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- Welcome to Dakota Life Detours.

There are more than 300 towns across the state of South Dakota.

They range in size from small rural communities to large cities.

What they all have in common are people with stories to tell and a love of South Dakota.

In this episode, we meet father daughter wildlife artists, Adam and Madison Grim.

We step into the studio of Bears, signs of Philip and see how famous Wal drug signs are made and restored.

And we visit the Timberlake area Historical Society to learn how they preserve natural history, cultural history, and artistic heritage.

But first, we traveled to South Dakota State University's campus in Brookings to experience little international, one of sds, U'S oldest traditions.

In spring of 2023, the student run Livestock Exposition celebrated its 100th year.

- Showman Zachary Showroom Everly, Iowa and your 2023 little international Champ.

Sheep Showman, Emily Noel Rutland, South Dakota.

- Congratulations.

Champion Experience Sheep Showman.

Emily Noel is one of 164 South Dakota State University student volunteers who serve as little international staff.

- I've been involved since I was a freshman.

I'm currently a third year senior, so I've been on staff as well as competed, showing an animal all three years and it's just been super rewarding being on both sides of it.

Getting to work with people, also, getting to work with my animal, getting to be, have that competitive aspect of it, but also definitely that learning and memory building and friendship aspect as well.

- Celebrating its 100th anniversary.

Little international or little I, as it's fondly referred to by participants, organizers, and alumni is the nation's largest student run Livestock Expo.

In addition to livestock shows, little Eye includes a diverse lineup of agriculture related contests like livestock judging, milk quality and products, and a crop show along with hobo days.

Little I is SDSU longest running tradition.

Cody Gifford is the 100th little I manager.

He oversees this 100% student run event as it celebrates a century long legacy.

- This started originally in 1921.

There was a couple years where it didn't happen due to Scarlet Fever in World War ii, but a hundred years of tradition here.

And you know, I look at it that we've had roughly 150 people on staff every year over a hundred years.

That's a lot of people that this organization has impacted during their college career here at SDSU.

So just knowing that and the legacy behind it.

And tonight when we see the stands all packed with alumni, it's just gonna be a, it's, it's hard to fathom how many people have been involved in this through its years.

- Alumni like Matt Gunderson.

Gunderson served as the 78th little eye manager today.

He's the Senior Vice President of Business Growth and Strategic Relations for Farmers National Company, the nation's largest landowner services company.

The first in his family to attend a four year university Gunderson Credits Little Eye with connecting him to SDSU and launching his career.

- My first time coming to Little Eye was livestock judging.

So we'd come for the Friday Livestock Judging contest.

And part of what the igniting was was the, the Livestock judging coach at the time Mary Nessel had placed pretty well in the judging contest.

And so she sent me a personalized letter congratulating me and saying, Hey, if you ever have an opportunity and you want to come look at South Dakota State, I was a seventh grader at that time, but that was a spark, right?

And then it started igniting and, and then coming to college here, getting on knew I wanted to be on little eye from just having attended from those, you know, judging contests really and expand the network, right?

Because you all of a sudden you got a hundred of immediate close folks that you're, that you're getting to know across the university and and across a lot of different geographic areas.

And so yeah, you got indoctrinated to a large family right at once and it was just a really great experience.

- For many Little Eye is a family tradition.

- We've had numerous alumni managers who have you know, been multiple generations.

A father was a manager and then their son - Berg herself is a second generation little eye alum.

Her mom participated in Little Eye in the 1950s and in the 1980s Berg served on Little Eye staff and participated in the Lamb lead.

Lamb lead is where Berg met her husband.

- When I got chosen to represent Block and Bridal Club in my freshman year in the Lamb Lead or Ladies Lead contest, I had to construct my own outfit.

That was the rule at the time.

Now students who participate in lamb lead can purchase a wool outfit, but I could get help from someone who was in the club on fitting my sheep or grooming it and getting it ready for the show.

And so I was in Pearson Hall here at SCSU and I thought, I think one of those Berg Boys is actually on second floor and he's in block and bridle and his family shows sheep so he could probably help me fit my sheep.

- The couple has been married 32 years.

Today Berg gives back by serving as one of two little eye advisors.

Berg is among many alumni who gathered in the Agriculture Heritage Museum on the campus of SDSU for a social ahead of the showmanship finals.

Laura Wright also attended the alumni event.

She was the second female to serve as Little eye manager.

During its 77th year.

She returned to co mc the 100th Little Eye, along with Matt Gunderson, an agriculture professional and business owner.

Wright said Little Eye remains relevant because it showcases the next generation of agriculture professionals.

