Two Companions

Clayton Week told this walk in his own words years later, and South Dakota Magazine printed his account in 2016. He and Charlie Almos were cousins whose families farmed about ten miles west of Sisseton, so for two years the boys kept house on their own in town to attend high school. With the highway buried, they steered by the tops of the telephone poles. When Almos wanted to sit down, Week would not let him. Either boy alone, Week said, would likely have lain down and never got up.

What the plaque says

Two Companions The Dakota winter of 1937 stretched out too long for farm boys Charles Almos and Clayton Week. They lived with their parents on the Coteau des Prairies eight and ten miles west of Sisseton. During their high school years, the boys shared room and board in town. For over a month, snowdrifts the height of telephone poles blocked Highway 10 west of town leaving little hope for the boys to get home for a weekend with their families. One Friday the invincible, yet lonesome, lads started out on foot towards home. After four miles of breaking through drifts they were cold and exhausted. All they could think of was lying down to rest. By now they had reached the coteau where winds racing along the hillsides whip the snow into unexpected blizzards. Sensing the danger of losing their way in the storm, the boys prodded each other along through the stinging snow. Good fortune led them to the homestead of Tobias and Bertha Herigstad where they received food and warm beds until they could be picked up by their parents. With grateful hearts the boys grew to manhood, ever acknowledging the hospitality of the Herigstad's which saved their lives. Sponsored by the Heritage Museum of Roberts County and the South Dakota Department of Transportation 1998

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Joseph N. Nicollet Tower and Interpretive Center — 3.3 mi
  A tower on the edge of the Coteau des Prairies honoring the French mapmaker who drew this country in 1838 and 1839 and kept the Dakota names on the map.
• Sica Hollow State Park — 6.3 mi
  Wooded ravines on the edge of the Coteau, on the Lake Traverse Reservation, where the springs run iron-red and the Dakota tell of a good land gone bad.
• Fort Sisseton Historic State Park — 17 mi
  A stone fort on the Coteau des Prairies built to watch the Dakota after 1862, renamed for the Sisseton who scouted for it, restored by the WPA and saved again by a boy who grew up loving it.

More markers nearby

• Two Sisters — steps away
• Little Paul Mazakutemani — 2.0 mi
• Roberts County / Marshall County — 2.5 mi
• Map of Northeast South Dakota — 3.3 mi