Horse Memorial expects to become the world’s second-tallest statue, more than 560 feet high. (The tallest at present is in Gujarat, India, the Statue of Unity, at 597 feet.) It was begun in 1948, the year before I was born, and by 2003, had progressed at least enough to display the head and face of the famous Indian warrior—which were dedicated in 1998.

The sculpture is interesting to look at, but there isn’t that much to see—yet, anyway. Its history is long and frustratingly complicated. You can learn much more about that at any number of websites, including the Wikipedia article [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Horse_Memorial ], which describes Crazy Horse himself as follows:

Crazy Horse was a Native American war leader of the Oglala Lakota. He took up arms against the U.S. Federal government to fight against encroachments on the territories and way of life of the Lakota people. His most famous actions against the U.S. military included the Fetterman Fight (21 December 1866) and the Battle of the Little Bighorn (25–26 June 1876). He surrendered to U.S. troops under General George Crook in May 1877 and was fatally wounded by a military guard, allegedly while resisting imprisonment at Camp Robinson in present-day Nebraska.

According to that article, Oglala Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear began negotiations in the 1930s with the Polish-American sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski, who worked on Mount Rushmore under the better-known sculptor, Gutzon Borglum. He informed Ziolkowski, "My fellow chiefs and I would like the white man to know that the red man has great heroes, too.”

Still, it then took until 1948 for Ziolkowski just to begin the privately-financed project, located on Thunderhead Mountain, on private lands in Custer County. He expected the project to take 30 years. But after his death in 1982, his widow and children continued the project, which delights tourists for its sheer size—the face alone is 80 feet high, larger than any of the Mount Rushmore faces—and its imaginative rendering in the models … with the warrior pointing in the direction of his tribal lands.

The model of what a finished Crazy Horse Memorial may one day look like. Public domain photo

I was astounded to take it in—even if it does require an active imagination. The memorial will probably not be finished in this century, although in 2022, “the hand, arm, shoulder, hairline, and top of the horse's head were estimated to be finished by 2037,” or perhaps sooner, if donations permit. The non-profit Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation continues to solicit donations from the public to finance the project.

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From the Crazy Horse Memorial to Pierre, South Dakota’s comparatively diminutive state capital, the highway runs for about 200 miles, depending on the route you choose. One of the few state capitals still not served by an Interstate highway, Pierre is a modest city in size, and not growing much—still fewer than 15,000 residents in 2010 and 2020, according to the latest U.S. censuses. (Only Montpelier, Vermont, is smaller, at 8,000 residents in 2020.)

But Pierre is justifiably proud of its traditions and history. If most people still mis-pronounce the name—it is PEER, please! (not the French pronunciation), say the locals—they will not forget it once they visit. I spent a night there and a day touring the sites, including the wonderful and distinctive, nearly-a-century-old state capitol (in 2003). That alone is worth the trip.

Then there is the smaller town of Fort Pierre (population 2,000), just across the Missouri River, which dates back to 1832, when a trading post was established there.

I did have a helpful tour guide—the director of South Dakota’s adult basic education program, Marcia Hess, had suggested to me in Sioux Falls that I should see the capitol, at least—and the weather was certainly agreeable in early July, even a little warmer than normal. As in Copenhagen, where I had spent two happy years in the Foreign Service, the South Dakota summers seem shorter than in my native North Carolina—but can be almost as hot, which was a little surprising.

But soon enough, after two nights in Pierre, I was on my way to my final destination: Bismarck, another 200-plus miles north. Before I got there, however, I would be required to make one more very touristy stop, just across the North Dakota state line in little-known Strasburg.

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North Dakota state road map, with Bismarck in boldface in center south. Public domain map

If you did not grow up hearing accordionist Lawrence Welk’s music, whose variety show dominated Saturday nights on TV in North Carolina, you may not have known he was born in North Dakota near a tiny town called Strasburg, just over the state line from South Dakota—off Highway 83, which runs from Pierre, South Dakota, to join I-94 east of Bismarck.

