Tony Venhuizen admits he’s not much of a hiker.
But a hike through history on the Trail of Governors in Pierre? That’s right in his comfort zone. It’s in his knowledge zone, too.
“I’ve walked it several times,” says Venhuizen, a lawyer, historian and Republican state representative from Sioux Falls. “Once the whole trail was done last year, my kids and I walked the whole thing and took a picture of each one and made a photo book of each sculpture.”
They’re well worth a hike, and a snapshot or two along the way.
Each bronze sculpture along the trail depicts one of South Dakota’s 31 former governors (Bill Janklow served as the 27th and 30th governor but has one statue). They are placed at strategic points along a sidewalk route from the southern end of the downtown business district to the South Dakota Capitol.
It’s a bit over a mile each way, a little longer if you wander a bit, as they do each June in the 3.5-mile Run with the Govs, which includes a walking option. The run is a fundraiser for maintenance of the sculptures.
He wrote the book on SD governors — no, really, the book.
Venhuizen and I sauntered as much as anything during our trip along the trail. It was a gorgeous early May afternoon and we had just come from a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the state Cultural Heritage Center renovation project. I parked my pickup in the state Capitol parking lot and stepped into Tony’s SUV for a ride to the south end of the business district to begin our walk.
I was in good company for such a trip. Venhuizen worked for three of the governors honored on the trail — Mike Rounds, Dennis Daugaard and Kristi Noem. And he served as chief of staff for Noem and Daugaard, who is his father-in-law.
Plus, he wrote a book called The Governors of South Dakota, which has fascinating details about the former governors. And he’s a member of the Trail of Governors Foundation Board of Directors who oversees their website. So if I had a question about a governor or a statue, I was pretty sure Venhuizen could answer it.
We didn’t even make it to the first sculpture, however, before he slowed down and nodded toward a slender, gray haired man tending the statue of Harvey Wollman, our 26th governor, on the southwest corner of Pierre Street and Dakota Avenue downtown.
“There’s Leroy there,” Venhuizen said, referring to Leroy Foster, one of the founders of the Trail of Governors project.
Along with his founder role, Foster did the plaques on the statues and continues to monitor and maintain them. That day he removed the Wollman and found a dollar underneath it.
“Don’t know where it came from,” he said.
People interact with the statues in many different ways, most of them positive. They photograph them, of course, take group shots and pose for selfies. Sometimes they put clothing on them.
An idea that came while checking out the presidential statues
Or maybe they’ll take a break to relax on the bronze bench where the sculpture of William H. McMaster, who served as our 10th governor from 1921 to 1925, sits casually with its left arm draped over the back of the bench and a gasoline can at its feet.
The can represents McMaster’s move to sell gasoline to the public from state highway shops at 2 cents above cost in order to force down retail gas prices the governor thought were too high.
Each sculpture has some individual feature representing that particular governor. It helped that some of the state’s top artists have been involved in the project. They are: Lee Leuning, Sherri Treeby, John Lopez, Jim Maher and James Van Nuys.
“We’d give the artists whatever pictures the state Historical Society had, my book, other materials to help,” Venhuizen said. “They tried very hard to not have it be just a man in a suit standing there, but something more memorable.”
Memorable is what Oral native Leroy Foster, a former state Department of Transportation engineer now operating a family property and rental business in Pierre, was hoping for when he and Pierre financial advisor Rick Jensen came up with the idea for the Trail of Governors back in 2010.
“I was in Rapid City looking at some of the statues of presidents downtown and thought to myself and told my wife that we should do that with the governors,” said Foster.
Recruiting smart people, then doing the math
At about the same time, Jensen was thinking the same thing, and thinking there must be a way to connect downtown Pierre with the state Capital complex. Eventually the two started talking about the idea of a trail of statues and took it to Laurie Gill, who was then the mayor of Pierre.
“We thought she might kick us out of the office,” Jensen says. “But she was open to the idea. So then we moved ahead and started to surround ourselves with smart people.”
They recruited former First Lady Patricia Miller, wife of the former Gov. Walter Dale Miller, and Patricia Mickelson Adam, sister of former Gov. George S. Mickelson and daughter of former Gov. George T. Mickelson.
