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Welcome to Dakota LIfe!.

We are here in beautiful Faith, South Dakota, at the one and only, 114th annual Stock Show and Rodeo.

They call it the Best Party on the Prairie, and we're going to go find out if it really is.

Come on!

[announcer over loud speaker] [sound of audience] Come on, rider!

[sound of hooves on dirt] We are the longest running rodeo in the state of South Dakota.

During the depression and during the war years, a lot of communities did not have celebrations.

But Faith always had a celebration.

So that makes us unique, that we are the longest running because we didn't take a break during the depression or the war years, like a lot of the communities did.

There was one day kind of set aside for softball games, you know, back in the 20s, 30s, 40s that was a big deal.

It's not as big of a deal now.

And horse races is something that we've always been known for.

From the time that Faith was started until now.

We've always had horse races in some nature [sound of audience cheering] The Indian relay races.

That's what a lot of people come to see.

That is that's one of our big selling points.

Everybody wants to come see those relay races and they're great watching, and we really try to get a lot of quality teams in here.

So it's good watching for everybody.

[sound of announcer] [sounds of hooves on dirt] And then we have the Wild Pony races.

So, in PRCA rodeo and SDRA, etc..

There's always been wild horse races, which is adults, and they let a horse out of the chute and they have to mug it down, put their saddle on, etc.. And so we start out to the kids when they're little, with the wild pony race and of three kids to a team it's like teamwork because you need a mugger, you need a rider, and you need an anchor.

Someone that it holds onto the rope.

Someone that helps you like, keep the pony like in their arms so it doesn't go all over the place.

So we have rider that helps us win.

And he like rides around the whole arena.

Hang on and squeeze and ride.

[behind camera - Haha, All right.]

Get that bareback rigging on, and they have to ride that pony to the designated around two barrels at the end of the arena.

And whoever can do it the fastest wins.

And it is extremely good watching.

I like to be the mugger because I like to talk to the horse and just sit there and pet it so it knows it's okay and stuff.

Oh, you don't want to get the pony too overworked.

It's so that it starts bucking and acting really crazy.

Because if you want a calm horse just to, like, have a nice and easy ride for the rider and not make their job as hard as everyone elses.

Because they're doing a pretty big role in that race, There's like a bunch of ponies running into us.

So we try to, like, stay kind of closer, like a tight grip on the rope and not so far out.

So we just stay in one complete circle so we don't have getting anyone else this way and they don't get in our way.

It's a doozy.

You can see, uhh.... You can see a lot in that time frame.

[laughter from behind camera] As you just saw, this is cattle country.

Faith as fewer than 400 residents within town limits.

But the borders of the Faith community extend far beyond the town into acres and acres of ranch land.

The town was founded in 1910 as part of a homestead boom.

were many words were used to describe homesteaders.

Some were called "honyockers" The origin of the term may be disputed, but it may be similar to the Norwegian term for, "honey chaser."

Honyocker was a derogatory term for people chasing dreams and free land, but allegedly they didn't have the true grit to stick it out for the long haul.

But of course some of them had grit aplenty.

My grandfather, went out on the prairie.

staked his homestead and built a sod house on a hillside and a sod barn, and dug a well by hand.

And, that's how he got his start.

He was 26 years old when he came out here in 1910.

To make a living out here.

Folks like Michael Fischbach didn't waste a thing.

Well, they cut off the head and thrown it away.

And so he saw that head chopped off, and he asked the owner, "What about that pig's head?"

He says, "Well, that's just yunk!"

And grandpa said, "Can I have it?"

"You sure can."

So grandpa took it home and skinned it out, and he took the brains and made, scrapple, those conservative people used every part of the pig except the squeal.

That's all they threw away.

Off camera.

Noel's sister, Yvette, told me - Eventually, that other family moved away.

They likely couldn't begin to understand the hardships of living here either, especially during the times when it felt like the land itself was turning on you.

Lack of money.

Lack of grass.

It was a real drought.

No rhubarb and no asparagus.

or crab apple trees.

Everything died off.

And you were just afraid to use too much water.

That maybe the well would go dry.

It was scary.

Everyone dealt with those hardships differently.

Some faced troubled times by being a little unconventional.

We can't discuss the history of Faith without mentioning, Loren Slocum.

He acquired a farm three miles outside of the town in its early days, but instead of building up a house and a barn, he started digging down.

Slocum lived underground in a five by eight foot hole for 40 years.

His name was splashed across newspapers nationwide.

Also three miles outside of Faith is Durkee Lake.

Brainchild of the newspaper editor and championed by the local doctor.

Both avid conservationists and sportsmen.

It became a haven for wildlife and humans alike.

Today you can enjoy the scenic beauty of Durkee Lake.

Whether you're out fishing or enjoying one of the only sand green golf courses in South Dakota.

