The Fourth in Kranzburg

By Chad Coppess

Kranzburg's Fourth of July parade is one of the state's largest.

An unorganized celebration keeps Kranzburg hopping each July 4 as anywhere from 4,000 to 10,000 people descend on the tiny town 8 miles east of Watertown. “No one is really in charge,” laughs Dale Plunkett, owner of Kranzburg’s Tip Top Tavern. “If you want to be in the parade, you just line up on the east side of town.”

Over the years it seems that every well-known South Dakota politician has marched in the Kranzburg Fourth of July Parade, community bands have played and plenty of free beer has been handed out. In fact, beer is how the whole thing started in 1958 or ’59 when the late Charles Strang and Willie Kranz celebrated the town’s incorporation by driving around with a keg in the back of a pickup truck handing out free beverages.

Now the parade “kind of just happens,” says Carol Rinehart, Strang’s daughter. She and her sister Mary Ann Stahlke spot people they haven’t seen in years and agree it’s a community reunion.

“Three hundred and sixty-four days a year it’s a quiet little town,” Plunkett says. “Then everyone who has a connection comes.”

“It’s wall-to-wall people,” Stahlke adds. “And it hasn’t lost its momentum.”

Dale Plunkett and his mother Marge run Kranzburg's Tip Top Tavern.

Kranzburg was named for the Kranz family that still lives in the area. It is historically a Catholic town with streets named for saints and the large Holy Rosary Church dominating the skyline. The impressively ornate church was built the same year the town was founded and placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986. Its school served the community from 1906 to 2014. At one time so many students attended that they overflowed into the one-room community school in town.

That public school was the first in Codington County and the Strang family sisters have lovingly restored it over the last several years. Carol Rinehart, Mary Ann Stahlke and Eileen Lindner all attended the District 5 Kranzburg school, as did their mother and other siblings. Although their father Charles Strang did not attend the school, he served on the town board that met in the schoolhouse until a town hall was built next door. Before he died in 2015, he made it clear that he wanted the school preserved.

“We promised and a promise is a promise,” Rinehart says. “I really think our dad helped us even though he wasn’t here.”

Carol Rinehart (left), Mary Ann Stahlke and other Strang family members continued their father's wishes to preserve the Kranzburg public school.

So the sisters devoted one day a week to clearing out junk that had been stored in the building, scrubbing, sanding and painting. They discovered treasures like original books, posters and even artwork students had left in cabinets. They baked 300 rolls to raise funds and the Watertown Area Community Foundation provided a grant that helped put new shingles on the roof. Roofers Mark and Doug Kranz also repaired and painted the belltower.

Fourth of July parade attendees in 2022 got their first look at the restored school. “Everyone who came really appreciated it. Like us, they got a little nostalgic,” Rinehart says. Memories of Kranzburg when it boasted a grocery store, cheese factory, mink farm, the Kranz Hotel, a train depot, three bars and a liquor store are also collected in displays in the school.

Plunkett bought the Tip Top Tavern from his parents; his mother still works with him at the gas station/convenience store/Marge’s Diner/bar. In 1918 the Tip Top was built as a Standard Oil gas station at the corner of Highway 212 and County Road 3. Rebuilt, remodeled and repurposed over the years, it still occupies the original spot.

Community values are at the core of Kranzburg’s survival, according to Marge Plunkett. “It’s just a family community,” she says. “It’s home.”

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the March/April 2023 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.