This is a production of SDPB.

Favorite part of Aberdeen?

I think it's the people.

Aberdeen was a great town to grow up in Go to the store and be careful on a Sunday, make sure you've got an hour because you're going to run into 15 people that you know I'm Aberdeen through and through.

The more I travel, the more I appreciate home.

This is a special place.

Join our crew as we paint a portrait of Aberdeen.

Greetings from Twist Cone here in Aberdeen.

Greetings from Aberdeen.

Greetings from Aberdeen.

Greetings from Aberdeen.

Glad to have you here.

Greetings from Aberdeen.

Greetings from Aberdeen.

Greetings from Aberdeen.

Greetings from the Dacotah Prairie Museum in Aberdeen.

Greetings from the ARCC Dance program here in Aberdeen.

Greetings from Aberdeen.

Greetings from Aberdeen.

Greetings from Aberdeen.

Greetings from Aberdeen.

Greetings from Aberdeen and greetings from the Brown County Fair.

Greetings from the most recognizable place in Aberdeen, South Dakota history, the Aberdeen Civic Arena.

Greetings from Aberdeen, South Dakota.

Dakota Life.

Greetings from Aberdeen is made possible with your membership in the friends of SDPB.

Thank you.

With support from Northern State University with more than 50 academic programs, faculty who know your name and career connections that start before graduation.

All in a safe, welcoming community.

Your degree is in Aberdeen - Northern.EDU and from Dacotah Bank.

Dacotah Bank actively supports activities, events and facilities all across Dakota Territory, combining local banking services with a broad range of financial products.

Go with integrity.

Go with Dacotah Bank and from the Aberdeen Area Chamber of Commerce is proud to serve the third largest city in South Dakota.

As a membership based organization, the chamber supports the Aberdeen business community through networking, resources and leadership on issues that impact members.

With additional support from.

Donors to the Explore South Dakota Fund support the production of local documentaries and other programs of local interest.

Presented by SDPB.

Friends of SDPB appreciates their support of this program.

Welcome to the Dakota Life and Greetings from Aberdeen!

In the show.

We'll go back before Lady Justice looked out over the land, before the railroad rumbled through downtown, before storybooks came to life, and before the sound of sneakers came to a basketball court.

Let's learn about Aberdeen's origin story at the Dacotah Prairie Museum.

We are located in the historic northwestern Bank building.

It was built in 1889 and served as a hub for businesses and chiropractors and doctors.

And in our basement we had a German printing press.

We had wholesale grocery storage as well.

Because the depot was kitty corner from us.

It was pretty vibrant and active until about mid-century.

Mid 20th century the owners of the building decided to gift it to Brown County for use as a museum.

Museum itself was established in 1969, officially then moved in to this building in 1970. looking at where the building is now and knowing where it came from.

It's pretty amazing, actually, and it's pretty special for us to be able to inherit it from those that came before.

And the purpose of mission of what we have, which is to preserve and share the stories of the Dakota prairie and its inhabitants, that has been a guiding light for us the entire time.

Yes, absolutely.

And we get to receive the compliments of the people that, you know, from the outside.

You know, you're building is so beautiful.

It's like, thank you.

Museum work is a little bit like South Dakota weather, you know, things pop up on the horizon you weren't expecting.

And sometimes we've got to change direction just slightly.

And so it's a very busy place.

The museum, like the town that it's in, has been busy right from the start.

Aberdeen's birthday is July 6th, 1881, and that's when the train first arrived But prior to that, in May, Samuel Jumper, who was working for an agent, came to claim the plat for his boss for downtown.

And guess where he landed?

Right here on this corner of Main Street in first.

ironic that when he arrived here he was met with a spring storm, you know, worried about his horses sheltering under his wagon and then waking up a South Dakota spring morning in May.

Everything's green.

There's water puddles all over the place.

And, he was struck with the beauty of the place, really.

And and he came here with plat map working for the railroad.

But whatever he encountered here, he ended up changing his plans.

And he stayed and became one of the early townspeople here.

And so something, something charmed him.

Maybe he just loves water, if you want to talk about water But the next block over the 100 block of Main Street was a slew when he got here.

So when we say Aberdeen was built on a slough, it's true.

It's also Town on a Frog Pond.

It's also been referred to as that as well.

Water, whether wells, sloughs, or Moccasin Creek that runs through town.

Has shaped life in Aberdeen since its founding.