- I think in the next hundred years it's even more important to show the community about agriculture because there's fewer and fewer folks living in that or, or working in that - Area.

Built on tradition powered by a vision was the slogan adopted by all 164 members of the hundredth little eye staff as together with their peers, alumni and SDSU faculty, they commemorate this time honored event.

- Little international allows college and high school students a chance to develop and refine skills essential for success in agriculture.

At the two day event, students not only have an opportunity to develop showmanship fitting and judging skills, but also make lifelong friendships.

There are many occupations that are handed down through generations.

Farming and teaching are often family professions, but the Grims have made painting wildlife a family tradition.

More specifically their passion for painting ducks - Before sunrise and South Dakota, Adam Grimm is getting ready to photograph ducks, - I kind of just go and get set up and see what happens.

I go to pretty great lengths to try to blend in well with the surroundings.

'cause if the birds see you, they just don't come.

- The photos will inspire his paintings that masterfully feature nature and wildlife.

- Some people do artwork that invokes like rage or anger.

I mean I, I'm trying to paint Happy Duck paintings and I want the viewer to feel happy looking at, at my artwork, I'm Adam Grim and this is what I do.

- Adam has always been an artist, but there was something different about the first time ducks flew across his canvas.

- You know, growing up I went through lots of phases.

I used to draw Heman and GI Joe and dragons and trucks and monsters and I kept kind of getting tired and moving on.

There's so many species of ducks, so many beautiful ways you could paint a duck from in flight to on the water, standing, even diving under the water with some of 'em.

It's endless, you know?

And I just, I don't ever grow tired of it.

- For the grim family, a passion for art and ducks is in their nature.

- I remember watching dad paint when I was little in his studio and just spending hours in there watching him.

My first word was duck because I looked up at one of his paintings and saw the ducks in it.

I guess that was kind of the first thing that made them think that she's really interested in birds.

- The funny creatures have found their way into the hearts of countless painters who take their passion to the next level.

Each year competing in the federal duck stamp contest.

- It's in that competition is the most prestigious wildlife art competition in the world.

It launched my career and it opened so many doors, so many avenues.

I was able to get ducks limit Arts of the year twice, actually two years in a row.

And then most recently I just won the federal duck stamp competition for a third time.

My oldest daughter, Madison, when she was five, she came into my studio and was watching me paint and she wanted to try to do a painting.

She practiced and she ended up starting this painting and it was turning out really good.

- Having dad critique it and stuff and painting alongside him.

That was really cool.

When I was doing the painting, it took a long time.

It took over a year to finish it on and off.

And I think that was where I first kind of discovered my patience and interest for it.

- It's pretty neat to see her have the ability she has and to you know, kind of have that in, you know, one of my children, we have spent so much time together talking about art, talking about the birds, building her aviary.

It was her idea.

- I asked Ted if he'd ever be willing to let me have an aviary because I knew it would take up yard space and all that kind of thing.

- And she said that she was willing to put the money up to do it from her winnings if I would help her build it.

And I just couldn't say no.

- Dad and I did the whole thing ourselves.

I was gonna only buy three ducklings, but I ended up coming back with like 25 ducklings and it just kind of spread from there.

I think now I have like 153 ducks.

- The grims care for more than just the ducks in their backyard.

In his home state of Ohio, Adam led efforts to restore 155 acres back into natural habitat.

- It was amazing because they had species showing up there that they haven't really had an Ohio for years.

And I was seeing people posting about it and they would say, well where is it?

And they would say, it's at the Adam Grimm habitat restoration.

And it's like, wow.

Like that's kind of cool, you know, to know that I made some kind of impact like that.

- The whole family shares a love of nature that grows stronger with each hunt, meal mount and painting.

- I think people take nature for granted.

It says in the Bible, you know, let the birds of the air testify to the creator.

As an artist, I can look at it and definitively know that there was intelligence and design in this thing.

This, you know, something like this, this spectacular does not happen by chance.

It's impossible.

So for me, you know, I always think you know anything that's gonna draw more attention to God's creation and maybe make people look a little closer and think a little more about that, I think is a, is a great thing.

And that's sort of what I set out to do with my artwork.

- Adam and Madison Grim hope to continue painting Happy Ducks for years to come.

Wal Drug has been a staple in the tourism industry of South Dakota since the 1930s.

Bear Signs has been in business since 1991 and one of their main projects is refurbishing and painting the iconic wall drug signs.

- Years ago when I was 12 years old, I made a sign called BJ's Leather Shop.

I was going into the leather business.

That one didn't make it so far, but we're still doing signs.

So I guess at 12 years of age, I kind of had an inkling of what I was gonna be doing.

Maybe you get to watch Paint Dry.

