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Town: South Dakota

35 posts
Bellevue, Iowa on the Mississippi River. (Courtesy Community Heart & Soul)
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  • Citizen Engagement

Fountains of Youth for Towns

  • Deborah Fallows
  • March 15, 2022
The life and spirit of any town or city depend on its ability to attract and retain people. In a time when many worry about brain drain, how communities keep their young people, or bring them back, or attract newcomers illustrates a place's sense of and attention to renewal.
Fireworks in the night sky
View Post
  • Civic Life

Congrats to the Winners!

  • Deborah Fallows
  • November 5, 2021
Two small towns come out strong in a national poll. They're among our favorites, and we're glad for these results.
Two girls on horseback.
View Post
  • Civic Life

Covid Pioneer Families

  • Deborah Fallows
  • September 21, 2021
How has the pandemic motivated people to reconsider where they live, and why? Here is a story from South Dakota about how families are changing—and towns as well.
Two sisters who left Darfur as refugees, and made their way to Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
View Post
  • Refugees

Bring in the Refugees

  • James Fallows
  • September 10, 2021
The most encouraging front-page headline I’ve seen in the New York Times in a long time was this, from Labor Day. It was on a story by Miriam Jordan and Jennifer Steinhauer, and…
Inside the Buffalo Ridge Brewery, one of the sights for RuralX 2021.
View Post
  • Civic Life

Brimming with a Sense of Possibility and Positivity with the Wind Finally at Our Backs Again

  • Ben Speggen
  • July 27, 2021
“Our Towns” Reader Response Roundup features film screening feedback, a unique effort to support libraries nationwide, and national perceptions being addressed at the local level.
View of he Laura Ingalls Wilder homestead, just outside De Smet, South Dakota. Wilder chronicled her childhood in this part of the country in her 'Little House' books, and one of her daughters became a noted journalist. In De Smet a new journalistic experiment is underway. (All photos by Deborah and James Fallows)
View Post
  • Local Journalism

The Rise of the Kingsbury Journal, and the Future of Local Journalism

  • James Fallows
  • July 8, 2021
A local paper with a longer history than its home state suddenly shut its doors, for good, during the pandemic. How an entire community willed a new publication into existence--and avoided becoming one more American "news desert."
Movie marquee showing "Our Towns"
View Post
  • Local Institutions

Learning from a Prairie State

  • James Fallows
  • June 28, 2021
Small cities, potentially big lessons. What a state that is home to 800,000 people can demonstrate to the country as a whole.
Sign that says "Welcome to Lemmon"
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  • Arts

The Artists of Lemmon, South Dakota

  • Deborah Fallows
  • August 13, 2020
The role of the arts in a tiny town with its sights set high
The new 'Arc of Dreams' sculpture over the Big Sioux River in downtown Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in July 2019, shortly before its formal unveiling. (James Fallows / The Atlantic)
View Post
  • Civic Life

How a City Talks About Itself: Sioux Falls

  • Deborah Fallows
  • July 29, 2019
In June 2013, my husband, Jim, and I first landed our small, single-engine Cirrus propeller airplane at the main airport, Joe Foss Field, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. It was the first…
What Deb Fallows discovered in the children's museum at the Washington Pavilion, in Sioux Falls (James Fallows / The Atlantic)
View Post
  • Economic Development

Sioux Falls is Ready for Tom Hanks

  • James Fallows
  • July 16, 2019
A year ago, America’s Favorite Actor™, Tom Hanks, triggered a series of reports on TV and in the Argus Leader newspaper in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. He did so with one little…
Sustainability Academy in Burlington, Vermont, a neighborhood school for many refugees (Deborah Fallows)
View Post
  • Refugees

A Post-Election Field Report From America’s Refugees and Immigrants

  • Deborah Fallows
  • December 3, 2016
Words and stories from the towns where the newest Americans live
Sisters originally from Darfur, resettled in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The young lady on the left was a proud member of public high school ROTC. (Deborah Fallows / the Atlantic)
View Post
  • Refugees

Refugees, Immigrants, and the Battle Over Who Is American

  • James Fallows
  • October 29, 2016
Deb Fallows has a new post up, about what’s actually involved in settling immigrants from Syria—or Somalia or Congo or Bhutan—in the American cities that have taken the lead in…
Illustration by Adam Voorhes and Robin Finlay.
View Post
  • Civic Life

How America Is Putting Itself Back Together

  • James Fallows
  • February 22, 2016
Most people in the U.S. believe their country is going to hell. But they’re wrong. What a three-year journey by single-engine plane reveals about reinvention and renewal.
A few of the places we have been to so far. (The Atlantic)
View Post
  • Travel

‘American Futures’ Master List: Some of the Hundreds of Places We Would Like to Go

  • James Fallows
  • February 13, 2016
Some of the Hundreds of Places We Would Like to Go "There is more going on, in more places, than you imagined."
Downtown Columbus, Mississippi, on a visit not long ago (James Fallows / The Atlantic)
View Post
  • Economic Development

A Song of America’s Downtowns

  • James Fallows
  • April 22, 2014
A heartening surprise of our travel so far: the breadth, seriousness, and—in some places—success of the effort to revitalize small-town downtowns. Or, what 3 programmers from Uzbekistan taught us about America.
View Post
  • Language

The Word Cloud of a Town

  • Deborah Fallows
  • April 7, 2014
How the people of Sioux Falls describe themselves and their hometown

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