We return to the topic of water throughout the show, but first let's learn more about the railroad and what it brought to the prairie.

Alexander Mitchell was the president of the Railroad, which is the depot and the first depot that is in Aberdeen, which is kitty-corner from us.

Alexander Mitchell was from Aberdeen, Scotland and Aberdeenshire.

So that is why we were named Aberdeen.

And if you notice, a lot of towns in our area are named in English names.

There's Bath and Groton, Duxbury.

So those names are English names.

the railroad really defined us to find our area, decided where towns would be, and honestly just pointed at the map and said the depot and the train will be here.

The line will go here.

For most people, the words we say and the lines we draw have little impact on the future.

But what happens when they get remembered?

There was a mapmaker.

And he heard about what was happening here in Aberdeen in early in 1881.

And he, like everybody else, was allured here and came here.

And his name was Walter Percy Butler, he was working for the Milwaukee Road as draftsman.

he drew a map of the Aberdeen area.

And he put in all the railroad lines that were coming into Aberdeen, as well as proposed ones, and there was almost ten spikes or spokes to this wheel that he envisioned, and he just wrote on it.

This is the hub of Dakota he started adding it on all the stationary things.

The city put it on the back of their letterhead.

and and it just got truncated to Hub City.

If you're going to come west from back east.

And these were these were college folks.

They were not ranchers.

They were people who are well educated.

And they came here because of the excitement.

One such educated adventure seeker was an actor in a playwright whose brother in law, T.C.

Gage, was an early resident of Aberdeen.

He wrote to his sister Maude and suggested they move west.

They did and moved into this house which still stands today.

And Frank started a shop called Baum's Bazaar.

which focused on frivolous toys and fancy wicker.

It failed in just 15 months.

A dreamer, he had several odd jobs before he took over a paper His writing took on a dark tone, calling for, "...the total annihilation of the remaining Indians."

Just days after Sitting Bull's murder and the massacre at Wounded Knee.

The paper would go out of business just months later.

But it was Frank's mother in law.

Noted Native American advocate and suffragette Matilda Gage who would have an indelible impact on Frank's career.

Later, she told Frank to submit to a writing contest stories with a moral arc, maybe a Dakota adventure, suggesting to perhaps bring in a cyclone.

Fodder, no doubt, for his future book, The Wizard of Oz, complete with a good witch said to be inspired by his mother in law.

let's learn more about Aberdeen's newspaper business.

in Aberdeen's early history, we had seven newspapers here in town, and they were very competitive.

They were very politically they were left aligned, right aligned in the middle, and ultimately coalesced into one newspaper called the Aberdeen Daily, which became the Aberdeen American News.

And that was the paper in this area for decades then within the last ten years, it just started declining and they started reducing staff, and they ultimately sold their building, liquidated everybody, and continued a daily newspaper operation with really no local people on the ground covering the community.

I had been publishing Aberdeen magazine for several years, and people just thought it was a natural fit for me to start a newspaper, which I had never worked at before in my life.

I'm not a journalist, but I knew all these former American News employees were in the fringes of our community, and so we started talking to them.

I got some good support from local folks wanting a newspaper as well, had no idea how to make money at it.

And we printed 4000 papers a week.

We gave them away for free, and then people started paying us for them.

we've been doing it over three years now.

And people people just love So it's been really rewarding.

And the great part about it is I still don't know anything about journalism and newspapers, but I have some of the greatest people in Aberdeen working on always say it's a great hometown.

It's just where I was born.

I left as a high school kid, came back as a business professional with no connection to the business community whatsoever.

I thought everybody at the Chamber of Commerce was so old, and now I'm too old to even go to their events, so.

one thing I really love is just the community support of our publications.

just incredibly rewarding for me to see the community talking about the same facts and the same experiences, having read what we've written and provided for them to, you know, better understand decisions being made in local governments as well as businesses that are operating.

And it's just been really amazing to be able to reflect the community into a daily news source that people are have become very accustomed accessing every day.

And that's just I can't see how it will ever stop now.

I mean, it's just it's just so important I feel we're on our way to painting a picture of your community.

And here's one of you.

That's awesome, I love it.

That's perfect.

But if we're going to paint a portrait of Aberdeen, there's no better place to do it than at than at the Brown County Fair.

A new tradition to celebrate America's 250th Birthday, contestants create an original piece of art depicting something patriotic with something Brown County Fair.

