First look at artwork for Mystery of the Maize

With another children’s book on the way from award-winning authors David Volk and Mark Meierhenry, it is time to give you a glimpse at some of the artwork from illustrator Marty Two Bulls.

Special Offer on books for the Holidays

SDSHS Press is offering a buy one, get one half price special offer on certain books this holiday season, so check out the options!

Sneak Peek at the Next Prairie Tale

Donald F. Montileaux is illustrating the 5th Prairie Tale, which will be The Enchanted Buffalo. The book won’t be out until next September, but here is a sneak peak at an early draft of the cover.

Small-town Boy, Small-town Girl soon to be released

Just to whet your appetite, you can now download a small excerpt from this great new book from the South Dakota State Historical Society Press.

A Marvelous Hundred Square Miles, part 12

To buy A Marvelous Hundred Square Miles: Black Hills Tourism, 1880-1941 so that you can read the whole thing in its hardcover beauty, click on this link.

Giving up hopes for a resolution, Albert Michaud assigned his interest in the claims to his brother Frank and moved to Canada about 1910. Frank Michaud and his family continued to ask for reimbursement from the government, and the Forest Service debated the matter internally. If Michaud’s claims were valid, he could have obtained patent to the property and the government might have been obligated to purchase the land. On the other hand, if investigation showed that the Michauds had tried to acquire Jewel Cave for development as a tourist attraction through the use of a mineral entry, the claims would be fraudulent. In that case, Michaud would lose any rights to the property and the government would owe him nothing. Apparently, Frank Michaud never applied for a patent to the land, and as a result the Forest Service did not formally investigate the claims, leaving their status in question.

The Forest Service did not consider mining activity under Michaud’s mining claims to be in contradiction with the government’s interests in the monument and continued to allow the family access to the cave so that they could perform annual assessment work necessary to maintain the claims. Thus, the agency avoided interference with legitimate mining activity that might have become a factor in the controversy. The Forest Service was unwilling to extend those rights, however. According to Frank Michaud’s son, the agency refused to enter into a lease that would have allowed the family to operate the cave as an attraction. Although the cave was open to visitors for periods of time, the confusion over the claims, the proximity of Wind Cave as a similar attraction, and the agency’s emphasis on timber and land management discouraged the Forest Service from further developing Jewel Cave or tourists’ services there.

Similar to the circumstances surrounding the establishment of Wind Cave National Park, part of the impetus for the creation of Jewel Cave National Monument was its potential attraction for tourists. The Michauds, trying to expand that potential, lost control of the cave. The Forest Service, frustrated by the legal issues and less interested in providing public access to the lands under its jurisdiction than in managing its resources, did little to promote the site. Under federal control, Jewel Cave received even less attention than Wind Cave. While Wind Cave superintendents struggled to maintain the national park and the United States Forest Service protected but did not promote the national monument, state lawmakers created a new game reserve in Custer County that would eventually become one of the country’s largest state parks and would play a more significant role in the development of Black Hills tourism than did any of the federally designated areas.

South Dakota’s first state park was the outgrowth of a state game reserve created largely through the efforts of Peter Norbeck, one of South Dakota’s best-known politicians. In 1905, Norbeck and two friends were the first people to drive an automobile across western South Dakota to the Black Hills. Norbeck’s visit there inspired him to promote the creation of a game preserve in the southern Black Hills and, in larger terms, to open the beauties of the Hills to motorists. In the process of pursuing that goal, he acquired beliefs and attitudes about park design and services for tourists that had a strong impact on the growth of tourism in the region.

Peter Norbeck was born in Clay County, Dakota Territory, in 1870 to Scandinavian immigrant parents. Although his father was a lay minister, the family’s farm was the primary source of income, and the Norbecks depended on their oldest son to help with the work. Consequently, Peter Norbeck received little formal education, attending rural school for a few months each year and then three terms at the new University of Dakota. He was intellectually curious, however, and always a voracious reader. In 1894, he and a cousin began an artesian well-drilling business that eventually made Norbeck a wealthy man and a well-known one in the new states of North and South Dakota.

Norbeck entered state politics during the Progressive period, an era from about 1890 to the 1920s. Although he was a successful self-made businessman, both his personal background and business interests were bound to agriculture, and he supported Progressive laws that restrained the power of corporations and railroads and favored farmers. In 1908, he ran for the office of state senator from Spink County on the Republican ticket. The primary election was marked by a division between Progressives and Stalwarts that constituted a deep rift in the Republican party. Although he was unpolished and largely unschooled, Norbeck’s energy, work ethic, and political instincts served him well. He won the election in 1908 and was reelected in 1910 and 1912. In 1914, he successfully ran for lieutenant governor, and in 1916, he was elected governor by a wide margin.

