Sioux Falls in the 50s | SDPB Documentary
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- čas přidán 19. 06. 2019
- A nostalgic look at South Dakota's largest city as it grew in the 1950's
This documentary and many other local South Dakota stories may be found on the PBS App for your smart TV or online at www.watch.sdpb.org
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I wasn't from Sioux falls but I was born in 1953 and man what a blast from the past,god I miss those days!! Whi a bunch of great memories!!!
Great video. Thanks for putting this together.🇺🇸
Wish I lived in sioux Falls back then. It has changed so much.
Growing up in Sioux Falls in the 30s and 40s was the greatest experience any one could ever imagine. There were. O major problems. I do remember that the town did have a curfew for young people. It was a friendly place were business was done on a handshake. We’re kids stayed out playing after dark. Where car doors along with house doors were never locked. I went to Mark Twain, Emerson and Washington High, down town. We walked or road our bikes every where. From the West Side to Drake Springs on the East side. I was back for visits in the 50s, 60s & 90s.
My favorite was the Christmas display in the Shrivers windows. It was like magic when I was a kid.
I remember that department store to, and watching Ralphie in “A Christmas Story” really reminds me of myself as a little boy during Christmas time. I felt like I was him in that Christmas comedy.
My mother (and my uncle) spent part of their childhood in Sioux Falls. They rode their bikes and ran wild around the countryside and my mom snuck into a local farm and rode a donkey til she and my uncle were chased out. They lived in Worthing, a nearby town. She wrote about it in her memoir. My grandfather worked I believe for Dodge Chrysler 🧡🧡🧡 miss them all, and grandma too
I grew up in Sioux Falls in the 50s and early 60s. Dad was the assistant manager at Sears. I went to Emerson, Mark Twain and Patrick Henry. I lived at 26th and Main. I used to bike down to the Rich Brothers and buy fireworks and swim at Terrace Park or Drake. I'm sorry our family moved away to Glen Ellyn, Illinois in 63. I still miss Sioux Falls.
As a child growing up during the 1950s, Sioux Falls was so different from today, 2023. I’m not going to sugar-coat this memory of mine.
On the bad side, I remember it as very dirty, and some what a shabby town. The Falls area wasn’t a nice park but scrub filth with dead carp and flies every where. A lot of trash along areas of the Big Sioux River. The stock yards was big and that whole area across from John Morrell’s packing plant stunk to high heaven. I remember seeing the glow in the night sky from the Sioux-Bee Mill fire. That was from our House window on the north east side. I remember seeing some boys dive from high points above the Falls into that brown foam at the base of the falls. I thought they were insane. As a small boy It felt like everything down town was bigger. The escalators in Penny’s was scary to me because they went so high from my little perspective at the first floor level. I really held my grandmother’s hand tight. I remember Captain 11 as the most famous person in town and saw him in the studio at the KELO station for my cousin’s birthday. I watched him on TV every afternoon after school. I remember the State and Hollywood Theaters the most. But, most of all, Sioux Falls seemed kind of run down back then. It was no where near as prosperous a town as it is today. I have fond memories, but life was hard for us and the 1950s and wasn’t all happy days as people like to paint it. I remember “duck and cover” drills in school. That was crazy. The Cuban missile crises was tense back then. People forget that.
Fascinating video. Lovely recollections. Even though I grew up in a different culture in 1970s Georgia, I was deeply influenced by the culture of 1950s Middle America. And I love it.
I had cousins that lived on Nesmith Ave, and we always came over there to play. and there was an old lady who (according to Legend) hoped the train from Chicago to Sioux Falls. people called her old lady High pockets. she was a character. I seen her a few times. Anyone else out there remember her?
I lived on the north east part of town and went to Franklin Elementary. Just a little east on 3rd ave. was a soda fountain where us kids would order fun concoctions to drink like a grasshopper. This was in the mid to late fifties. I remember seeing a red glow in the night Sky to the west of us when the old Queen Bee Mill caught fire. The not so nice part of that era was the Falls area was so filthy and the river was terribly polluted. It really stank and with all these dead giant carp laying all over the banks with flies every where. It was nothing like it is today. Boys would dive into the brown murky water at the bottom of the falls and swim through the dirty suds bouncing on the waters surface. I thought they were nuts. Sioux Falls is so much cleaner now then it was.
Low populations lead to shortages of mating partners
Probably the most ignorant comment on YT. Well done.
Life was much more simpler, safer….. and RACIST LMAO
Back when America was America and she hadn't lost her way in all this modern woke BS.