The Spirit of Sioux Falls (Urban Tapestry Series)

Dust jacket notes: "'Sioux Falls was founded during a heady time of land speculation and western expansion when nothing seemed impossible,' says Terry Woster, who has been reporting on the state of South Dakota for 25 years. In the Spirit of Sioux Falls, Woster shares his observations about and love for the Great Plains city, which Money magazine in 1992 declared the 'best place in the nation to live.' With the aid of more than 160 colorful images by the area's finest photographers, Woster guides us from the city's 'first days as a bend-in-the-river tent town to its head-first dive into the 21st century.' We learn of the timeless attraction of the prehistoric Indians and the homesteaders of the 1800s to the Big Sioux's rushing waterfalls. And we examine the city's power today to draw new residents at the rate of about 600 people - a city the size of Sioux Falls in 1873 - every three months. Woster's recollections of Sioux Falls include touching accounts of a prairie kid's fascination with the big city and a reporter's affection for the place where he started his career and family. The noisy stockyards and John Morrell & Co. are enduring memories for this farm boy from west of the Missouri River. The agricultural heritage is still a strong force in Sioux Falls today, but Woster also pays tribute to the aggressive economic development that has kept the city at the forefront of the area's business and industrial growth through the last decades of the 20th century...."