How donors in De Smet are bringing big projects to little town on the prairie

Even though it happened more than a decade ago, Rita Anderson can still recall the worry she felt as all her hard work, planning and fundraising to build a community and event center in De Smet appeared to be fizzling out at the very last minute.

Anderson was the director of the De Smet Economic Development Corp. (EDC) in 2013 and had raised most of the money in private local donations to pay for the building that would include a senior center, theater, kitchen, workout room, meeting spaces and a new lighted high school football field outside.

But while local donors had given their full-throated support — and opened their wallets to back it up — Anderson’s efforts had come up just a bit short the day the De Smet City Council was meeting to consider approving the project.

Questions had arisen on social media about the need for the project and its cost, even though no taxpayer dollars were allocated, and some council members were reluctant to approve the $3.8 million project.

“After the initial bids came in $1 million higher than expected, the council gave us a month and said, ‘If you don’t have every cent raised, we’re not going to approve it.’ And they were serious,” Anderson recalled. “And on the final day, we were about $17,000 short.”

That day, the owner of Warne’s Appliance store called Anderson and promised to chip in $10,000 more. And just as the council was about to vote, local cattle rancher and attorney Todd Wilkinson stood up and said his family would cover the final $7,000.

“They had to approve it then,” Anderson said in early June as she sat within the event center that was finished in 2015. “We were so excited, we were screaming and jumping up and down.”

If Anderson had any questions about the devotion of residents and business owners to the continued growth and improvement of De Smet, they were answered that day.

And they’ve been answered many times since, to the tune of more than $15 million in private donations raised over the past 15 years for medical, cultural and beautification projects in the town of 1,100 people.

“The passion people feel here is really remarkable,” Anderson said of the central South Dakota place best known as a haven for hunters and the one-time home of famed children’s author Laura Ingalls Wilder. “There’s always been a feeling in De Smet that if you’re going to do anything, you’re going to go over the top and make it better than any other community around.”

So far, the event center project has cost about $5 million, all paid with donations except for $100,000 from a federal grant and another $400,000 in city tax money, Anderson said. The city also pays up to $90,000 in annual operational costs, with the remaining expenses to run the facility funded through usage fees, she said.

During initial fundraising, more than 1,400 individual donations were made and almost all were matched by local company Lyle Signs, Anderson said.

Donors of $1,000 or more were feted with their names on a leaf within a giving tree display in the event center. Anderson recalls how one local family wanted to be part of the project so badly that it sent in $25 a month, sometimes in coins over a period of three years.

“They were living on the margins, but they had such family pride that they wanted their name up there,” Anderson said. “That was one of the most touching stories.”

With the success of the event center project in hand, city development officials began another fundraising project that has shown great success in remaking the downtown of De Smet as a cultural, dining and historical hub for locals and tourists.

Using the recommendations from community surveys within a long-range master plan developed in 2019, the Beautiful De Smet Committee was formed to undertake fundraising needed to support a wide range of projects aimed at remaking downtown De Smet.

The group saw an opening for upgrades when the town decided it would dig up and rebuild underground utilities and the pavement on Main Street in downtown, said Grace Aughebaugh, now the director of the De Smet EDC.

“It’s all to create a gathering space for tourists and for locals,” she said. “It’s all aimed at getting people downtown to spend money at our local businesses.”

Main Street runs north off U.S. Highway 14, the main east-south corridor through central South Dakota, including Kingsbury County, so care was taken to encourage people to not just pass through but to stop and spend some time in downtown De Smet.

One idea was to build an arch over Main Street that was large enough and high enough that travelers on U.S. 14 could see it and recognize that a vibrant downtown was only one turn away, Aughenbaugh said. The welcome arch, with LED lights that can change color and match lights installed atop most Main Street businesses, was christened at the Old Settlers Days celebration in June.

Downtown is now home to way-finding kiosks that promote walking tourism, hanging flower baskets and a sculpture trail with some pieces of art drawn from the history of Ingalls Wilder or the characters in her books. The project also includes benches, bike racks and security cameras.

Another effort already underway is to build a system of trails from downtown that lead to Big Slough and Silver Lake, both water bodies featured prominently in books written by Ingalls Wilder. The trail will lead to a large observation tower, and eventually could extend 5 miles to the south to connect with Lake Thompson, a popular fishing and recreational lake.

The proposed tower has its own unique story. De Smet participated in an annual architectural competition run by the French firm Buildner, which resulted in a winning design by American architect Jordan Paul Scheuermann that features a series of round viewing platforms accessible by a swirling pathway. The project has yet to obtain funding.

A number of local businesses and individuals have played key roles in supporting the continued growth and development in De Smet, including Lyle Signs, American Bank & Trust, De Smet Farm Mutual, DesCo Manufacturing, Midstate Agronomy, Legend Seeds and Maynard’s grocery.

But perhaps no one has stepped up to help remake and strengthen De Smet as much as Greg Carmon.

Carmon, 72, grew up on his family’s ranch outside De Smet but left town then grew a highly successful business – Midwest Railcar Repair in Brandon, S.D., a national leader in painting and repair of rail cars that has 175 employees.

Now a semi-retired philanthropist, Carmon was a founding board member of the Build Dakota Scholarship program and has aided the Special Olympics and United Way as well as numerous organizations and projects in Brandon and Sioux Falls.

But Carmon has always retained a love for the town where he grew up, and his contributions – both financial and in terms of idea-generation – have helped expand the local hospital, build the event center and beautify the city and its downtown.

Carmon couldn’t pinpoint exactly what has driven all the donations to projects in De Smet, but he said the city’s frontier history and modern economy, schools and cultural connections create inspiration to help make De Smet even stronger.

“People are always thinking outside the box, everybody has pride and they care and they want De Smet to do better, and be better, and that kind of gets infectious,” Carmon told News Watch.

Aughenbaugh said Carmon’s role in local projects goes well beyond providing funding.

“He’s not only a donor, but he’s been in the meetings and has been there to help make decisions,” she said. “He truly has been along for the ride and been a huge help in keeping things going.”

According to prior reporting by News Watch, De Smet capitalizes all it can on the historic links to Ingalls Wilder but also expects to see greater growth in the coming years due to new industrial, commercial and agricultural expansion.

To plan ahead, the De Smet EDC recently commissioned a housing study through Augustana University in Sioux Falls, which it hopes will provide a blueprint to generate housing for new residents.

The city is already seeing some new housing growth with the recent development of new homes constructed in the Wilder Pass development on the western edge of De Smet and in Calumet Townhomes, a series of duplexes that will in total add 14 new housing units on the south side of the city.

De Smet has a well-populated industrial park with employers that include companies that produce traffic signage, bases for casino games, syringes for diabetic patients and equipment for oil fields. The industrial park draws 300 commuters each day to De Smet, Aughenbaugh said.

Not far to the west, in Manchester, S.D., Riverview LLC is developing a $191 million dairy operation that will be the largest in the state.

Anderson said she and others are lobbying state lawmakers to offer a bill designating the entire area at the Laura Ingalls Wilder State Park. She is also pushing the concept of the Legendary Highway 14 Tower Trail project, which would create a bicycle trail following U.S. 14 on its entire east-west path across the state.

Anderson and Aughenbaugh said they hope those projects can also be funded largely through donations and not local tax dollars.

“There are people who are so invested in their community and invested in seeing it do well that they’re willing to contribute to these projects,” Aughenbugh said. “This is a great community that is progressive and forward thinking, and it shows in what we’re trying to do.”

This story was originally published by South Dakota News Watch and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.