[WHACK - the sound of a solidly hit drive] There it is!

All right.

Here at the golf course, the greens might be grassless, but the prairie around Faith supports a whole lot of livestock.

So it's fitting that one of the most famous sons of Faith is a cowboy.

Hugh Ingalls was inducted into the South Dakota Hall of Fame in 2024.

His ranch is just west of Faith and is known for its historic herd.

The Ingalls Centennial Angus cows are the oldest Angus herd in South Dakota.

The herd was registered by Ingalls great grandfather in 1895.

Ranching organizations locally and nationwide sought Hugh Ingalls leadership.

He was known as a rancher with incomparable expertise, leadership, integrity, and faith.

And I've been using the past tense because he and his wife, Eleanor Ingalls, passed away in February of 2025.

The couple had been married for 75 years and had six children.

They passed away just eight days apart.

You can still feel the legacy of cattleman Hugh Ingalls in the cattle industry as a whole.

And at places where the future faces of the cattle industry are learning the trade.

[voice of auctioneer] I think every young person should work a cattle auction, if you're going to raise cattle, sell them at auction The Faith Livestock Auction was started in 1938.

The Vance family owned and operated it for three generations after they purchased it in the 1960s, and then in 2017, it was put up for sale.

I was raised here, grew up here.

When this market, I heard it was for sale, we decided to purchase it along with my, partner, Mason Dietterle and we run it together [sound of arena and auction] We just kind of try to do business with everyone, the best way we can and be honest and and work on it in this deal is, finding people to buy the cattle.

And also, you need to, have a relationship with the people that got cattle to sell, too.

so we we've seen an increase in numbers coming in here.

October is traditionally a time to sell calves in cattle country, so it's a busy time at all sale barns across South Dakota.

The second or third week, October, we have a livestock week special.

is our biggest week.

it's kind of been a tradition to a lot of the same people sell their cattle on the same same sales, and it's always livestock where you can always goes by the same cattle every year on livestock week.

Knowing your neighbors and doing business on a handshake is still part of a long running tradition here in Faith I've been ranching with my dad for 40 years now.

I'm the third, but I got a boy that's 30.

He's the fourth.

And I got a grandson that's eight.

We've been living on the same ranch for 100 years next year.

Dace bought this place seven years ago, and he's an honest man.

And we were selling at home until he called us up.

And so we've been selling here, and he's treated as well.

10,000 calves and yearlings went through the sale on the first day.

I don't know how they do it, honestly, I, I work for a young lady back here.

She tells me what to do.

My son works in the other side and he helps unload trucks.

And he sorts.

I bet you there's 40, 50 people here that keep this place going.

And he's got done a he a good job in the ladies in the office do a really good job.

So Dace explains the ballet of a cattle auction.

so when they back up to the chute, unload the cattle, there will be a brand inspector and a person counting them off the truck.

After that, they take them to an alley.

They decide if they need to steer and heifer them, or if the rancher steered and heiferred them at home.

If the rancher steered and heiferred them at home, they'll go right to the sorting alley.

If they didn't, they'll go to an alley to be sexed, steered and heiferred and then they'll go to a sorting alley, So once they go to a sorting alley, they'll be sized.

The steers will be sized into certain groups.

The heifers will be sized in certain groups or colors.

Then the guys up close the ring, bring them into the ring, and then obviously we sell them and their auctioneer sells them.

Then they get to leave here.

They go down to the pen back alley and there's a crew there that's putting them in the correct pen for the buyer.

And then once they get there, they'll stay in there until the truck's ready to here to ship them or or whatever.

And then there will be a few guys, go get the cattle, take them to the truck, help the truck load.

He leaves.

it's a lot of motion, a lot of movement and things to get them all right.

It's But you just think, how can this work so good for 10,000 head of calves?

Go through here.

And you know, I think we maybe had one miscount on the truck this in the last 24 hours.

The real reason the sale is, in a word, flawless.

the thing about the auction that that I think is why this place works good, is because people that help us, we have probably anywhere from 50 to 70 people on a big sale like yesterday.

And they're all either friends, family members and, you know, people just help, help out.

And we can't thank them enough.

And we wouldn't be able to do it without them.

And I think everybody really cares about it and wants to see a successful livestock auction in, in western South Dakota.

For decades, you could have found Glen Haines In the driver's seat of one of these trucks.

My dad started a trucking company in 1965, it's in the third generation now, but we're kind of retiring from it.

it's fun in a way, but it's a tough life the livestock business, like right now, it's a busy time.

You got to be gone 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

He might have made a living as a driver, but he found fulfillment in running.

Well, I just decided one time to do something for the community is to run, and I run for council, and I've run for mayor, and I, like I say, I just love the town, and I love what's going on in town.

And hopefully we can keep making it better and better.

Even though he's no longer on the road 24 over seven, Mayor Haines still puts in a whole lot of time behind the wheel.

