SCOUTING YESTERDAY: Buried dynamite on reservation caused panic in 2000

This week in South Dakota history: April 25 - May 1

Debris is thrown into the air as decades-old dynamite is destroyed. Photo: Argus Leader

Federal officials sounded the alarm in 2000 after discovering that a 1930s Works Progress Administration (WPA) road crew had buried more than 140 cases of dynamite — with half the power of the Oklahoma City bomb — just 12 feet below tribal land on the Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota Reservation, according to the April 30, 2000, edition of the Argus Leader.

The road crew buried the dynamite in a field after completing their work on a dam and roads in 1938. Six decades later, an elderly living center and a Tribal Head Start building stood across the road from the site.

SCOUTING YESTERDAY: Dakota State's most wired award was two decades in the making