Quite often in my journeys it has turned out that places are quite different than I expected them to be.  Except for the driving, I really enjoyed Texas; except for the parks, my experience of California was rather aggressive and unwelcoming; I surprised myself by having fun in Las Vegas; I want to keep going back to Amelia Island in Florida; I’m totally fine with never going to Kansas ever again; I could probably live happily in St Louis, Missouri.  But you’d think that when I was passing through a place called Sioux Falls, South Dakota, I would have realized the obvious, that there was a waterfall there.  Honestly, it never crossed my mind.  When I came across the Falls Park, it was a light bulb moment for me — ooooohhhh, I get it!!  But putting my dim moment aside…

Hey, so there’s a gorgeous waterfall on the Big Sioux River in Sioux Falls, South Dakota!

I learned quite a bit about Sioux Falls from the signs located near the walking paths in the park, but the write up in Wikipedia has all the same information, so I’ll just quote it here:

“The history of Sioux Falls revolves around the cascades of the Big Sioux River. The falls were created about 14,000 years ago during the last ice age. The lure of the falls has been a powerful influence. Ho-Chunk, Ioway, Otoe, Missouri, Omaha (and Ponca at the time), Quapaw, Kansa, Osage, Arikira, Dakota, and Cheyenne people inhabited and settled the region previous to Europeans and European descendants. Numerous burial mounds still exist on the high bluffs near the river and are spread throughout the general vicinity. Indigenous people maintained an agricultural society with fortified villages, and the later arrivals rebuilt on many of the same sites that were previously settled. Lakota populate urban and reservation communities in the contemporary state and many Lakota, Dakota, and numerous other Indigenous Americans reside in Sioux Falls today.

French voyagers/explorers visited the area in the early 18th century. The first documented visit by an American (of European descent) was by Philander Prescott, who camped overnight at the falls in December 1832. Captain James Allen led a military expedition out of Fort Des Moines in 1844. Jacob Ferris described the Falls in his 1856 book “The States and Territories of the Great West”.

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 (1.3 km²) claims, but worked together for mutual protection. They built a temporary barricade of turf which they dubbed “Fort Sod”, in response to hostilities threatened by native tribes. Seventeen men then spent “the first winter” in Sioux Falls. The following year the population grew to near 40.

Although conflicts in Minnehaha County between Native Americans and white settlers were few, the Dakota War of 1862 engulfed nearby southwestern Minnesota. The town was evacuated in August of that year when two local settlers were killed as a result of the conflict. The settlers and soldiers stationed here traveled to Yankton in late August 1862. The abandoned townsite was pillaged and burned.

Fort Dakota, a military reservation established in present-day downtown, was established in May 1865.  Many former settlers gradually returned and a new wave of settlers arrived in the following years. The population grew to 593 by 1873, and a building boom was underway in that year. The Village of Sioux Falls, consisting of 1,200 acres (4.9 km²), was incorporated in 1876 and was granted a city charter by the Dakota Territorial legislature on March 3, 1883.

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.

But 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).”

Wiki also says: “As of 2016, Sioux Falls had an estimated population of 174,360. The [greater] metropolitan population of 251,854 accounts for 29% of South Dakota’s population.”

Much of the local area is flat grassland or rolling hills, so when you see the waterfall it’s easy to recognise what a significant feature it is on the landscape.  The picture below was taken from an observation tower on the visitor center near the falls.

Bison were a key resource for both Indian and white residents in the area, and I like to imagine what it must have looked like with huge herds moving over the surrounding grasslands.  There are several nice statues in Falls Park.

The park around the falls is lovely, with walking paths, a café, and recreational facilities.  There’s a nice page with information on things to do here: https://visitsiouxfalls.com/things-to-do/falls-park/.  If you look carefully at the upper right quadrant of the picture below, you can see a bride and groom having their wedding pictures taken on the day I was there.  I also saw fish jumping at the lower end of the falls, but please don’t ask me what they were…

The ruins of the Queen Bee Mill are located next to the steepest part of the falls.  It was a seven story modern mill built in 1881 to provide local farmers with an alternative to shipping wheat to Minnesota or Wisconsin for milling.  It seems to have only operated for a couple of years, however, closing due to lack of water power and wheat.  It was used as a warehouse for a while, but was mostly destroyed by fire in 1956.  Looking at the ruins reminded me of being back in Ireland and England exploring old castles.

I can’t conclude this post without mentioning the sound as well.  I had a salad for lunch at the Falls Overlook Café, and then sat in the shade near the old restored wooden turbine house after walking around the whole park.  The wonderful thunderous rumble of the falls was all around, so that the ground seemed to vibrate with it.  I’m not sure what it would be like to live in the midst of that noise, but in my mind the sense of power made a great contrast with the quiet and peaceful prairie all around.

I don’t know how many people reading this will ever have a chance to visit Sioux Falls, but I think that when I look back on my trip in years to come, it will be these hidden gems that stand out most clearly… maybe… if I can even remember that there’s a falls in Sioux Falls…