In addition to agricultural issues, Norbeck was also vitally interested in conservation and wild-game protection. In 1910, the state took title to lands in the southern Black Hills in lieu of state school sections located within the national forest. This agreement between the state and federal governments gave South Dakota jurisdiction over a rugged, heavily timbered area in Custer County that the state legislature designated a state forest. In 1913, with Norbeck’s prompting, John Parks, state senator from Custer County, introduced legislation creating a state game preserve on the land. The legislation passed the senate, but failed in the house until Norbeck suggested that some supporters of the preserve vote for a pending temperance law in exchange for votes in favor of the game-preserve measure.

Authors in the media

Suzanne Julin, author of A Marvelous Hundred Square Miles: Black Hills Tourism, 1880-1941, was on South Dakota Public Radio yesterday. Click on this link to listen to her interview. The interview covers the last 10 minutes of the show.

And David Wolff’s book on Seth Bullock was the subject of a feature story in South Dakota Magazine. Click on this link to read the story.

A Marvelous Hundred Square Miles, part 11

We continue our serialization of A Marvelous Hundred Square Miles: Black Hills Tourism, 1880-1941 by Suzanne Julin this morning. This teasing tantalizer does not have long left so enjoy these last few chunks, and then you’ll have to buy the book to read the rest!

The presence of the national forests in the Black Hills offered residents and tourists opportunities to enjoy the scenery and to camp, fish, and hunt. Some people built cabins under the leasing law of 1915, which allowed the public to lease lots for recreational structures as well as for hotels, stores, and other services that catered to tourists. The Forest Service made little effort to promote the establishment of such services, however, emphasizing timber and land management, not public access. The Antiquities Act of 1906 allowed the president to establish national monuments to protect natural and built features of historic, prehistoric, and scientific value located on public lands and gave various federal agencies, including the Forest Service, responsibility for monuments created on lands under their control. This charge did not necessarily extend to supervision or development, and often the only protection accorded monuments were signs posted at the sites to warn the public against collecting and vandalism. The presence of vast tracts of public lands meant most of the earliest designated monuments were in the West, and as automobile tourism increased, the existence of the monuments helped pull motorists in that direction.

To the United States Forest Service, then, fell the supervision of Jewel Cave in the southern Black Hills. The development of this cave, located about twelve miles west of Custer, South Dakota, had repeated the pattern started at Wind Cave of conflicts between early developers and local citizens concerned with degradation of resources. At the turn of the century, Frank and Albert Michaud, two brothers who had recently settled in the Custer area, discovered a cave entrance so small that neither of them could enter it. They enlarged the opening, explored the cavern, and decided the crystals within had no value as minerals but could be a lure for tourists and a source of revenue as specimens. The Michauds took on a partner, Charles Busche, and filed a mining claim on the property, calling it Jewel Lode, in September 1900. The Michauds subsequently filed other mineral claims in the same area, and another partner, Bertha Cain, acquired an interest in these properties.

Over the next several years, Busche and the Michauds explored the cave, established passages in it, built a wagon road to the site, and constructed a two-story log building there. The building, probably designed as a hotel and dining room for tourists, featured a rustic but imposing two-story front porch with round arches and decorative detail suggestive of the Stick-style architecture popular in the late 1800s. The men promoted the structure as the site of the “Jewel Cave Dancing Club” in 1902. Despite these efforts, as well as some local advertising, the cave failed to draw enough people to make the enterprise worthwhile. The site was difficult to reach, and Wind Cave was better known and more easily accessible. Subsequently, Busche sold his interest in the cave to Frank Michaud in 1905, and at some point, the brothers apparently devised a new scheme to increase the attractions of the site: the development of a game preserve.

The Michaud brothers garnered some political support for the idea, proposing the withdrawal of an area of sixty square miles from the Black Hills National Forest, including over sixteen thousand acres of timber. Local residents, however, were not enthusiastic about such a withdrawal, suggesting that opportunities for general development in that area of the Black Hills were better served if timber sales and grazing continued. A report produced at the time of the proposal stated that the cave was not scientifically significant because the same variety of specimens were available in Yellowstone National Park. It further concluded that the proposed area was not large enough for a viable game refuge and recommended that the area be designated a national monument instead. Unfortunately for the Michauds, the interest generated by the game-preserve proposal, which threatened the interests of other local residents, undermined their attempts to develop a profitable tourist attraction. As a national monument, the cave and its environs would remain under the jurisdiction of the Forest Service, and its grazing and timber resources would still be available to the larger public. President Theodore Roosevelt signed a proclamation citing Jewel Cave’s “scientific interest” and designating it a national monument on 8 February 1908.

