South Dakota State Capitol

When South Dakota became a state in 1889 Pierre was named the temporary capital, a town of a few thousand on the east bank of the Missouri that had grown from a ferry landing across from Fort Pierre. It won a second vote in 1890 against Huron and others, and still the fight did not end: bills to move the capital came up again and again, and in 1904 the voters were asked a third time. Pierre won again, and its backers set out to build something too large and too permanent to move.

Work began in 1905, and the building was dedicated on June 30, 1910: a neoclassical capitol under a copper dome, with painted murals inside that are among its best-known features. Every December the rotunda and halls fill with decorated Christmas trees.

Capitol Lake, east of the building, was dug in 1913 and filled by an artesian well whose water carried so much natural gas that it could be set alight. The gas feeds the Flaming Fountain on the shore, a memorial to the state's veterans that has burned for decades. Nearby, the Fighting Stallions memorial honors Governor George Mickelson and the seven men who died with him when their state plane crashed in Iowa in April 1993. In winter the warm artesian water keeps the lake partly open, and Canada geese stay through the cold.