We each get four hours.

One canvas.

And the entire fair grounds to use as our studio.

than at the Brown County Fair.

it's pretty sleepy on the midway, as the morning air fills with the smell of funnel cakes.

and I walk around chatting with the locals and look for a good spot to paint.

I find my spot here, under the stars and stripes.

Near the Open Class Sheep Barn.

while the rest of the team finds other artists in action.

Plein air at the fair.

All I went to Northern State University, great school here in Aberdeen, and graduated with an art degree.

And I have my favorite job now, which is being a stay at home mom.

But I like to do art on the side.

So I have the Ferris wheel kind of in the middle of my painting, and then I have the carousel on the right, and then I'm painting my kids into the picture, also just their backs going to the fair, Meanwhile, my painting starts to take shape and I make a new friend.

then I saw you were kind of measuring stuff.

I'm like, he's painting something for sure and trying to make sure everything's particular.

So I had to come over and see what you're doing.

So I am kind of helping supervise open class sheep show.

We have people checking in today and tomorrow, and our show is on Saturday morning, I see sheep coming and going, but she's wearing a red shirt, and I figured it worked with the American flag here.

So what did I ask you to do?

You asked if I could bring a sheep out and act as if I was walking into the building, so which is actually pretty awesome, because people that I used to show sheep for are right.

They're going to clip their sheep.

So I was like, can I borrow that sheep from you guys real quick?

So it worked out good.

I thought it worked out pretty good too.

By the time I finished up, the Brown County Fair had filled up faster than a horse stall full of poop.

And it reminded me that so much of the fair is about the next generation following in the footsteps of those who came before.

For more on that, we met Eva when we turned in the paintings.

Hi, I'm Eva Vogel.

I live in Aberdeen, South Dakota.

So for the adult, they just had to make something and America 250.

But for the elementary division, you had to make, an America 250 in the future, like the next 250 years.

My piece is called, "Can We Change?"

It's like saying that we should choose the environment over technology to focus more in the future.

I think because it'd be a better future to, like, not have pollution in the air and like more like environment and not all tech focused.

Eva's artwork isn't the only one asking us to reckon with our country's past, present, and future.

Let's meet an artist whose painting is titled.

"The Brownest County Fair."

who usually paints with words, knowledge and legal precedent.

[speaking in Lakota language] Dani McQuillen.

Aberdeen, South Dakota.

This year is the 250th anniversary of the United States.

if I talk about Aberdeen in the Aberdeen region, from an American Indian angle, I could just say, well I don't have to talk to about white people for a hundred years Because nobody was here.

At that point, it was just all just Indians Unfortunately for us, we weren't resistant to a lot of diseases, so a lot of people died And then you saw all sorts of insidious policies that really did everything from literally suppressing religion.

The first police and courts on tribal land, one of their primary duties was to suppress religion to prevent people from practicing their religion.

there was also the land grab by any means, honestly it was just fraudulent.

Everyone knows From the Sioux Nation case that when the Black Hills were taken.

That was described as the most ripe and ranked case of dishonorable dealing in the history of America.

we have a very complicated American patriotism, that there's a lot of reason to be very angry and upset over what is essentially a genocide.

But at the same token, as many people who have lived in South Dakota for a long time also recognize that Indian country has just an incredibly high percentage of men and women who serve in the military, who have fought in wars, who fought in wars even before they were considered American citizens, and think the legacy of Aberdeen history, particularly with those two chiefs who were really active in this area, Drifting Goose and Waneta who had different approaches and resistance to the colonization and the encroachment and how to deal with the reality that colonization was just running over the people and the resources here.

you kind of saw two strategies, and I think there was a lot of merit to those two strategies in modern times.

Right.

The first strategy came from Chief Waneta.

Born just a few miles north of present day Aberdeen.

Windows father had strong relationships with British trappers, who said the Great Spirit sent them to help tribes fend off American settlement.

one at a fort for the British in the War of 1812, where he got his title The Charger, where even after several gunshot wounds, he went forward and killed seven soldiers in hand to hand combat.

After the war, he became a captain in the British Army, met King George II, and spent several years in his court before returning home, assuming the role of chief after his father was killed by the Chippewa.

He led his people in the decimation of their band, but Waneta received a vision during the Sundance of 1820, he was changed.

He became a negotiator, a diplomat, and a deal maker.

