The Sheep Herder Who Wrote the Book

By 1910 open range had ended. In the early years sheep could do well on scrub land and could produce both lambs and wool. Archer Gilfillan was born in White Earth, Minnesota in 1886 the son of an Episcopal Missionary to the Ojibway Indians. A Phi Beta Kappa with an Ivy League education , he turned his back on it all and spent 19 years working as a sheep herder in Harding County, South Dakota. During those years, he spent most of his time living in sheep wagons, including this one. Gilfillan was a good writer with a sharp wit, and wrote the classic book, Sheep, a personal story of the life of a herder, nearly everything you ever wanted to know about sheep, and what it meant to live alone in a sheep wagon in South Dakota. The typewriter is the actual typerwriter he used to create his writings. 

The next window display depicts what a typical town in the middle border had evolved into before the great depression. Towns often had churches, a café, a pharmacy, a store, and many other businesses.