Prairie Signs

Bicycling through the heart of the American prairie, I noted two distinct yet connected attributes: big skies that necessarily yield wide horizons.  The prairie terrain is at times unforgiving, arduous when combined with a disadvantageous wind, and possessing much more elevation gain than one expects in the "flats".  In other words, it can be tiring!

The result:  one constantly scans that wide horizon for distant signs of life.  A town. A place to rest.  Get a cold drink.  Engage in an unexpected way with the locals.  And perhaps most of all, a momentary relief from the beautiful monotony of the landscape.

But where are they?  How far am I?  What is that town like - what does it hold for me?  And you peddle onward in hope of that place.

The roads with big sky and wide horizon in Montana, Wyoming and much of western South Dakota that I travelled revealed no secrets as to how far a town was.  They could not be seen.  Frequently, they consist of a scattering of dwellings or structures clustered low along a creek, not visible from afar as they are shielded by the low, rolling ridges of the plains.

It wasn't until Fort Thompson, and more precisely the village of Stephan on the Crow Creek Reservation in South Dakota, that it occurred to me.  The one sign that a town was in the achievable distance, triggering a slightly quickened pace on the pedals:

The water tower.

There it was, sitting like a large golf ball on a tee many miles out of town, visible as a distinct profile that some settlement required a water tower.  If there is a tower, there must be a town.  Farther west, water tanks would be placed on a higher bluff from the town, and not free standing as the typical midwestern water towers are.  They didn't need a tower for its sole purpose is less about storage and more about maintaining water pressure on the system.

Where I reside, water towers are necessarily all over the place - we take them for granted. But on this road trip, I had not, until seeing the Stephan tower, realized the symbolism they represent to a traveler.  They are a sign of life, of a vital community that can afford "city water"!

How diverse they are.  I sought out water towers to see how they are connected to the town.  In the "back" somewhere? In the city park? Even outside of town? To this latter point, I noted several rural water systems covering miles of farmland not specifically attached to a village.  In a way that is sad, because the water tower symbolizes the pride of the community, offering up "Home of the . . ." labels below the certainty of a name for the city or town.  It is both literally and figuratively a sign.  Suddenly, I was taking note of them, how varied they were, and how central they were to the community they serve.

But there is yet another sign: the grain terminal.

Most of these small towns evolved from the railroad boom of the mid-to-late 1800's. Farmers needed ways to store their grain until it could be loaded onto a train for market.    The railroad, touching many of these small towns is long gone, now strategically selective in the towns it touches.  Trucks have taken over moving grain more easily to a distant market when it was most opportune to sell it. Thus, some terminals become hulking derelicts within the community, a hopeless beacon from a more vibrant time, the train whistles long silent. 

Yet those other terminals with rail are expanding apace, itself another sign of rural prosperity

The hulking mass of these silos is also a distant sign of life - present or past, one does not quite know.  Yet even this is going away as farmers choose, understandably, to hold their grain in bins until the market presents its best opportunity to sell, then truck them to market.  All shiny, these new bins do not point the way to a town, but just to some hoped for prosperity when the price is right - this year or next. 

The water tower and the grain bin in the prairie - beacons of rural hope and repast for the approaching cyclist, yet miles distant.