Pierre in Days gone by….

Pat Powers

I’ve always got those projects that I come back to every 12 months or so, and one of them is a stack of photographic negatives from Pierre in the 1930’s. I’m somewhat obstinate that I’m going to find a way to get all these oversized 5×7 negatives them converted to a digital format in a quality that’s acceptable to me.

If you’re a friend of mine on facebook, you know I’ve been working on putting an archive of 500-600 old family photos on-line for my extended family to access; everything from my parents in the 1930’s forward, as well as grandparents, cousins, and anything else that’s in the pile.

Finding some vintage negatives, it gave me the impetus to attempt some crude conversion of photographic negatives, which led me around to another run at the Pierre Negatives.

They’re not perfect, but here’s what I came up with:

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These two pictures are of a 1930’s era Pierre Baseball team playing a game against Sioux Valley. Notice the cars all lining the field.

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Here’s a couple of views of the State Capitol, pre-1940. How do I know?  The Catholic Church on the hill in the background has yet to be built in the view from Capitol Lake.

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And check out the wild riverboat night club advertising “Every Night – Old time MeloDrama and VodVil” in the shadow of the old bridge, as well as boats going up the Missouri River.

Interesting snapshot into history for our State’s hub of government.

9 thoughts on “Pierre in Days gone by….”

  1. Amazing PP! Thank you for sharing. It is great to see the bottom one when the big ships were going through the Missouri.

    1. That last photo doesn’t look like any bridge in Pierre. The first Pierre car bridge was built in 1926, was a multiple arch span construction and quite narrow. The railroad bridge was constructed in 1905 and was quite low to the water. A section could pivot out 90 degrees to allow boat traffic through. That bridge in the photo looks like Minneapolis and the Mississippi river.

      1. I agree. The old Pierre/Ft. Pierre bridge looked like the old bridge that crosses from Chamberlain to Cedar Shores.

      2. That’s the bridge in St. Louis.

        Anybody else there when the explosive demolition company dropped the old highway bridge into the river? We were right under the railroad bridge. My ears rang for a couple days.

  2. During WWII, while my grandfather was away, my grandmother, uncle and father lived in Pierre with my great-grandparents. I faintly remember my Dad telling me of he and his brother walking on Sunday’s to the ballpark to watch the baseball game. Must have been a huge thrill for him as he told it to me every time we walked from our house to the Amateur or Legion baseball game in Gettysburg (6 or 7 blocks).

    I had always presumed they walked to from North Huron to Hyde Stadium (20 blocks?) but when I look at that picture, it looks like it is in the location of Hyde’s Stadium but it wasn’t built yet as the outfield is against the railroad tracks (which is now that parking lot on south side of Stadium) and that “roof” appears to be roughly where 2nd base is now.

    And, what is that large building SW of St. Mary’s Hospital? It looks almost like a Hotel and to be close to the west side of the tennis courts.

  6. Thanks for the great pictures from the “Tom Berry Era!”…. Those were the good old days!

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