According to the Wikipedia entry, the Lawrence Welk Birthplace is “officially called the Ludwig and Christina Welk Farmstead … restored and run by local volunteers including Lawrence Welk's niece Edna Schwab.” Welk’s parents were German-speaking Catholic immigrants from a part of what was then Russian Ukraine, near the current city of Odesa. In the early 1890s, they left Ukraine to settle near Strasburg, where son Lawrence was born in 1903— the sixth of nine children.

He learned to play the accordion from his father, and borrowed the $400 from his father to buy his first accordion. He soon became a successful bandleader, despite family disapproval, moving to River Forest, Illinois, in the 1940s, about the time his parents died. Finally settling on the name Lawrence Welk and His Champagne Music Makers, his musical variety show began its near 30-year run on ABC in 1955, with my parents among his biggest fans.

It seems Welk was neither terribly attached to nor fond of his family house, and reportedly refused to contribute any funds specifically toward restoring the family homeplace—even if he did freely give money to the town of Strasburg and other charities. Strasburg had fewer than 600 residents in 2000, and Welk never even visited the place after his parents died; some even say he hated the farm, after spending an unhappy childhood there. But others chose to capitalize on the success of Strasburg’s most famous native son.

Bandleader Lawrence Welk’s birthplace near Strasburg, North Dakota. Photo courtesy Roadsideamerica. com.

The privately-financed renovation was completed by 1992, the year Welk died, and until 2014, was run as a local museum, with volunteers showing off the homespun exhibits—including a mannequin of a bewigged Welk himself in a hayloft. Outside, boomboxes (and a stereo system inside) play Welk’s unique blend of wholesome family music and perky polka dance tunes. His original accordion was acquired and donated, and a life-size cardboard cutout of Welk himself —nicknamed “Mr. Wunnerful,” after his catch-phrase—greets visitors in the somewhat cramped dining room.

Thousands of paying guests actually visited the homestead in the two decades while it was privately operated, before it was sold to the Historical Society of North Dakota by his remaining relatives. I almost did not get there, however, falling victim to what I assumed was a practical joke—removing the directional signs on US 83 northbound that pointed to the homestead. After driving a few more miles than I guessed I should, I turned around and retraced my route, only to find the southbound side of the highway showed the turnoff with professional signs. (I wondered if North Dakotans were simply disadvantaging traveling South Dakotans …)

On the day I visited, there were just a handful of tourists to compete with in the neat but tiny rooms of the house. But just after I got out of my car, I saw a small busload of students arrive—and quickly learned they were on a field trip from a day-case center for students with various kinds of disabilities, including wheelchair users. Unfortunately, the main house was not really equipped to move wheelchairs easily inside the house—so I ended up volunteering at one point to help a chaperone squeeze a student’s chair through a narrow doorway. I didn’t mind at all—but began to wonder about safety regulations.

One of the main attractions was Lawrence Welk’s upstairs bedroom, period furnished to reflect the 1910s, accessible only by a narrow outdoor staircase in a second building, as I recall. (The wheelchair rider did not want to risk that climb, thank goodness!) More accessible, as it turned out, were the summer kitchen, the barn, a granary, a windmill, a blacksmith shop, and the Lawrence Welk celebrity outhouse (!).

The Welk Farmstead outhouse stands alone and unused these days. Photo courtesy roadsideamerica.com.

I bought my mother a framed print of the original sod house—where the Welks lived while building the farmhouse, apparently—but she was not particularly impressed, as I recall.

Then it was off to the Big City—Bismarck, population 55,000 at the time, second largest in North Dakota—and rejoining my friends from the GED Testing Service with tales to curl their ears of my adventures on the open road.

Next time: Don’t sell Bismarck short—and visit Teddy Roosevelt, brought back to life in Medora!