June 29, 2008

Today we are in Mitchell, South Dakota. We stopped here to see the Corn Palace. There have been three Corn Palace buildings. The first was built in 1892, the second was built in 1905 and the final Corn Palace was built in 1921. Twelve different colors of corn are grown locally and used in the designs on the outside and inside of the building.

This year’s theme of decoration is “Everyday Heroes 2008”.

Inside is a 3000-seat auditorium that is used for basketball games, graduations, proms and stage shows. Oscar Howe, the late Sioux artist and South Dakota artist laureate, created the permanent interior murals.

It is fascinating what can be done with different colors of corn.

First the designer creates the mural then transfers it to black building paper with the different colors notated. Then the ears are sawed in half and nailed flat side to the building with nail guns and hammers. Rye, Sour Dock, Grasses and Milo are use in the trim work of the designs. The building is redone each year starting in the summer replacing the grasses and later the corn at a cost of about $130,000.00.

Next we went to the Mitchell Prehistoric Indian Village National Historic landmark. We visited the Thomsen Center Archeodome where we saw archeological digs of a village from 1000 years ago.

We had a full and very interesting day during our first day in South Dakota.