Elk Point History-Part 4 by Don Fowler

  In the early twenties, the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad that ran east, west, north and south through my town, was a busy mode of transportation for both personnel and freight.  My best friend to the age of seven was Ken Strobel, whose father was the Depot Agent for the town.  Mr. Strobel, on occasion, arranged for Ken and me to be photographed in the cabs of train locomotives. It gave us a real grown up feeling.  I lived within a city block of the station and could see and hear the trains as they arrived at the depot or if freight trains just tooted through the town.  It was fascinating for a child to watch as the train’s engine loaded up with coal and water.  Of course at that time steam engines were in vogue and were the real romance of the railroads.  The passenger trains were many going in all directions, and the passengers were usually provided time to leave the train for fifteen minutes or so to visit the Depot Hotel snack bar and to converse with the local personnel who assembled there to obtain the news of the day.  As a young lady my mother joined the group of young folks, especially on Sunday afternoons, to meet the train passengers and to socialize with the town’s young men and women. Many a romance was reported.  In the fall of each year, when the corn and grain were harvested, the grain elevators were busy loading freight trains for shipment of the local grains to other parts of the United States and abroad.  This produce of the farms represented the annual cash income for most of the local farmers and registered the wealth of the community.

The Elk Point Train Station--from an old postcard

    Please pardon another short family interruption.  When I was very young an oft repeated adult question was “Sonny, what do you want to do when you are a grown-up big man?”   My oft repeated answer was  “I want to be a locomotive engineer.”  As a man, no one made me such an offer of employment.  But there is a rewarding sequel to the story.  A boy was born and grew up in South Dakota and settled as a man in Sioux Falls.  He became a locomotive engineer for the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Rail Road, and for a period of time his train hauled the Sioux Falls red granite rock, of which our Courthouse was built [see Part 1 posted below--Ed.), from the banks of the Big Sioux River in Sioux Falls to Sioux City, Iowa to become rip rap that was utilized to stabilize the banks of the meandering but navigable Missouri River.  He was Ken Rothenbuehler, my quiet and unassuming brother-in-law.
 
  In 1889, when South Dakota became a state along with North Dakota, Montana and Washington, rural was rural whether one lived on a farm or in a small village catering to the needs of the farmer.  A farm                  

could be identified by a house, a barn, a granary, a chicken coop and other smaller ancillary buildings, plus always a small grove of trees planted to provide shelter and wood for a variety of needs.  The trees marked the location of a farm home like feathers define a bird.  Similarly, a village in the Middle West was marked by a much larger group of trees, a water tower, the distinctive tops of two or more grain elevators and the steeples of an equal number of churches.  In the wind-swept prairie country, trees are conspicuous by their absence, as they don’t thrive with limited water and perpetual dry and cold or hot winds.  Originally, tall grass covered the land, where the buffalo could roam and multiply.  Cultivated land awaited the immigrant farmer from Europe, who took the land from the American Indian and for a pittance. 

  For everyone in South Dakota, and for many in our country, the 1930’s signified the Great Depression, persistent drought, and devastating dust storms.  To stem the force of the winds and to protect the land from further soil erosion, the New Deal government built a “shelter belt” composed of strategically placed groves of hardy trees extending over much of the prairie lands of the Middle West.  It tended to change for the better the climate of that part of the country, but for how long one cannot predict.