Yes, we went there; the Corn Palace.
In 1892, the World’s Only Corn Palace was established on the Mitchell, South Dakota’s, Main Street. It was conceived as a gathering place where city residents and their rural neighbors could enjoy a fall festival with extraordinary stage entertainment – a celebration to climax a crop-growing season and harvest. This tradition continues today with the annual Corn Palace Festival held in late August each year.
A new Corn Palace was built in 1905 due to the success of the first one but it was quickly outgrown. In 1919 it was decided to build a third one. This one was to be permanent and more purposeful than its predecessors and was completed in 1921, just in time for the Corn Palace Festivities.
Today, the Corn Palace is more than the home of the festival or a point of interest of tourists. Its many uses include industrial exhibits, dances, stage shows, meetings, banquets, proms, graduations arena for Mitchell High School and Dakota Wesleyan University as well as district, regional and state basketball tournaments. USA Today named the Corn Palace one of the top 10 places in America for high school basketball.
One of the most notable aspects of the Corn Palace is its exterior decorations. It is redecorated each year with naturally colored corn and other grains and native grasses to make it “the agricultural show-place of the world”. Twelve different colors or shades of corn are used to decorate the Corn Palace: red, brown, black, blue, white, orange, calico, yellow and now even green corn! A different theme is chosen each year, and murals are designed to reflect that theme. Ear by ear the corn is nailed to the Corn Palace to create a scene.
Inside the Corn Palace a complete history is shown on various plaques and display cases and includes a photo history of each yearly design since inception.
Outside of admiring the work that goes into the planning and constructing the outside and inside decorations and reading through the history of the Corn Palace inside, there’s not much to do here. Unless there are touristy-type vendors inside chatting with visitors and selling their trinkets, people can get bored pretty quickly; I’ve read many accounts of other visitors saying just this. That is unfortunate as the process designing and growing the different colored corn and cultivating the native grasses that go into the decorations that is documented inside is really quite fascinating.
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