We’re adding a new contest to our Web site. We’ll call it Know Your County Courthouses, or if David Letterman sues us for copyright infringement we’ll change the name to Where’s Yeller? Of course, all you have to do is be the first to guess the name of the county where the courthouse in our picture [...]

We often get memoirs written by South Dakotans, but none have had hair-raising stories about running from revenuers. Leona Pietz recently sent us her book, Memories of a Bootlegger’s Daughter. It’s about helping her father make moonshine on their farm southeast of Parkston in the late 1920s. As she tells it, times were tough. Her dad [...]

As we explore South Dakota, we are constantly pointed by local people toward burial places with interesting stories. Here in Yankton County, there’s a high hill with a big boulder at the top. Local lore says a bar owner shot a man who broke into his tavern in the 1950s, and then recruited some of his [...]

Perhaps the best thing about green tomatoes is that you can only cook with them for such a short time each year that you probably won’t grow tired of their taste. We just had a conversation with Grant Peterson, host of Depot Radio’s Afternoon Smorgasbord, regarding South Dakota food traditions. We were joined by Steve [...]

Thanksgiving is just around the corner. You can almost smell the aroma of turkey and pumpkin pie wafting through the air. Last week, at a party we attended, small pumpkin cheesecakes were served. They were delicious and a nice break from traditional pumpkin pie. Since the cheesecakes are small, they have the added benefit of [...]

WHAT MAKES AN artist? Sensitivity? Sense of color? A flair for design? Four paws? Don Theye, a seasonal employee at Bear Country U.S.A., raised that question in the Black Hills last summer when he entered a painting into the Central States Fair that was created by an 8-month-old bear cub [...]