Stoneage Ramblings

By John R. Stone

There can be some interesting experiences on the road and we had a few on a recent trip to visit relatives in Wyoming.

We spent a couple of nights in Rapid City on the way out just to poke around there, which we haven’t done in many years.

On the way we went through Miller, S.D. and drove through just before their homecoming parade. It must be a tradition, but all the trees along the route had been dressed up with toilet paper, they’d been TPd. There were a lot of trees, I’d bet there wasn’t a roll left in the county!

Our first stop in Rapid City was the visitor center, and Mary went to the guest register to put our names in the book. As Mary looked at the names above where ours would be she said to me, “look at this!” The most recent names on the list were Larry and Linda McQuiston of Farwell.

A couple of hours later we were walking through the downtown business district and stepped into the Tandy Leather store. A young (compared to me) man asked where I was from. I said Minnesota and he of course asked where. I did the unusual thing and said it was a small town he might not of heard of. He asked where again and I said Glenwood. He said he was in the Glenwood High School class of 1984! I had probably taken his picture at some high school activity. Oh, his name was Morris Persson.

We spent a couple of nights in Riverton and had dinner with Jeremy and Rachel Cochran. Then we headed up the road to Yellowstone planning to visit that park before heading to Cody to see Mary’s brother.

On the way up US16 from Riverton, eight miles short of DuBois, a town of 911 people according to the sign, we came across the National Museum of Military Vehicles.

This place is in a brand new 140,000 square foot structure out in the middle of nowhere showcasing the collection of military vehicles obtained over the past decade or so by Dan Starks. Starks is the former CEO of St. Jude Medical, a Minnesota firm. He lived in Chanhassen for a number of years.

Upon retiring he bought a 17,000 acre ranch near DuBois and started collecting military vehicles. He would run some through the DuBois 4th of July parade and kept them on his ranch. He started getting so many requests to see what he had stored on the ranch that he decided to set up the museum. So far he has spent around $100 million on the building and acquiring nearly in 1,000 vehicles.

He has a shop with six employees who fix up the equipment he buys from a variety of sources and has endowed the museum so it doesn’t need to raise funds. It does charge admission, however, veterans and active duty military personnel get in for free.

The structure contains displays of vehicles from WWII, the Korean and Vietnam wars. They are organized by conflict and sometimes by events. There is a long display of vehicles, for example, for the Red Ball Express that kept troops and vehicles moving in WWII in Europe.

I was surprised by how many tanks there were. Tanks are heavy and I think there were at least 25 tanks on display, not just U.S. tanks but some from other countries like Germany in the WWII display.

Outside the museum there are probably 100 vehicles on display under a roof to protect them from the sun and 40 or 50 more lined up to be serviced.

Starks does not plan to stop there. He has located land for a second museum that will cover the vehicles of the Cold War, Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

What I thought was interesting was the display explained how each vehicle was used and what was good and what was not so good about it. I found that very interesting. There was also a display for each conflict showing how many U.S. troops participated, were wounded and killed.

And at the end there was a large room for groups with cards where people could write down impressions of the museum, the concept of war or whatever was on their mind. Very impressive!