Big Towns and Little Towns

What makes a town grow? What makes a town shrink?

Why do some towns form by rivers and others out on the prairie? This episode examines what has made towns like Sioux Falls and Rapid City grow continuously and why some towns like Detroit, SD, disappear. It examines the economics of city growth and rural decline throughout our state's history.

Screenshot of the Big Towns and Little Towns YouTube playlist.

Big Towns and Little Towns: Additional Videos

YouTube Playlist with a variety of episodes related to the topic, including Dakota Life: Vanished Towns.

Episode Activities

Episode Quiz

Student Glossary

Guided Notes (answers)

Crossword Puzzle (answers)

Discussion Cards

Class Activity: County Special

Class Activity: Flick Cabin Scale Activity

Episode Script

Light Pollution

Related Resources: Additional videos, activities, and more are below.

________________________________________________________

— Class Activity: Local Landmarks —

Every town, big or little, has unique things and places. Your students should research and photograph local landmarks in your town and region. Then, they should create a blog about the unique landmark they selected. There are example blogs below.

Landmark Examples

Rural Life and History

Landmarks: The Keystone Wye and the Highway 16 Arch

Michael Zimny

Engineer Charles Williamson recalls how a construction mishap begat yet another local Black Hills landmark.
Rural Life and History

Landmarks: A Fish Story That Almost Got Away from Spearfish

Michael Zimny

A unique sculpture from the New Deal era.
Rural Life and History

Landmarks: The Snake Butte Turtle Effigy

Michael Zimny

A memorial to bravery on the Missouri.

________________________________________________________

— Drive-In Theaters Videos and Class Activity —

Activity - Inverse Proportions and Shadows in the Real World: In this video, students take a quick trip through the history of drive-in theaters and are then asked to consider the question, "What is the relationship between the size of an object’s shadow and the object’s distance from a light source?"

Then, the students participate in a hands-on experiment about the size of their shadows at different distances from a projector or other light source.

Theater Under the Stars 

Pop from the Past 

________________________________________________________

Unique Features

Family Matters 

An archival photo of the front of a J.C. Penney Company store.

Changing Times, Changing Spaces

The first J.C. Penney store opened on 1 April 1916, on Main Street in the community of Redfield.

The small rural town of Johnson, South Dakota.

Why is it called Johnson Siding?

The answer — like the answer to so many town etymologies — has to do with the railroad, and a sawmill.

The outside of the Carlock dance hall with a lot of cars in the parking lot.

Carlock: The Dancehall Without a Town

At Carlock, the dancehall stuck around after the town left.

Archival photo of the Murdo fire of 1910.

The Great Murdo Fire of 1910

Murdo, SD had only just gotten started as a town when disaster struck on a cold February night in 1910.

Temples of Justice

A look at the history of South Dakota courthouses highlighting several cities across South Dakota .

The inside of a Masonic Temple in Yankton, SD.

What are Masonic Temples?

Learn about the history of Masonic Temples in South Dakota.

Abandoned chalk rock building in disrepair.

The Rising Hail Colony

A scattering of crumbling chalk rock cabins on the river bottoms near Marty, SD, on land owned by the Ihanktowan Nation, are all that’s left of a communal ownership scheme.