Stone Shatter City

Saturday, August 28, 2021

Excerpt from Wikipedia:Sioux Falls (/ˌsuː ˈfɔːlz/; Lakota: Íŋyaŋ Okábleča Otȟúŋwahe;^[6] “Stone Shatter City”) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of South Dakota and the 131st-most populous city in the United States. It is the county seat of Minnehaha County^[7] and also extends into Lincoln County to the south, proximate with the Iowa state line. As of 2020, Sioux Falls had a population of 192,517. The Sioux Falls metro area accounts for more than 30% of the state’s entire population. Chartered in 1856 on the banks of the Big Sioux River, the city is situated in the rolling hills at the junction of interstates 29 and 90.

Stone Shatter City is what the Lakota called what is now Sioux Falls. Native Americans inhabited the area for thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans. After visiiing Falls Park I can understand how they arrived at that name. The rocks around the falls look like a giant had taken his club and shattered them. Sioux Falls is a typical Dakota city- clean with a lot of eye appeal. The residents around the Cathedral are just beautiful. Downtown has quite a few historic buildings. It’s a wonderful town.

St. Josheph Cathedral, Us’ns and Praying for the unborn….

History of Sioux Falls, South Dakota– Thanks Wikipedia!

Two separate groups, the Dakota Land Company of St. Paul and the Western Town Company of Dubuque Iowa, organized in 1856 to claim the land around the falls, considered a promising townsite for its beauty and water power. Each laid out 320-acre claims, but worked together for mutual protection. They built a temporary barricade of turf which they dubbed “Fort Sod”, in response to native tribes attempting to defend their land from the settlers. Seventeen men then spent “the first winter” in Sioux Falls. The following year the population grew to nearly 40.

The arrival of the railroads ushered in the great Dakota Boom decade of the 1880s. The population of Sioux Falls mushroomed from 2,164 in 1880 to 10,167 at the close of the decade. The growth transformed the city. A severe plague of grasshoppers and a national depression halted the boom by the early 1890s. The city grew by only 89 people from 1890 to 1900.

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Prosperity eventually returned with the opening of the John Morrell meat packing plant in 1909, the establishment of an airbase and a military radio and communications training school in 1942, and the completion of the interstate highways in the early 1960s. Much of the growth in the first part of the 20th century was fueled by agriculturally based industry, such as the Morrell plant and the nearby stockyards (one of the largest in the nation).

Structures in Falls Park

In 1981, to take advantage of recently relaxed state usury laws, Citibank relocated its primary credit card center from New York City to Sioux Falls. Some claim that this event was the primary impetus for the increased population and job growth rates that Sioux Falls has experienced over the past quarter-century. Others point out that Citibank’s relocation was only part of a more general transformation of the city’s economy from an industrially based one to an economy centered on health care, finance, and retail trade.

Art and Flowers in Falls Park

Sioux Falls has grown at a rapid pace since the late 1970s, with the city’s population increasing from 81,182 in 1980 to 192,517 in 2020. The city is home to Augustana University, the University of Sioux Falls, Sioux Falls Seminary, Southeast Technical College, National American University, the South Dakota School for the Deaf, the University of South Dakota’s Sanford School of Medicine (Sioux Falls campus), Stewart School and the South Dakota Public Universities and Research Center..

Our stay at the Sioux Falls KOA was very pleasant. The place is well maintained and the worker bees here are always buzzing around doing something. The wifi is really good which is not the norm for RV parks. The only drawback is it’s proximity to Interstate 90. We got some road noise, yet it wasn’t unbearable.

I’d been tracking a storm on Weather Underground’s really good real time weather map. The weather service had state that we could get a few severe storms come through. Well this one got larger and headed straight for us. Severe weather warnings went up indicating 60mph wind gusts with 2″ hail possible. The storm hit and up went three tornado warnings just south of town no more than 10 miles from here. Wind at over 80mph was recorded. Constant lightning and heavy rain for about an hour. This is our second encounter with a severe storm in three days. Boy, this is getting old quick!

Tomorrow we’ll head west to Chamberlain, SD. See you there!