Day One, Mitchell Corn Palace.

A Comfort Inn provided shelter and directions to the Corn Palace.  Mitchell is a small town, but we managed our usual wrong turn. When Lewis and Clark passed through this area in 1805, they wrote unfavorably of it being a barren desert only suitable for buffalo. In 1892, the Corn Belt Real Estate Association built the first wooden Corn Palace to showcase the crops which could be grown and attract more farmers. Today’s brick structure, built in 1929, has panels around the sides with a dozen varieties of different colored corn and Milo intermixed to create murals of western life.

The outside of the palace is redecorated each year, with a different theme.  The inside is redecorated every ten years, and keeps the same murals.  We took a short guided tour and ended up looking at stalls filled with junky tourist gifts.