A visit to the Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD

May 30, 2019

Partly cloudy this morning, but at least we can see some blue sky and a little bit of sun!

Today we visited the Corn Palace, where they decorate the entire outside of the building with 325,000 ears of corn, or part of the plant and approximately 3,000 bushels of rye, oat heads and sour dock. Each year in the fall, they put up a new design, which means they have to start taking the previous year's design down in June. They were starting to do this when we were here today. All of this stuff is nailed on, so the guys we talked to were using small hay forks and a variety of other tools to get this stuff off of the walls. Each ear of corn is cut in half, length-wise and then nailed to the wall (plywood). Corn doesn't come in very many colors, so the designs are made to accommodate the yellow and brown, any other color means the ears have to be painted. The designs are done by local artists. The inside of the building is a multi functional gym, used for basketball games, concerts, dances, stage shows and a variety of other uses. The intricate designs are all very interesting, as is the history of the building, what it has been used for and who performed there.

 Pretty flower baskets hung from light posts along main street. The little yellow thing in the base of the post is an ear of corn, one on each side.

Here they are starting to take last year's design down.

One of the designs of the past, even the spires are done.

Another design from the past

See how intricate the designs can get