Rapid City & Mitchell, SD

Rapid City is the second most populous city in South Dakota. It is famous as the “gateway” to the Black Hills and Mount Rushmore.

We visited Ellsworth Air Force Base. Ellsworth is known as one of “The Showplaces of SAC (Strategic Air Command)” along with Minot AFB and Grand Forks AFB in North Dakota. During the cold war it maintained two legs of America’s strategic triad: strategic bombardment and ICBMs (Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles). The base was established in 1941, and today has approximately 8000 military members. Today, the host unit at the base is the 28th Bomb Wing (28BW) which is Air Combat Command’s lead B-1b conventional bomb wing.

Just outside the base gates is the South Dakota Air and Space Museum. It is dedicated to the history of the United States Air Force, the base and aerospace in South Dakota. Unfortunately the actual museum was closed during our visit and we could only explore the outside displays.

Mitchell, South Dakota is famous for The Corn Palace, commonly advertised as The World’s Only Corn Palace and the Mitchell Corn Palace. It is a multi-purpose arena/facility.

In the late 19th century, a number of cities on the Great Plains constructed “crop palaces” (also known as “grain palaces”) to promote themselves and their products. The original Mitchell Corn Palace (known as “The Corn Belt Exposition”) was built in 1892 to showcase the rich soil of South Dakota and encourage people to settle in the area. It was a wooden castle structure on Mitchell’s Main Street. The palace was rebuilt in 1905, 1921 and in 1937 the onion shaped domes were added.

The exterior corn murals are replaced and redesigned each year with a new theme and designed by local artists. The estimated cost each time the palace is redecorated is around $175K.

Twelve naturally-occurring shades of corn are grown by local farmers to create the artwork. Artists’ drawings are transferred to black tar paper labeled with codes corresponding to colors, providing a “corn-by-numbers” pattern showing where each colored cob should be nailed. Corn cobs are split in two lengthwise and nailed to the exterior of the building, using approximately 1.5 million nails and 325,000 ears of corn.