My name is Barry Knutson and we're a bear signs - And I'm Ed - McMan.

We're in Phillips, South Dakota.

Stepped into our studio.

Yeah, we started doing signs back in, would've been 1991.

And I came back to Philip, helped with Track, got a newspaper editor job here, and then went from that, joined the National Guard.

And I needed something a little bit different to do and a guy in town here said, Hey, why don't you try doing some signs?

You're a pretty good artist.

So I went over to Wal Drug one day, I had a meeting with Teddy Houston, ran into him, didn't know who he was and he was just humoring me kind of.

But we went and did one three little pig sign, brought it back.

Raw materials.

Did not know what I was doing, but it was a cute sign.

Anyway, dunno how long it would've lasted, but he ended up saying, you know what, let's do another sign.

So I led to another sign and another sign and to finally, here we are today and we're trying to built it into a family business.

And it came along right after I started and we've been doing signs together ever since.

We're putting up a new side face on a sign that was 22 years old and we just put a brand new one up.

I think it's really neat that some of our signs can last this long and we have such a unique opportunity in the sign world that we, we can make signs that get to last a long time.

A lot of messages will change with different businesses, but Wal Drug keeps our message pretty much the same throughout the years.

So my job is to try to make our signs last a long time.

So with the sign that we're looking at right now, 22 years is unbelievable for a sign to last that long, and maybe we should replace it out a little bit sooner, but it was still doing its job.

What started out as just an idea of free ice water that Ted and Dorothy Hu said started.

It just kept leading to more signs and encompassed more ideas.

All of our signs, we just keep getting to branch out.

We had to do camping supplies, we get to do rock hounds for an artist, it's a dream come true to be a sign painter and be able to do these signs in that way.

It's not like anything else that you could ever come across.

I think what what I'm after too is it's not just a job.

This has been something I've been doing for 32 years of sign painting for Walburg.

But I take it kind of personally in the way that I want South Dakota to have a neat experience as you're driving across it.

It's not just a sign to me, it's an adventure.

All of them kind of lead to a new experience where we put a sign kind of helps us decide what to put on that sign.

What I do, I want people to pass through our state to really appreciate what they see here.

And I want South Dakota to be proud of what we have.

Also, we're trying to blend into what South Dakota already has, but we wanna stand out and I think by using a lot of signs from the forties and fifties, kind of that similar look of what sign painters would've done back then.

We're trying to keep the past alive, I think.

And we try to work with the landowners, try not to leave an infra behind clean up what we, what we come in.

We take out even more than what we left with basically as far as if we find stuff behind, we pick it up.

Well drag, it's been around a long time.

They started out and they were having trouble during the depression and a few years into it they went out with some signs and it worked immediately.

And since then it's just been snowball effect as far as what signs have done for 'em.

And they have signs all over the world.

And we have painted some of those in the past.

But mainly we're focused on South Dakota, Wyoming, a little bit of Minnesota, taking care of what's closer to home.

I was in Italy once and it was such a neat thing.

When I say saw, well drug sign, it just brings you back to home.

And I think that's what the soldiers, when they see a side out in the middle of wherever country they're in, it just feels like home.

And I guess that's what we wanna do is just create a nice homey feeling for Wal Drug and something that everybody will want to go see and hopefully they enjoy it.

It's just been one of those deals where we have tried to make it a family business and make it work.

- And now we've been painting signs for a third of Wal drug's life.

So that's kind of exciting.

- We might be one of the most famous artists in South Dakota, but nobody knows who we are.

Famously un famous.

We don't want to just be a sign, we want to be an art piece on the highways.

Our strategy is complex simplicity.

When they're done, we try to make 'em look.

Everybody says, oh, they look so easy kind of until you get in 'em.

And there is so many different elements to it, the drop shadows, the fade jobs we give as much as we can to 'em, but still making our sign stand out before we even know it's our sign.

We'd like you to know, hey, I think that's another wall drug sign because of the colors, the vibrancy, the richness, the depth of it.

And so we put a lot more into it than you normally would.

There's a lot of complexity in these things and my workers all come in going, oh, I'm so excited to work on these.

And within a few months they're like, oh my gosh, these, there's a lot to this.

And I might make it harder than what maybe we should make it.

But we get a look that's unique and we're after the longevity of signs.

We want to entertain people as they come across the state.

Some people love our signs, some people are like, I'm sick of your signs.

But all like, well, how was the signs in general?

Well, they're really good, but sure, got sick of er.

I love your science.

People do the a, b, C game and we gotta throw a couple little Zs out there and a couple other deals that, so people can play that with their kids.

There's just about one for every day of the year.

