Prairie Skyline

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Story

This isolated prairie elevator is an actual location four miles from the artist's hometown in eastern South Dakota. As a young boy Terry Redlin often visited the area, sketching and honing his creative skills. Forty years later he returned to renew the vision. The result is this dramatic painting that captures both the vastness of the plains country, and the wildlife who survive regardless of man's intrusion.

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Approximately 8 to 10 years back, I began doing some genealogy search on my grandparents from when they lived in the Rauville, area. I was at the Codington County Courthouse and found documents relating to Rauville Dairy, which had the legal description to the land in the area where the Prairie Skyline Elevator site is located. My paternal Grandfather, John, farmed quite large- - (for those days)- - with horses, the building site was located just south of this elevator.
I have visited this site several times since, (including the Redlin Museum) and can only imagine the difficult times that went along with farming and milking a large herd of dairy cows after working the fields all day.
My father didn’t talk much about this time period, but I gathered his father was a rather tough disciplinarian. I also know that my grandmother died rather young.
I have read some of the family history of Terry Redlin, and believe that one of the” Stein family” relatives may have been an employee to my grandfather’s operation at Rauville during the period from 1917 - 1934.
My mother was also from this area. Her maiden name was “Buelow” her father was Herman, and farmed about a 1/2 mile north from what was a Wisconsin Synod Lutheran Church. The church has closed and removed from the site. All that remains is a cemetery where my maternal grandparents are buried.
Larry Rusch