Foster and Jensen also recruited well-known Pierre attorney and history buff Chuck Schroyer. And they enlisted former state Tourism Secretary Patricia Van Gerpen, who worked for Govs. Bill Janklow, George S. Mickelson, Walter Dale Miller and Mike Rounds, and Tina Van Camp, who worked for Governors Janklow and Rounds.
Venhuizen was initially part of an advisory board on the Trail of Governors. Upon Pat Adam’s death in 2016, he was invited to take her spot on the foundation board.
Jensen said he and Foster never worried much about money in the beginning.
“If we had thought about it more we might have gotten scared and not tried it — had we put a calculator to it,” he said.
Undeterred by fundraising challenge, they “just went ahead”
Somebody did put a calculator to it, however. When they approached Bob
Sutton, then the president of the South Dakota Community Foundation, Sutton looked at the numbers, as foundation presidents tend to do.
With a rough estimate of $70,000 for each statue, they were looking at more than $2 million. It was a dose of reality, but not a deterrent.
“We just went ahead,” Jensen says.
The numbers have worked out about as predicted. With sculptures of all the former presidents in place, the Trail of Governors Foundation has raised and spent more than $2.4 million and has about $100,000 on hand.
Now the work and expense primarily involves maintaining and promoting the existing sculptures until Gov. Kristi Noem, our 33rd governor, has finished her second term, when a new sculpture will be needed.
“Just before she’s out of office we’ll probably start raising money,” Foster says. “With Daugaard we started about a month before and had so many people give us money we couldn’t believe it. I assume the same will happen with the current governor.”
But that’s for the future. Tony Venhuizen and I were interested in the past as we left his SUV on a gravel parking area near the Missouri River and walked to the front of the American Legion cabin, where our walk would begin.
Starting with a governor from Lyman County, of course
“This is Merrell Sharpe. He’s located here, of course, because of Lake Sharpe,” Venhuizen said, referring to the Missouri River reservoir so named to honor Sharpe.
Merrell Q. Sharpe was an important player in negotiations that led to the construction of the six main-stem dams on the Missouri River, one each in Montana and North Dakota and four in South Dakota. His sculpture was created by Leuning and Treeby, who often work as a team. It shows M. Q. Sharpe in a fishing outfit, holding a paddle in one hand and a northern pike on a stringer in the another.
I loved the sculpture and the attire, although Venhuizen and others on the Trail of Governors Foundation Board of Directors never managed to confirm that Sharpe actually put a line in the water.
“We tried and tried and couldn’t find evidence that he was a fisherman,” Venhuizen said. “So we talked to the family, and they were fine with it.”
A Kansas native who worked as a surveyor assistant, school teacher and reporter before going to law school, Sharpe moved to South Dakota to practice law in Oacoma and Kennebec in Lyman County. And as a grown-up Lyman County farm kid, I can just about guarantee you that Sharpe did some fishing somewhere, probably including the Missouri River.
Next stop was a block north at the intersection of Pierre Street and Dakota Avenue downtown. We’d already seen the Wollman statue on the southwest corner, so we went to the southeast corner and the statue of our 23rd governor, Nils Boe.
Beagle Boe and Baby join their masters in bronze
Boe was born in Baltic and raised in Sioux Falls, graduating from Washington High School and the University of Wisconsin Law School. His statue is placed in front of the BankWest building because he had a long friendship with the Burke family, long-time owners of BankWest.
A life-long bachelor, Boe is also one of two governors on the trail depicted with his dog, in this case a beagle named Beagle Boe. Farther along the trail, Gov. Mike Rounds is portrayed in hunting gear with his shotgun in one hand and his beloved Labrador Baby at his feet.
Across the street to the north from Boe is the Peter Norbeck statue. And our ninth governor is appropriately portrayed as a surveyor, with his boots planted on a rock base representing The Needles in Custer State Park, which Norbeck founded and expanded.
After that was the sculpture across the street to the west, an image of Tom Berry, a rancher from Belvidere and one of just four Democrats to be elected governor of South Dakota. (The fifth Democratic governor, Harvey Wollman, wasn’t elected to the job, but rather filled the remainder of Dick Kneip’s last term when Kneip left to be ambassador to Singapore.)
