Dell Rapids, South Dakota

Yesterday was a three-state, three-Carnegie day cut short by a deeply foreboding black sky that unleashed a torrent of rain and hail.  I had to take shelter under the overhang of a garage of a house along the road when the storm finally unleashed itself.  The brunt of it passed in a few minutes and I was able to continue to Dell Rapids in a light rain six miles away.  I lingered in its Carnegie nearly until closing time at seven waiting for the rain to relent.  I had the option of the $109 Bismarck Inn and Suites or the town park.  The tent as always prevailed.  

The sky had begun to clear and lighten as I initially set up my tent under a gazebo out of the drizzle before transferring it to the grass.  Though I was a little damp, the relatively warm sixty degree temperature kept me from feeling too chilled.  I quickly warmed up in the dry tent.  It was the first town park I’d stayed in that I shared with other campers, if they could be called such, as the two other occupied sites appeared to be semi-residents of the park with RVs and a pick-up. 

I began the day much more rustic, camped beside a quarry in Iowa just south of the Minnesota border.  After crossing into the land of ten thousand lakes it was twelve miles to Luverne and its dandy, corner-entrance Carnegie, the first of these travels.  It now serves as the Carnegie Cultural Center.  

The road was wet from an early morning rain I was lucky to miss, though periodic jolts of lightening threatened it could resume at any moment.  It held off as I pedaled thirty miles southeast back into Iowa and then into South Dakota once again for the examplary Carnegie in Sioux Falls, the largest city in the state with a population of 200,000.

Its Carnegie is now the City Hall with space for the City Council and City Clerk.  It dated to 1902 and included “Free to the Public” on its facade, which hadn’t been necessary on the later Carnegies, as in time it came to be understood. The Carnegie portrait was enshrined above a fireplace.

Across from the portrait was a painting of the library in all its glory.  A painting of the library by a local is almost as common a feature of Carnegies as the portrait and always worth a close look.

A large building across the street took the name of Carnegie as well, calling itself the Carnegie Condos.  When I saw it first before the actual Carnegie I feared it was the Carnegie, and I had a sense of deflation, as it didn’t have the majesty I was anticipating and appeared as if it had been greatly altered to turn it into a building for people to live in.  I was relieved and revived when I glanced across the street and saw the distinguished, noble building facing it.  Now that was what I had come for.

The Carnegie in Dell Rapids fifteen miles north, though considerably smaller, was another building of grandeur constructed of local stone.  It had an addition to its rear, but still allowed patrons to enter up the steps through its original entrance.  I didn’t see any rapids when I crossed the Big Sioux River as I entered the town even with the recent cloudburst, and asked where they might be.  The librarian said they could be seen from another road and really weren’t much. 

Such had been the case too in Sioux Falls and the day before at Rock Rapids in Iowa on the Rock River.  Towns on rivers seem to like to dramatize themselves with the rapids or falls appendage, usually due to a trifle of rough water nearby that Colorado river-runners would scoff at. In keeping with the spirit of self-aggrandizement, Rock Rapids, a town of 2,600 residents, in 2002 sought to bring attention to itself with a mural project, then anointed itself the “City of Murals.”   

There are more than thirty scattered around the town remembering historic events, such as a flood and an 1890s upraising against a bordello and three times hosting the start of RAGBRAI, the latest in 2007.  

Several honor prominent citizens—a couple of lawyers, an engineer, a mayor, a newspaper man.  Jerry Mathers of “Leave it to Beaver” fame lived in the town for a few years after being born in Sioux City, but not long enough to be immortalized on a wall.  

There was no Carnegie  in Rock Rapids. The nearest was in Sibley to the east.  It was a fine small town version of the Prairie School architecture , but it had lost some of its luster by the brick barrier placed in front of its original entrance, funneling patrons to the side to enter through its addition.  When I told the librarian I was visiting Carnegies she said she had just noticed in the local paper an ad for the sale of the Carnegie in Storm Lake for $199,000.  She thought that wasn’t too much to ask, though she wasn’t prepared to pay it.

The Carnegie in Sanborn twenty miles south could be on the market one of these days too.  It has been relegated to being a Community Center that doesn’t appear to being put to much use and has a very neglected, hangdog demeanor.  I had to ask an older woman leaving the post office where it was as the new library wasn’t open and Wikipedia had bungled its address, giving that of the new library and also giving it the designation of still being used as a library.

The Carnegie in Sheldon eleven miles west was a Carnegie at its best, though no longer a library.  It was now the Sheldon Prairie Museum.  It may have limited hours, but it remains in pristine condition.  With this set of three Carnegies all in towns beginning with the letter “S,” I have finished off the seventeen Carnegies in the northwest corner of Iowa and have just one more in the state to visit in Fayette in the east, which will be the last of the Carnegies of this trip after a few more in South Dakota and Minnesota.  I won’t complete either state, but I’m getting a good leg up on the twenty-three of those in South Dakota with the majority concentrated in the south and east of the state.