To Dani, windows approach became.

one of I'm going to collaborate more.

I'm going to be more interested in figuring out how to work with with the people around me.

I can see what's coming.

I'll sign treaties because I think we need to preserve land and things like that.

Then you saw the other strategy, which is, I'm just going to resist you guys.

And I love strategy from Drifting Goose because he was more subversive.

You're putting up stakes to survey a railroad.

You're trying to do development here.

I'm just going to disrupt it rather than fighting people.

I'm going to destroy things that allow you to advance into these areas.

you have Drifting Goose over here.

It's like I'm never signing a treaty.

I'm never agreeing to this.

And I'm also going to be disruptive, but not in an overtly, physically violent way against other humans.

I think both of those men exemplified the type of adaptation of what they were trying to do to survive and what was happening to them.

And we can learn a lot of really powerful lessons from that around the Aberdeen area, but they can resonate everywhere, right?

You can try to survive by adapting and trying to get along with people that are around you and that all the way over to the lessons we learned from Drifting Goose, which were there is more than one way to skin a cat to resist what is happening to you, And I think both of those strategies can serve us well if we think about it.

It's amazing that they were both, you know, working in and around the Aberdeen area for, for much of their lives.

So I think there's a lot of power in that, that those are lessons from hundreds of years ago that can serve us today as we continue to try to grow and improve and strengthen our nations.

To grow in strength in Aberdeen today, leaders work to tackle a long running issue.

For more on that.

We turn now to Jackie Hendry.

They say the economic development of a community relies on three things power, transportation, and water.

Here in Aberdeen, water has been a barrier to growth basically since its founding.

But we learned about an ongoing project that's looking to provide water for the city and the region all the way from the mighty Missouri River.

When you ask people about the water in Aberdeen, you hear a lot of this: [Off camera] "Thoughts about the water here."

Umm... I... well... It's terrible.

I, I have a filter.

I have for years.

I think it's greatly improved.

WEB water is an excellent water system.

I live just a little bit northwest of Aberdeen, about four miles, and I'm one of the lucky ones.

I'm on WEB water, so I drink all my water at home for the most part.

Let me put it that way.

WEB Water serves folks living outside the Aberdeen city limits.

Shane Phillips is WEB's general manager.

WEB stands for Walworth, Edmunds and Brown counties.

That's how we got the name.

Unlike the city water system, WEB sources its water from the Missouri River, managing flooding, runoff and the limited capacity in Aberdeen's water system has always been a challenge.

But who makes the decisions and who pays the bills has been a sore subject.

The city of Aberdeen and WEB I believe, have kind of a storied history as far as discussions and and trying to to work together in the past, and it's never really worked out.

And this time, I think we all realize that the need is too great and the consequences are too great to not work together.

The story of this partnership begins about a decade ago, as it became clear the region's water infrastructure couldn't keep up with the growing demand.

Within an 18 month period, WEB Water had requests to basically double its system, and we just had no ability to do that.

Meanwhile, Aberdeen Mayor Travis Schaunamann was seeing a similar challenge.

So on a daily basis, Aberdeen utilizes about 4 million gallons of water per day.

2 million of that is spoken for by two large industrial consumers.

So we simply can't continue to add these big ag processing type facilities without additional water.

We get almost all of our water from a shallow creek with a lot of ag runoff and a lot of sedimentation.

And so between quality and quantity, we were looking for possible new sources of water.

Covid was happening and there was ARPA funds available specifically earmarked for water projects.

The City of Aberdeen, WEB Water and BDM Rural Water ultimately partnered to form WINS.

It stands for Water Investment in northern South Dakota.

Together, they received $46 million in federal ARPA funds to expand water infrastructure.

Shane Phillips, who also sits on the Aberdeen Development Corporation's board, says it's crucial for future growth in the area.

A lot of times when we're discussing development opportunities, it's almost a three legged stool.

You have electrical, you have roads, infrastructure, rail that sort of, you know, getting the services in and out.

And then you have water.

And right now our three legged stool is teetering on two legs.

We have we have the roads, we have the rail, we have the electrical capacity, we don't have the water.

And so without that third leg, the stool does not stand.

Aberdeen sits about 100 miles away from the Missouri River.

Expanding the region's existing water infrastructure to source from the river is no small feat.

The project is likely to take decades and up to $1 billion, but the work is already underway.

We've completed a 6 million gallons a day water treatment upgrade to WEB's existing treatment plant.