But no, it's really rewarding.

But you do, you have to be willing to put in the time.

It's just great being a small town 'cause you can have the freedom to do all this kinda stuff.

- He has too many ideas I - Can give up.

And I believe like Phillips, Dakota, there was a sign from the fifties that was here that we found that said Philip City of Opportunity.

And I believe that's what it is.

If you wanna make it, you just gotta find what your opportunity is and go for it.

We're very fortunate to have this job.

- In the early years, Barry had to hold back a little to stay within the wall drug tradition of text heavy signs for better road readability.

As he became a better sign painter, he gradually sold the husted on more imaginative artwork.

We bring history to life is the slogan of the Timberlake Area Museum.

This is very evident when you visit the museum and see the diverse collection that includes natural history, cultural heritage, and even a T-Rex skull.

- When you start out an organization, I think the, probably, if you're starting it for the right reason, the greatest thing you have is hope.

And we had a lot of optimism and we had a lot of faith probably in, not founded in dollars and cents, but founded in the fact that we had the right mission that we were after.

The preservation of history and the history of the Timberlake area - In the paleontology exhibit.

That's one of the main reasons we started the museum.

Helen Ross, who was our postmaster, she was a, she took up a new hobby and her hobby was being a rock hound ammonite collecting.

And that became her passion.

It's a snail and what you find is the fossilized remains because they're found right here.

Because this was an ocean, the ocean was right here.

And that's why you find the ammonites here.

Now further to the north and west, you find dinosaurs because that was the land.

So we are in the perfect place to have access to both.

And Bill Alley, who discovered the T-Rex, we call alley wrecks, that's, that was found in his pasture.

He's a rancher up north of fire steel and a lot of the specimens of dinosaur species, mainly triceratops.

But this T-Rex was a big fine.

Those were from, from his place.

- Along with the paleontology exhibits, the museum offers a Native American exhibit.

- The native people that come here have ties to this area.

They, they have relatives, they have their, they have family members or they're from this area.

And to come here and to gather information about their own past, it's been enlightening for many of 'em.

What we got involved in this winter count was June, and we got a grant from the South Dakota Humanities Council in June of 2021, and we sat down with Dr. Craig Howe.

He, he looked at our native, the items that we had and the way we had 'em presented, and we decided to make this a little more interactive.

We sat down, we looked at the winter count and we picked these six years.

And with these years we there, they've got a theme that goes with each one of these years.

And so within this theme, within these themes, we picked items that within our native collection that we could use for, to highlight this theme.

- The murals that hang from the ceiling throughout the museum were painted by local artists and depict the history of the Timberlake area from prehistoric to the present.

- We had a a committee and they had, the artists had to apply, we had the list of 50 subjects.

We wanted them to choose from those to make at least 34, 36 images or paintings, drawings, multimedia, whatever.

And so we did that, but we only had an average of $350 per per art.

Some artists were happy with the $350.

Some didn't charge us anything.

Some artists and some collectors loaned us things because we could get them copied and really nice digital print.

- Another driving factor for starting the museum was a photography collection.

- Frank Ell, and he called himself the Han Yoker photographer.

And that's on his pictures, postcards, mostly postcards.

And he came here as a homesteader over by south of Fire Steel in about, I think 1911 and 1910 is when kind of officially opened here.

I think the initial donation or collection came from Mary Beagler.

We, we said, well, when we build the new library, we, we wanna have a room to keep the Frank Condo pictures and some other things that people were starting to give us.

So that was how we got that, that we came to the decision of not just a library, but let's build on, let's build a little bigger and have it be a museum.

- His wife was my mom's sister, so they were my aunt and uncle, and they were the only family of my mom's that lived in the area.

It was definitely a hobby with his, but I think he, I didn't even know he was really a good photographer as a kid.

My mom talked about it a little bit to me, but Uncle Frank didn't.

And I, I kind of, I kind, he was very interested in the Native American culture, I think, and knew that that was something that had to be recorded because he knew what was passing.

And so I think he paid particular attention to that.

And also he was, he knew the pioneer era was not gonna last forever - By showcasing the history of Timber Lake.

The museum also brings the community together.

- We never at that point, even dreamed of owning museum that we we're after.

The preservation of history and the history of the Timberlake area.

- The Timberlake Area Museum is just one of over 160 museums across South Dakota.

All of these are unique to their community, but have the common goal of telling the story of the people of South Dakota.

As we continue our travels across South Dakota, meeting folks and telling their stories of Dakota life, we'll take you on more detours along the way and share those stories of our state's culture, heritage, and way of life.

For all of us at SDPV, I'm Tim Davison.

Thanks for watching.