Saturday, I went online to check out the Corn Cam, a 24/7 live feed of The World’s Only Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota. To the untrained eye, this shot of the exterior of the Corn Palace showed nothing much of interest — the limbs on a lone tree in front of the building swayed gently in the wind; flags atop the building flapped; an occasional car drove past; and once in a while, someone entered or existed the building. But to my trained eye — I’ve had the pleasure of visiting the Corn Palace in person, so I know what to look for! — there was much more afoot.
Steve and I never had any intention of visiting the Corn Palace. Actually, neither of us had ever even heard of it. But then we ended up in Mitchell, where a visit to the palace is practically mandatory. After all, if you’re in a town, and you find out it has “the world’s only” anything, how can you possibly pass that up?
Mitchell built its first Corn Palace in 1892 to celebrate its agricultural ties, but the town had outgrown the building by 1905 (yep, the palace was that popular), so it was torn down and re-built, bigger and better. Then the town outgrew the bigger, better Corn Palace, so it was replaced again in 1921, and that’s the building still in use today.
What the Corn Palace is most known for are the corn murals that decorate both its interior and exterior walls. The murals are made entirely from corn and other grains and native grasses, and while the interior ones stay in place for many years, those outside are usually changed out each year. This annual mural reconstruction requires anywhere from 250,000 to 275,000 ears of corn (and some estimates put it even higher).
In addition to yellow, local farmers grow corn in several different colors and shades — red, brown, black, white, blue, orange, calico and green, so no paint is needed (or even allowed) to construct the murals. Each ear is cut in half lengthwise and nailed in place, using over a ton of nails each year (coincidentally, that’s the exact quantity of nails in my dad’s shop in Georgia right now).
During basketball season, the Corn Palace serves as home court for the Dakota Wesleyan University Tigers, whose fan base is known as the “Corn Crib Crazies.” It used to also be home to the local high school team, the Mitchell Kernels, although I believe the high school now has a new gym. The Kernels’ mascot is, no surprise, Cornelius.
Besides hosting hoops, the palace is home to all sorts of other events throughout the year, including the annual Corn Palace Festival in August.
It’s free to enter the building and wander around, although, admittedly, that mostly amounts to walking around on a basketball court. If you need to go to the bathroom, footprint-shaped ears of corn along the floor show you the way. It’s easy to see where b-ball fans get their fill of snacks and drinks — there’s a sign pointing to the “corn-cessions.”
At some point, things might get a little too corny for some folks, but I have to say I love stuff like this, and apparently, I’m not the only one: 500,000 visitors a year stop by to soak up the a-maize-ing atmosphere (yeah, I went there).
So, back to the Corn Cam. If you’ve never been to the Corn Palace, chances are that if you tune in, you’re likely to be so struck by the building’s overall appearance that that’s where your focus is. The term used to describe the architecture is “Moorish Revival,” and, if you’re like me, that doesn’t mean a heck of a lot; in fact, if you offered me a million dollars at this very moment to describe the elements of Moorish Revival architecture, I’d draw a blank (well, technically, I’d probably go online and google it, so I could collect the million). Suffice it to say, though, that the architecture is interesting; particularly eye-catching are the onion-shaped domes on top of the building (they look similar to those I’ve seen in photographs of Russian churches).
Because I’d been to the Corn Palace before, I immediately honed in on the murals, and the first thing I noticed was the one to the right of the front door — showing a group of circus elephants — wasn’t in good shape. The corn on about a quarter of the mural was missing. Then I glanced at the mural to the left of the front door. It’s farther from the camera and, therefore, harder to see, but it was clear even from a cursory view that it was totally incongruent with the circus elephants; it was only after enlarging the image that I could see it was a young man admiring banners from the Kernels’ past basketball championships.
The point is: The Corn Palace is in the midst of changing out its exterior murals; the one on the left is brand new, and the one on the right is currently being dismantled. This is something that’s usually done every year in late summer/early fall, and each year, there’s a new theme uniting all the murals. The last theme was circus-related, and that group of murals actually stuck around for two years, as last year’s drought prevented the annual mural reconstruction. However, with corn crops back up to par this year, new murals are now being put in place for 2024, with a theme of “Famous South Dakotans.” The young man in the basketball mural is, it turns out, former NBA player Mike Miller, a Mitchell native who played for the Kernels. Other planned murals for this series include: portrayals of game show host Bob Barker (who spent much of his youth in S.D.), Wild Bill Hickok (who was killed in Deadwood, S.D.), and author Laura Ingalls Wilder (famous for her series of Little House on the Prairie books).
In the days to come, I plan to pop back in to the Corn Cam to see if I can catch work on the murals as it’s taking place. And if you can think of a better way for me to spend my time, I’m all ears.
