WORLD'S LARGEST BIRD FEEDER

Currently in Mitchell SD (Low 60 Currently Clouds and Sun 65)
Heading to Sioux Falls SD (Currently 64 Clouds and Sun High 80) 

With its field corn exterior the Corn Palace in Mitchell South Dakota has jokingly been called the world's largest bird feeder. The Corn Palace originally built in 1892 was not the world's first, that distinction belongs to Sioux City Iowa, but it is the only corn or grain palace left in the world.

The murals on the exterior are made of 13 different colors of field corn that is cut in half and nailed to plywood. Here is a display inside showing a small example

and the different colors of corn. A 14th color, green, will be in the 2018-2019 theme. 

The 2017-2018 theme was South Dakota Weather. The 2018-2019 theme will be to honor the military.

This is truly a multi-functional building, not only is it the 2nd most visited tourist attraction in South Dakota after Mount Rushmore it is also a basketball court for high school and college games, and an arena for concerts, bull riding competition and other events. Over 200 basketball games are played on this court each year. USA Today calls this basketball venue one of the 10 best places in the country to watch high school basketball. Here is the arena space showing the interior murals serving as the gift shop.

A closeup of one of the murals residing inside that used to be outside.

The pillars in the building are decked out as different colored corn cobs, we especially liked this blue corn one.

This was a lot more than we expected, plus it was free admission. Don't worry they got some money from us as we bought corn of course, chocolate caramel popcorn that is, and some wild plum jam. They use the proceeds from the gift shop to pay for the yearly redo of the exterior to the new theme, plus the murals inside also need to be maintained.

We thought this would be corny but it turned out to be very interesting.

Till next time,

Bob and Jo