Synopsis
Badger Clark was already famous when he wrote "When Hot Springs Was a Pup", likely a fund-raising project for the local Kiwanis Club in 1927. Clark extolled the virtues and foibles of his little community on the edge of the Black Hills, from its beginnings as a Lakota place of healing to its current status as a destination resort. Hot Springs, South Dakota is still a unique, thriving community, home to artists, craftspeople and the world-famous Evans Plunge.
Charles Badger Clark Jr., known as Badger Clark, became the first poet laureate of South Dakota in 1937. He lived and worked in his cabin, dubbed "The Badger Hole", until his death in 1957, writing poems and humorous short stories depicting the cowboy life. Self-described as a "poet lariat", he enjoyed spinning his tales for audiences across the country, as he became a much sought-after speaker for events ranging from rural junior high and high school graduations to women's club meetings.
Except for added electricity, the cabin remains as it was when Badger Clark died at age 74. In summer, volunteers show visitors how simply the poet lived, with kerosene lamps, and a storage box below the kitchen where he kept perishable food and ice when he could afford it. His boots are lined up as if he had just walked out the door, and a table holds the typewriter on which he composed poems. Above his fireplace hands a saying recalling his hospitality as well as the time he spent in Cuba. "Mi Casa Es Suya": My house is yours.
Expanded edition with over 100 photographs and notes by the editors
Historian and author Peggy Sanders and author Linda M. Hasselstrom worked together to create this text to bring Badger Clark's words to a new audience. This updated and revised edition contains additional notes and commentary; a biographical sketch of Clark, "Requiem for a Cowboy Poet", by Peggy Sanders; and a timeline of Badger's life. The book provides an abundance of detail on the early days of Hot Springs, with over 100 historical photographs, maps and illustrations.
About the Authors
Charles Badger Clark, Jr. was born in Iowa on January 1, 1883 to Charles and Mary Clark, who moved that spring to Plankinton, SD. The family moved to Deadwood where the poet, then known as C. B. Clark, graduated from high school in 1902. He attended Dakota Wesleyan University for a year before joining a group of 30 other prospective colonists to Cuba. Returning to Deadwood in 1905, he worked as a surveyor and a reporter before moving to Arizona for his tuberculosis. In 1910, four years after his first publications appeared, (the poems "Ridin'" and "A Cowboy's Prayer"), he moved to Hot Springs to help care for his parents. His lifelong speaking career began in 1915, when his first book of poems, "Sun and Saddle Leather", was published. In 1925, Badger moved to Custer State Park; he was named the state's first Poet Laureate in 1927. He finished building his cabin, The Badger Hole, in 1937, living there until his death in 1957.
Linda M. Hasselstrom's published writing includes 17 books of nonfiction and poetry, including most recently Gathering from the Grassland: A Plains Journal, (2017), Dakota: Bones, Grass, Sky: Collected and New Poems (2017), and The Wheel of the Year: A Writer's Workbook, (2015). Dirt Songs: A Plains Duet with Nebraska State Poet Twyla Hansen (Backwaters Press) received the 2012 Nebraska Book Award for Poetry. Hasselstrom has received recognition for Distinguished Service to the Humanities from the South Dakota Humanities Council and is special consultant to the Rural Literature R.A. L. L. Y. initiative, State University of New York, Buffalo, NY. Among her memberships are The Author's Guild, Inc., Western Folklife Center, Elko, NV and Women Writing the West. She holds an M.A. degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia. Her western South Dakota ranch hosts the Great Plains Native Plant Society's botanic garden for grassland plants, and she conducts writing retreats in person and by email at her Windbreak House Retreat; she has worked with more than 300 writers from 31 states.
Peggy A. Sanders is a follower of local history whose great-grandparents Ira and Hattie Tillotson homesteaded near Cascade, Dakota Territory in 1883; six generations of their descendants have lived and worked in Fall River County, always in agriculture. She has written five Images of America books including Fall River County and Hot Springs: 125 Years; The Civilian Conservation Corps In and Around the Black Hills; Custer County (SD); Wind Cave National Park: The First 100 Years, and Fall River County and Hot Springs: Views from the Past 1881-1955. She is a contributor to the anthologies, Woven on the Wind and Life on the Farm and Ranch: South Dakota Stories. She is a member of Western Writers of America and Wyoming Writers, Inc. Sanders serves on the SD State Historical Society Board of Trustees. She is the originator and past chairman of the Focus on Fall River County History Conference, held annually in Hot Springs, SD. She is on the Board of Directors of the Civilian Conservation Corps Museum in Hill City, SD, a museum she helped create. A columnist since 1999, Sanders won the National Society of Newspaper Columnists' Will Rogers Writing Contest in 2007. Sanders earned her B.A. from Central College, Pella, IA after spending her junior year at the Sorbonne, Paris, France.
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