Each Thursday, your Crap Archivist brings you the finest in forgotten and bewildering crap culled from area basements, thrift stores, estate sales and flea markets. I do this for one reason: Knowledge is power.
Assorted South Dakota Tourist Pamphlets
Date: 1941 -- the mid 60's
Discovered at: River Market Antique Mall
The Covers Promise: "Other families get to have fun. Why can't we?"
Representative Quote:
"REHABILITATION -- Deep from Mother Earth Comes The Warm Mineral Waters Which Were First Discovered By The Indian And Are Now Used As A Medical Tool In Modern Application." (Hot Springs Pamphlet, no date listed)
What's most remarkable about this packet of leaflets and fliers celebrating Black Hills attractions like Wind Cave, Devil's Tower and "Shrine of Democracy" Mount Rushmore isn't the sheer number of them I picked up for three bucks. It's that the pamphlets date over a period of almost thirty years, meaning whatever family collected these didn't just venture to the Dakotas on occasion -- they took trip after trip.
Nothing against South Dakota, of course -- but can you imagine the misery of the kids motoring, year after year, toward fun like this?
Dads will love the old cars and engines. The kids - well, they'll have to make do with the "Special Exhibits for Ladies and Children":
"For your entertainment, we have a display of china, fancy clocks, beautiful steins, music boxes, antique gold umbrella collection, ancient hanging and 'Gone With the Wind' lamps, ladies' finery and a collection of antique toys."
What child doesn't dream of the gold umbrellas of Rapid City?
Point of Interest:
Throughout the pamphlets, Midwestern honesty and plain-spokenness are at odds with the hucksterism needed to sell roadside attractions. The Horseless Carriage Museum promises, "WE GUARANTEE A WORTHWHILE EXHIBIT," which isn't really too much to ask for.
They also get downright existential:
"YOU REALLY SEE SOMETHING HERE."
Who could possibly dispute that? Traveler's Tip: At the Horseless Carriage Museum, the human eye can discern objects from shadows!
The Wonderland Cave, way up in Sturgis, at first seems similarly circumspect in its promises. A flier brags about "Courteous and Competent Guides" and that "We Honestly Have What We Advertise."
Here's the best of what Wonderland Cave advertises ... and honestly has.
"Hundreds of Beautiful, Unique, Weird, Grotesque Formations!"
Lots of the cutesy crap that your aunt keeps on that piece of furniture she insists is called a "credenza":
And, because Mother Earth is actually Miss Havisham, a creepy wedding cake!
There's also bizarre chutzpah entirely at odds with their otherwise bashful advertising:
Are they really challenging the entire world to find a better cave -- in America?
Shocking Detail: This description of Abraham Lincoln from the National Park Service's leaflet on Mount Rushmore:
"This frontier lawyer was a true liberal. He knew and loved the common man. Liberalism to him was not a garment that he wore on occasion; it was, as one of his biographers has said, 'the fiber of his mind.'"
Of course, the term liberal means something entirely different today than it traditionally has. Still, if this gets out, don't be surprised if modern-day conservatives suddenly start playing up those rumors about Honest Abe's male friendships.
Highlight:
Hot Springs -- "The City of Healing Waters" -- comes on a little strong.
"Hot Springs wants to meet you whether it is on vacation, on business, or for health's sake. You will always remember its pine-scented nights, its cool picnic grounds with their singing brooks, you will want to retell of its colorful scenery and the value of its healing waters. You will never forget its hospitality. You are invited to spend a day, a week, a lifetime in Hot Springs, South Dakota."
Wow! I think the Chamber of Commerce just proposed to you!
More Hot Springs boasting:
Remember: these images are intended to make you want to visit Hot Springs.
Yes, Coolidge "stopped" here ... but he left after waking up connected to the electric fan of a sweaty necrophiliac.
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The woman on the cover is my Grandmother. I had one of these flyers, it was destroyed last year in a flood.
Stumbled across your snotty rag. I spent part of my childhood in your wretched state and you can keep it along with your pseudo-urban-corn-fed cool, I couldn't wait to get back to Colorado. What you dopey kids call chutzpah was an invitation to a happily internet deprived world (with more sensory erudition than the odoriferous blog tripe you dump)to come see and touch the local natural wonders. Thorstein Lien, my Grandfather, was a delightful Norwegian immigrant who loved America and worked extremely hard to develop Wonderland Cave into a successful attraction that people from around the world have enjoyed for generations. So, what do you and your ilk do with your infinite idleness and arrogance besides childishly and crudely tear others down.
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