What Makes Hecla?

By Bernie Hunhoff

The Hecla City Bar offers a variety of apparel to visitors, as modeled by (from left) Terry and Diana Ulmer and Mary Freudenthal.

Outside influences shape the little town of Hecla, a tradition that dates to the last ice age. These days, a million winged and feathered guests migrate through the lakes and marshes south of town in the spring and fall. Humans follow the ducks and geese, and often find their way to the Hecla City Bar, where they traditionally pin dollar bills to the tiled ceiling and post photos of big fish on a “brag wall” near the door.

Hang around the bar and you eventually get a history lesson of the town. Its name comes from Hekla, Iceland, home to a stratovolcano. January Jones, a Hollywood actress who gained fame as Betty Draper in Mad Men, grew up here in the 1980s. A young couple, the Pioskes, operate an award-winning butcher shop across the street; sometimes on Friday nights they bring over a grill and cook ribs for everyone.

“It’s a pretty friendly town,” says Jess Monsen, who once ran the bar and now serves as the town’s deputy clerk.

Monsen says North Dakota is just 4 miles to the north, which explains the North Dakota State University Bison flags in some yards. “We’re pretty split between the Bison and the SDSU Jackrabbits.”

What about the Coyotes?

“I don’t even know what that is,” she quips. This is north country.

Trailers, tractors and other antique keepsakes decorate the yards of Hecla residents.

Hecla does feel like a town with a culture all its own. Jim Bauer, a woodworker who arrived from North Dakota as a youth in the 1960s, says the town has persevered even as many of its institutions have gone.

“There were 46 in my high school class in 1969,” he says. Today a memorial marker and bell are the only reminders that there was a school, which closed in 2002. Most of the downtown stores have been shuttered (though the butcher shop occupies three connecting buildings) and even some churches have left.

“Our Catholic church has closed,” Bauer says. “If I was rich, I would have bought the building and put up a big screen TV and broadcast the Sunday Mass, but I suppose the bishop wouldn’t have liked that.”

Bauer planned to parlay his woodworking skills into another enterprise for Hecla, but big business blocked him. “I was hoping to become a millionaire making caskets, and I started to build them, but the funeral home industry said I didn’t have enough liability insurance, so I never really got started.”

Weather is also not always friendly. As one of South Dakota’s northernmost communities, Hecla is among our coldest places in winter. Average January lows are barely above zero.

One asset that bishops, business tycoons and even Jack Frost cannot take from Hecla is the 21,498-acre Sand Lake Refuge that stretches for miles south of town. Fed by the James River, which flows down from North Dakota, the marshes and lakes — created when Ice Age glaciers melted 11,000 years ago — are a paradise for migratory birds and wildlife.

Hecla woodworker Jim Bauer keeps a collection of vintage lanterns in his shop at Fourth and Oak, including relics from trains, buckboards, police wagons and military vehicles.

Hunters and anglers, including many from North Dakota and Minnesota, make annual treks to the refuge. Most of the sportsmen stay at local lodges like Ruenz’s Roost or the Flatland Flyways, but others have bought homes and converted them to hunter’s cabins.

Monsen, the deputy clerk, says absentee ownership isn’t as controversial in Hecla as in mountain towns of the Black Hills. “Housing goes in cycles here,” she explains. “At times there isn’t a house to be found, and then a few years later there’ll be lots of homes for sale and not a buyer in sight.”

Refuge officials estimate that more than 75,000 people arrive every year to enjoy the outdoor paradise. They include birdwatchers, hunters and anglers. “There are three or four bridges near town that are the easiest places to fish from,” says Monsen, “and in spring and summer they might all be busy.” Northern and walleye are the prime catches.

Hecla culture today is a blend of farming, fishing and waterfowl. Antique farm machinery and duck/goose signage are common yard décor, along with the Bison signs from that university in nearby North Dakota.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the January/February 2025 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.