Tom Berry ran for governor during The Great Depression pledging to “use the axe” to cut state spending. And he did make sharp reductions. Berry is represented in bronze holding an axe.
As we moved on along the trail, Venhuizen provided details of each governor and each sculpture. Some of what I write here came from my scribbling as we walked. And some I have lifted from his book.
As the book came together, so did the trail
Venhuizen said the idea for his book and the work by Foster, Jensen and other foundation board members for the Trail of Governors took shape at about the same time. Eventually they quite naturally merged.
“My book really started in late 2011, kind of after Bill Janklow announced that he was dying,” Venhuizen says. “Basically, he was dying and we needed to get some things squared away with the disposition of his papers, which he wanted to go to USD.”
Venhizen was working for Daugaard then, and he and fellow staffer Dusty Johnson, then chief of staff for Daugaard, went to meet with Janklow for a few hours. They discussed many things, of course, as you always did with Janklow, including other governors.
“Talking about different governors, I kind of came to the realization that here I was a history major working in the governor’s office and all these guys I knew nothing about,” Venhuizen says. “So It kind of went from there.”
The Trail of Governors project itself was delayed for a year in 2011 when flooding from the Missouri River threatened parts of Pierre and Fort Pierre and other river towns and required the focus of Gov. Daugaard and other state and local officials.
The first statue placed in 2012 was of South Dakota’s first governor, Arthur C. Mellette. From there the statues kept coming, along with the funding to pay for them.
On bullhorns, saddle shoes, branding irons and sign language
I admit, I have favorites statues along the way, starting with my Lyman County governor, Sharpe, and his northern pike. I also like the two governors with their dogs, Beagle Boy and Baby. Here are some other statues and their features that capture the eye and imagination:
- Bill Janklow, situated near the memorial to law-enforcement officers, firefighters and EMTs, and holding a bullhorn.
- George T. Mickelson, striding brightly forward in a double-breasted suit and saddle shoes, which represent the former governor’s favorite footwear. Pat Mickelson Adam saved a pair of her father’s shoes that were used as models for the sculpture.
- Walter Dale Miller in western attire and on a bed of real prairie grass holding a branding iron.
- Dennis Daugaard honoring his deaf parents and others with hearing disabilities with an outstretched hand making the “I love you” symbol in American Sign Language. In his other hand is a shovel representing his commitment to tree planting and other work. The hand is also pinching a penny, a symbol of Daugaard’s frugal nature.
- Warren E. Green, who served a difficult one term in the early 1930s, is shown holding onto his hat as his jacket and tie appear to be blown sideways by a strong wind. Don’t miss the sculpted grasshoppers clinging to his clothes and at his feet.
- Dick Kneip and George Mickelson are similarly depicted, with a right hand out offering a friendly greeting. Mickelson has the added feature of a sports coat thrown casually over his shoulder.
There’s a lot more to see and know along the Trail of Governors. And more people are seeing and knowing it all the time.
“We’re getting people now that come to Pierre just to look at them,” Foster says.
Some of those people stop out in front of Jensen’s office, to check out the statue of Samuel Elrod, our fifth governor.
“I had no idea how many people would stop,” Jensen says. “They take pictures. They check out the QR code. Whatever. It really adds to the quality of life. And it’s not just a Pierre project. It’s a project for the whole state.”
A brochure with a map of the trail and short biographical information on each governor is available at the state Capitol and the Pierre Chamber of Commerce office, as well as some of the motels in Pierre. For a more detailed look at the governors themselves, there’s always Venhuizen’s book.
It isn’t a commercial venture for him. Far from it. He has the books printed himself, whenever demand requires another printing. He also keeps them updated with new material on the governors. Price is $20 to $25, depending on how many he has printed. If you’re interested check out his blog: https://sodakgovs.wordpress.com/contact/
But book or not, consider setting aside some time to visit the Trail of Governors. Check out a few of your favorite governors. And, if you’re able, walk the entire trail. It’s well worth your time and footsteps.
Even a resistant hiker like Tony Venhuizen knows that.