I've been fire department for 50 some years.

I drive the ambulance when they need help.

Okay.

I'm just a driver.

I'm not an EMT or nothing.

I don't drive this one much.

I'm too old.

But this is kind of amazing, just to see a little town like this, to have that much.

a statewide brag about this.

You know it is.

As he showed me around, I asked how a small town can pay for so much infrastructure?

Faith is a unique town.

We own everything.

We got our own electric company, telephone company, water company, own the liquor license and stuff.

And that's where we get a lot of our income plus through sales tax.

That's where we're above a lot of these little small communities.

makes you proud that the community has done something.

We're out here by ourselves.

You know, like I say, Rapid City or Sturgis rapid 100, Sturgis 100.

Our shortest run is four hours.

I mean, if we go to rapid, it's six or seven hours.

And that's a long ways either way.

Bismarck is just I think it's about 30 miles farther than going to Rapid City from here.

And we are the farthest town away from the county seat, I think in the United States, because our county seat is Sturgis, which is 100 miles Because of its rural location, transportation has always been a factor for those who live in Faith.

When Glen's ancestors settled on nearby Fox Ridge, selling their cattle meant for a very long trip.

years ago when they sold the cattle, they shipped them to Chicago on the railroad.

And.

Okay, you had your cattle to go, you went with them.

You got a ticket to Chicago.

And I got one of my dad's original tickets.

To Chicago.

So it's interesting how it's changed from now to now.

You know, you go and look at the museum, there's a picture over there, shows the stockyards.

They were out there.

Now, you look at what we got today over here.

The train took them out and now we got the trucks coming out.

It's hard to overstate just how much the railroad influenced the burgeoning town of Faith.

You take a look at Timber Lake, to Isabel, to Faith.

railroad ended in Faith.

And Faith got his name from his, a daughter of one of the engineers.

so did Isabel.

You go back and look at the history of it.

Of what all started this town.

This is a story about how they did this, how everything was moved.

The train took with it sheep, wool and cattle, and brought back people, goods and a very important Wild West staple.

[sound of beer] It was built by James Flannery to market Golden Grain Belt beer.

He had a contract with the Minneapolis Brewing Company in 1911.

And the ice was on the top floor.

They cut it in the river.

And generally those blocks were two by two.

And how deep the ice was.

came in by train.

A carload of ice and a carload of sawdust, of course, the Three cars of beer.

then they used the sawdust pack it.

And it was fun to walk in those ice houses barefooted.

[laughter from behind the camera] Refrigeration eventually rendered the ice house obsolete.

And as the decades passed, its future grew more and more uncertain.

Well, in the mid 90s, demolition was a rumor.

And two of us were on the council who were interested in seeing it preserved.

And we talked some people into forming a Faith historical organization.

the Faith and Area Historical Society.

[sound of lightbulb going off] A group to save the ice house.

And my personal goal was to see that that was open to the public.

because, I don't know.

I have traveled around a little bit, and I haven't seen another ice house, the ice house belonged to Ernie Gottschalk, He had a radio and TV repair shop here in town, Said that he would give icehouse to our organization.

the papers were drawn, and then it was ours, and it was a mess.

What It was absolutely full of trash just a lot of junk, number one.

what do you call them?

[off camera - "pinball machines"] Pinball machines and things like that.

Yeah.

we cleaned what we could.

And then the city actually took over there were some upper storage areas, and they would just take stuff and put it in the trash bags and they got, you know, took quite a bit out.

And then they found a human jawbone.

That's where you get the haunted bit.

Yeah.

And there could have been more that went out in the trash.

But it was, you know, in whatever, we have no clue.

Today, the ice House is listed on the National Historic Registry and because of its preservation and location on highway 212, it helped the people of Faith right and receive a grant for the next chapter of Faith's history.

And that Grant helped build part of this museum The ice house seeks to inspire the next generation with a taste of history.

So does Mike Stocklin.

He is also continuing the legacy of a historic technology.

His, however, has been honed over thousands of years.

I'm a historian, I guess, and I'm a flint knapper self-taught, and I'm a primitive bow and arrow maker.

I started out as a little kid, I grew up on a reservation, friend of mine was an Indian boy, lived in Iron Lightning, and his grandfather taught us how to fashion a bow.

when we were kids at that age.

He was in his 70s, But as I got older I always wanted to find arrowheads, But I could never find any.

finally, one day I decided I'm going to figure out how to do this.

And I found a book that was published by Pope and Young, and it was on the last American Indian in California.

Ishi.

he taught them the art of flint knapping.

So in this book, it basically had the principles, what you needed for tools and how to work a piece of stone.

so I walked around on the prairie and found a little chunks that were laying out here and cause most of them were tough, really tough material, you know, because here we got lots of agates and that but I went to work on it anyway.

