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The Home Place

Making a living on 160 acres was nearly impossible, and those who stayed added surrounding land from those who sold out. With ingenuity and "making do," farmers built barns, fenced land, added windmills for water, built small stock dams, and planted shelterbelts for protection. Families concentrated on "keeping the home place." It was not just any land. The home place was land that had been in the family for many years -- sometimes for generations. 

West river in South Dakota was the site of the last Dakota Boom from about 1902 to 1920.  At one time the area had been the domain of the Great Sioux Reservation. However, cattle and sheep ranchers gained a stonger hold, west river, beginning in 1889 with 9,000,000 acres of reservation land was gained by the government. "Surplus" lands between reservations were opened to settlement. 

The sculpture by Frederic Remington, depicts a cowboy with his horse. Remington, unlike sculptor, Charles Russell, was a sophistcated Easterner who came west on occasion to capture the sense of time and events.

Dakota Discovery Museum Tour
  1. The Middle Border
  2. Native American Territory
  3. The River and Dakota Territory
  4. The Claim Shanty
  5. Railroads and the Depot
  6. The Threshing Machine
  7. The Home Place
  8. The Sheep Herder Who Wrote the Book
  9. The Great Depression
  10. The Doc or the Watch Repair Shop
  11. Harvey Dunn
  12. Leland Case Office and Library
  13. Charles Hargens
  14. Charles Hargens’ Studio
  15. Oscar Howe and Outdoor Buildings