Why You Should Visit the Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota

The Corn Palace is certainly one of the weirdest places I've ever been. As a little girl, I often studied my grandmother's 1940s photographs of a building that appeared to be made entirely of corn, and I always wanted to see it; I finally got to visit the legendary palace this year. Nestled in the South Dakotan town of Mitchell, South Dakota, the world's only Corn Palace resembles the Kremlin with its onion domes and minaret-style towers, and its exterior is completely covered in grain. The theme changes each year, and an artist designs new murals to be created out of corn and other grains. The theme for 2006 is "Salute to Rodeo," and there are corn pictures of horses, rodeo riders, bucking bulls, cowboy boots, and more. The murals are quite unique and the domes are painted in bright colors, making the Corn Palace a real traffic-stopper.

The first wooden Corn Palace got its start in 1892 right on Main Street in Mitchell. The first palace was covered with various grains, including corn, wheat, rye straw, oats, barley and other grasses. John Phillip Sousa played there, and well-known politicians visited and spoke at the new, larger Corn Palace that was built in 1905. In 1921, the third and present Corn Palace was built from concrete, and it currently hosts basketball games for Dakota Wesleyan University and local high schools as well as stage shows and other entertainment in its spacious indoor arena.

Inside the Corn Palace are a museum with educational exhibits about corn and the artists who designed the murals, photos of each year's designs, and a gift shop with all sorts of "corny" gifts. Free tours are given, and the friendly guides will tell you all about the process of taking down all the corn from the old murals and nailing on the hundreds of thousands of new ears. The ears are halved so they lay flat against the building, and the mosaics created by them are striking; there are more than a dozen different hues of corn used, so the murals are very colorful. The corn is grown around Mitchell, and it begins to go up on the murals in summer; tar paper diagrams are put up and each variety of corn is nailed on as it is harvested. The Corn Palace Festival is held around the time all the corn has ripened and the murals are complete; it's a harvest-time festival with country music stars and carnival rides that's held in late August or early September. As winter nears, birds, squirrels and mice turn the Corn Palace into a giant feeder, so if you want to see it in full array, go in September or October.

I visited the Corn Palace this year in May and saw all of the 12 completed murals; because of a drought the murals were just touched up and not completely removed and recreated this year, and the murals have been occasionally left up for a couple of years on different occasions. During the world wars the murals were even painted on since the grain couldn't be spared; it takes several hundred acres of the various colors of corn to do the murals up right. The artist for the past few years has been Cheri Ramsdell, who is an art professor at Dakota Wesleyan University in Mitchell. There are permanent murals inside the Corn Palace created by Oscar Howe, a Native American artist who also designed the exterior murals for more than 20 years. The murals usually have Western or agricultural themes.

There is a polka festival held each year in September in the Corn Palace, and the Corn Palace Stampede Rodeo is held in July. Admission to the palace is free, and it's open from 8 am to 5 pm, but you can look at the outside of the building anytime. There are quite a few shops and restaurants surrounding the Corn Palace on N. Main Street, and you can easily spend an afternoon around the area. There are other attractions in Mitchell, such as the Prehistoric Indian Village and Archeodome, Dakota Discovery Museum, and the Enchanted World Doll Museum. The Corn Palace is located at 603 N. Main Street; turn off I-90 north onto Highway 37, then turn right on 6th Avenue. The Corn Palace is at 6th and Main. You may think you're lost but keep following the signs, and finally you'll see the World's Only Corn Palace.