And I mean, I worked and worked and, you know, finally got a hold of some obsidian different things and finally taught myself how to make arrowheads.

And, you know, I started out with that, making arrowheads.

I went to a couple of what we call knap-ins, those other flint knappers throughout the United States.

And I went to a couple of them, and some of those guys have been doing it for years, you know, and It's much easier to learn watching somebody else and just trying to teach yourself, you don't make nearly as many mistakes because they've already made them.

And they can teach you how to get around and I've done it in schools and for 4H clubs all over the state of South Dakota and into Nebraska and Wyoming and North Dakota.

I've done it extensively on the reservations here friend of mine who lived in Rapid City, his rendezvous name was Doc.

Doc Herman, and he made primitive bows and arrows too, just like I did.

And this lady in Rapid When they decided to do the movie.

Her name Is H.J.

Newman, came to him and wondering about making the bows and arrows for Dances with Wolves, and he said, "Oh no, no."

He said, "you want to get ahold of my friend over in Dupree, Faith South Dakota Mike Stocklin.

I made em 22 quivers and bows and we made them over 850 arrows when they did the buffalo hunt scene, they were actually shooting the arrows with rubber blunt tips on them.

At those 2000 head of buffalo they're running.

So they called me back in two weeks.

and wanted more arrows.

And I said, what did you do with the 400 I just sent you?

Well, we had the buffalo hunt.

And when you run 2000 head a buffalo over those little sticks.

There's not much left.

I said well no, that's right.

Haha!

So, we got busy and my wife and another lady, Sherri Knight, and of course, all the arrows we made for them.

All they were was just arrow shells with feathers on them.

No point, we did make them 50 original arrows And if you see the scene where him and Timmons are off on the prairie headed for Fort Sedgwick they come across the this dead human there's an arrow there, poking out.

And he pulls it out and it's all dilapidated because they took one of them and did that to make it look aged.

of course he used that to poke Timmons in the rear in the morning.

if it would have been one of those cedar ones, it would have snapped.

But with that, when you see how much it bends, they didn't break.

like I said, I'm a history person.

I like to study things and learn things about our past.

Because the more we look at our future I'm thinking more people better learn how to do this because if we might be back into the caveman stage.

Lord help you, you don't ever happen to you.

But if you fell into that situation, you could take these tools and get food and protect yourself.

now, do you want to try your hand at it?

CRACK [ sound of rocks smashing together ] Ooh!

...wsssshhhhh... [ sound of arrow zipping past camera ] [laughing] You might want to come down just a smidge.

...thung... [Sound of bow releasing ] ...wham... [Sound of arrow hitting target] Mike, I can't thank you enough for showing me a little bit about this and letting me shoot a bow.

You're welcome.

Hey, thank you so much.

Thank you guys.

In today's world, there's a lot competing for our attention.

So it's easy for us to get a little lost sometimes.

But I like to think that with a little Faith, one sign will lead to the next and eventually put us right where we need to be.

How's it going?

[Kid] Good.

[Tim] Could I get a glass of lemonade?

[kid] Sure.

Awesome.

And, I even have a lemon.

[Tim] Oh, even better.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

What's your name?

Braylie Heidler.

I'm trying to make some money because I have state 4H finals, and then I have the carnival I want to go to, and all these rodeos that I want to go to.

[Tim] So what's your event in 4H?

I do barrels and polls.

[Tim narrating] Braylie comes from a family of entrepreneurs.

Her mom and grandma on the shop right behind her.

They invited us into the Rustic Barn to check out their handcrafted goods.

We do a lot of custom furniture.

Upcycled furniture.

A lot of fun, cute gifts.

In a town of a few hundred people.

Every thriving small business can feel like a miracle.

It definitely has its ups and downs.

You know, the fall is going to be better when everybody sells their calves.

we depend on the ranchers to come in and see if we have something special for them.

We've sold a lot of Christmas gifts for the wives.

They'll come in and decide they need an island or something.

And then the husband comes in and takes care of it for them for Christmas.

know it.

It's not just local.

We have sold a lot to out-of-state.

We are right on highway 12.

So we have met the most interesting people from just about every state in the United States.

It's been very interesting.

Mom has retired from, a teaching job over in Dupree and decided she wanted to do this and asked me if I wanted to tag along my dad, likes to build, so we just asked him to partner up with us.

so that's just kind of how we got together.

She they asked me and my husband build some stuff to when he has time.

we kind of we're good together, I guess And we can say it like it is good.

Yeah.

You can be more vocal, I think, since his family like, nope, I don't like that.

It's nice to work with family.

When our conversation ended and our lemonade cups were empty.

This family had a gift for us.

To those of you who have followed along this season.

It may look a little familiar.

If you've missed any of our stories here in Faith or across South Dakota.

You can see more at sdb.org/dakotalife.