We've completed 14 miles, a 49.5in water line to get the water from the river to the treatment plant, and then further beyond.

Aberdeen isn't the only community in the state looking to the Missouri River to solve their water woes.

Responsible stewardship of the river is top of mind for many.

Shane Phillips is mindful of the future, both for the river and the communities that rely on it.

As far as you know, water managers in general, I think we are more focused now on not what's the plan for the next year or the next five years.

We are focused on what's the plan for our next 50 years, what's the plan for our next 100 years?

All of these infrastructure projects, especially water, they take a lot of time and a lot of money, a lot of dollars to complete them.

And I mean, they could take upwards of 30, 40, 50 years to complete.

So we need to start planning for that now so we don't miss these opportunities in the future.

now lets see how one local business is taking water, adding beans, and creating community.

I wanted to be a person with a mission.

my sister was the same.

We started the business together.

We just wanted to make the world a better place.

when we were kids, we would go to different coffee houses when we were on vacation and started like pointing out things that we really liked about coffee houses, my sister and I. And it started saying, when we have our coffee house, we want tables like that, or we want, you know, an area like this, or the menu will look like this in our coffee house.

And never really thought we were going to have a coffee.

I was a kid talk.

Right?

So when we graduated from college, we just said, oh, we always talked about coffee House and all the pieces just fell together.

so we just kind of dove into this business thing and alongside of it Made these decisions were really bad business decisions, you know, after about five years of not making any money at this business plan, we were like, what?

What do we do?

But we just saw the positive things that were happening in our community and all the positive things that were happening in people's lives.

And we said, we can't, can't throw in the towel yet.

you know, I'm an artist and musician, so just naturally, I wanted to have a place in the walls for artists to to be able to hang their stuff.

And a stage where people could hop up and play some music and where people could collaborate together and do music together.

so we made that an important part of the coffeehouse from the beginning.

And what we didn't realize is not only were artists and musicians coming out and taking advantage of that, but some folks would look up and say, maybe I could do something.

because they had a place where they if they did, if they pulled it off, they'd have a place to come and and and perform.

Right.

So not only did we pull out artists and musicians, people were identifying as artists and musicians because there was an opportunity for them.

people started playing and collaborating and band started forming, and people were in each other's bands the artists were involved with music and the music with the art.

And then filmmaking hopped on and we started making films.

And so it was a real, exciting time of music and art and still going to this day.

We went for years doing our best to, to be the best business we could be.

But our vibe was always nonprofit.

We were always looking out for folks and taking care of people and taking care of social problems kind of our core group of folks who called the fallout.

We decided to be more intentional about including not just people with disabilities, but anybody who was on the fringe, anybody who seemed like they needed a place to belong.

We started doing that.

And so we got a real flood of people with disabilities that started hanging out.

so someone said, hey, this work that you're doing here, there's lots of grants out there for what you do.

And I knew nothing about grants or nonprofits, but I just started looking at other nonprofits and kind of copying and pasting and put it all together.

And 2010.

We became a nonprofit, The Fallout Creative Community, and it just really naturally goes alongside all of the things that the Red Rooster does.

eventually I think the community recognized the positive things that we were doing really started supporting us.

As a matter of fact, when we knew that we weren't going to stay in the building down in the corner, we moved down the street into this new location.

We set up a GoFundMe and the community support us.

we were able to raise $25,000.

there was no big gifts.

The biggest one was like a thousand bucks.

So it was a lot of people who just thought that we were doing the right thing.

They thought we were good for the community and wanted us to land somewhere and continue on.

So here we are 30 years later, and it shouldn't be.

That's not how coffee houses work.

The life of a coffee house is roughly five years.

But as far as the the community that that was formed around, all the things that we have been doing for the last 30 years, I could have never imagined how rewarding and exciting and opportunities to impact people's lives.

My life has been impacted, and I have been able to turn around and use this place and this machine here to as a tool to impact other people's lives.

Join us on part two of Dakota Life.

Greetings from Aberdeen.

As we dive into Moccasin Creek, Aberdeen's art scene, deep sports history, as well as new partnerships and old stories that make us all feel young again.

And for all of our stories in Aberdeen and across South Dakota.

You can find more at sdpb.org/dakotalife for all of us on the crew here in Brown County, I'm Tim Davison.

Thank you for watching.

Dakota Life and we'll see you next time.