Immediately, the Michaud brothers and a partner Bertha Cain began asking for compensation for the loss of their claims as well as for the improvements they had made to the property. The Forest Service questioned the legality of the claims, citing a decision in the Wind Cave litigation that held that land claimed because of the presence of a cave and which yielded minerals which could be sold only as “curiosities” did not meet the definition of mineral land in mining law. Although the Antiquities Act said monuments created under the law were subject to valid claims, the validity of the Michaud claims could be questioned because of the family’s use of the property.

A Marvelous Hundred Square Miles, part 10

This is part 10 of the serialization of the first chapter of A Marvelous Hundred Square Miles: Black Hills Tourism, 1880-1941 by Suzanne Julin and published by the South Dakota State Historical Society Press.

Ownership issues that plagued the early development of Wind Cave and helped lead to its establishment as a national park also affected other areas destined to become tourist attractions. The presence of national forest lands and the administration of the United States Forest Service were crucially important to the development of the tourism industry in the Black Hills. President Grover Cleveland created the Black Hills Forest Reserve in 1897 by the authority of the Forest Reserve Act of 1891. This reserve was unusual because it was established in proximity to significant settlement, compared to most forest reserves that were located in remote, unpopulated areas. The designation effectively removed from public use all timber and land not legally claimed in the reserve’s 967,680 acres, representing most of the timbered lands in the Black Hills region.

Black Hills residents were not pleased. They expected that the forest reserve would block individual access to the region’s resources and retard development. Shortly after the establishment of the reserve became public knowledge, thousands of local citizens gathered in Deadwood and protested. Such opposition in South Dakota and in other areas of the West led to modifications in the laws governing forest reserves. South Dakota Senator Richard F. Pettigrew, for instance, successfully sponsored legislation that placed restrictions on further forest reserve designations, allowed the filing of mining claims on forest lands, and permitted prospecting and cutting of timber for mining-related purposes. By requiring active management of forest reserves and opening them to managed use, including sale of timber, these laws revised the earlier policy of simply protecting the areas. Subsequent Interior Department administrative policies allowed grazing, farming, and road and irrigation development under controlled conditions. In 1905, jurisdiction over the forest reserves was transferred to the Forest Service. Subsequently, the term identifying all the reserves was changed to “national forest.” In 1910, President William Taft divided the Black Hills National Forest into a northern section, carrying the original name, with headquarters in Deadwood, and a southern section, designated the Harney National Forest, with offices in Custer.

The United States Forest Service, by the terms of its organic act of 1897, had the authority to manage the national forest lands for mixed uses, including recreation. Under Gifford Pinchot, who headed the agency until 1910, the Forest Service concentrated on the management and control of its resources, rather than making national forests accessible to the public or preserving scenic lands. Although Forest Service officials and foresters under Pinchot and his successor, Henry S. Graves, recognized the validity of the recreational use of the forests, they continued to see that use as a low priority. In 1915, Congress authorized leasing lands in the forests for summer homes and businesses to serve visitors, and in 1917, the Forest Service engaged Frank A. Waugh, a landscape architect, to investigate the recreational promise of the nation’s forests. The public’s utilization of the scenic and recreational resources of the national forests, however, remained relatively insignificant in terms of forest management until automobile travel brought more people to the areas.

That increase created a demand for services and amenities. In 1916, the Forest Service estimated that three million people had come to the national forests during the year; in 1925, visitation reached fifteen million. By then, fifteen hundred designated public campgrounds existed in the forests, about one-third of them enhanced by sanitary facilities, water supplies, and fireplaces. Many of these improvements, however, had been made by private or civic organizations. Although the Forest Service recognized and acted upon the needs of the increasing numbers of visitors, expansion of resources to serve them remained less important than other priorities and even controversial within the agency. Partially as a reaction to the creation of the National Park Service and its programs, the Forest Service’s attention to recreational use focused increasingly on wilderness management, including limited development in wilderness areas. Such policies served different purposes than the Park Service’s programs and therefore did not compete directly with that agency’s goals.