A Visit to the Only Corn Palace in the World & a Few Caches 8/2/2010

Off we went this morning to visit the only Corn Palace in the world, a unique experience I guess. We drove downtown and parked and walked over to it and went in and looked around. Admission is free, which is unusual, as it costs them $130,000.00 a year to change the murals on the inside and outside every year. The Corn Palace itself was just another arena but the murals they make out of the corn are amazing.


The Corn Palace is a multi-purpose arena/facility located in Mitchell, South Dakota. It is a popular tourist destination, visited by more than 500,000 people each year. The Moorish Revival building is decorated with Crop art; the murals and designs covering the building are made from corn and other grains. It also hosts the home basketball games of Dakota Wesleyan University and the Mitchell High School Kernels.
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. In 1904–1905, the city of Mitchell mounted a challenge to the city of Pierre in an unsuccessful attempt to replace it as the state capital of South Dakota. As part of this effort, the Corn Palace was rebuilt in 1905. In 1921 the Corn Palace was rebuilt once again, with a design by the architectural firm Rapp and Rapp of Chicago. Moorish domes and minarets were added in 1937, giving the Palace the distinctive appearance that it has today. It costs $130,000 to decorate the Palace annually.
The exterior corn murals are replaced and redesigned each year with a new theme. The designs are created by local artists. From 1948 to 1971 the artist Oscar Howe designed the panels. Calvin Schultz designed the murals from 1977 to 2002. Since 2003, the murals have been designed by Cherie Ramsdell. No new mural was created in 2006 due to an extreme drought.
Besides being a tourist attraction, the Corn Palace also serves the local community as a venue for concerts, sports events, exhibits and other community events. Each year, the Corn Palace is celebrated with a citywide festival, the Corn Palace Festival. Historically it was held at harvest time in September, but recently it has been held at the end of August. Other popular annual events include the Corn Palace Stampede Rodeo (in July) and the Corn Palace Polka Festival (in September). It is also home to the Dakota Wesleyan University Tigers and the Mitchell High School Kernels basketball teams.
The Corn Palace in Mitchell was preceded by several other grain palaces including: a Corn Palace in Sioux City, Iowa that was active from 1887–1891; a Corn Palace in Gregory, South Dakota; a Grain Palace in Plankinton, South Dakota; and a Bluegrass Palace in Creston, Iowa.
In 2004, national media attention was drawn to the Corn Palace, when it received Homeland Security funding. This drew criticism of the Department of Homeland Security and its grant program. In 2007, the Corn Palace subsequently received $25,000 in DHS funding for a camera system useful for purposes including Barack Obama's visit in 2008, and as reported by the Mitchell Republic, to protect a "new Fiberglas statue of the Corn Palace mascot Cornelius" in 2009.
Kenny Rogers will be the headliner at this year's Corn Palace Festival. We looked around the lobby at the enclosed displays and then walked in to see the arena and as you can see they have murals made out of corn in there too as well as a gift shop that takes up the entire arena floor. We were really only there for about 30 minutes at the most so after we were done we went out and found a couple of caches one in a small park in a very exclusive housing development located on Lake Mitchell and the other in a pine tree outside the Mitchell Fairgrounds. We stopped on the way back into Mitchell to look at where the water from Lake Mitchell goes over the spillway and down to wherever it goes and as you can see by the pictures it was unbelievable how much water was going over it (see pictures). Note in the pictures the one picture of the guy standing outside the Corn Palace dressed in his kilts and a cowboy hat. Then it was back to the coach for the rest of the afternoon. Well that's about all from Mitchell for today so until next time we love and miss you all. Mom & Dad Dori & Dick