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Philip, South Dakota (605) 433-5400 Call Anytime - 24 hours/day
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Philip, South Dakota (605) 433-5400 Call Anytime - 24 hours/day
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Click here to learn more about the Prairie Homestead!
The Prairie Homestead and the Badlands Trading Post are both located at the North East entrance to the Badlands National park. The Homestead was restored in 1962 by Keith and Dorothy Crew. They started The Gasoline Station in 1973. In 1995 it was rebuilt. Both businesses are still operated by the Crew family.
| The Prairie Homestead is one of the very few sod dwellings intact today. The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation's cultural resources worthy of preservation. In 1974 the Prairie Homestead was placed on this list. It is also an AAA approved attraction. This sod dugout was built by Mr. & Mrs. Ed Brown. They were early pioneers who came west looking for land where they could fulfill their dreams. When they reached the grassy prairies near the Badlands they filed on this 160 acres. |  |
The homesteaders' living conditions in the early 1900s were similar to the conditions found in the Eastern United States 200 years earlier. However humble, it was their own and it was home. Many good pioneers survived this kind of living.
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With thick sod walls and a dirt roof, this small bedroom stayed
cool in summer and warmer in the severe winters than did the more
modern frame buildings that were used here at that time. These
little sod shanties and dugouts were common throughout the prairie.
Most of them have disappeared, melted away by the prairie rains,
caved in and returned to the earth from which they came. |
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| Turn off of Interstate 90 at Exit 131, the entrance to the Badlands National Park. Stop at the unique Badlands Trading Post and new Amoco gas station, "Where the West still lives". It features gifts ranging from mounted buffalo heads and skulls to western designed T-shirts and a variety of lower priced items as well as food - from the famous Buffalo Hot Dogs and Ice Cream Cones, down to a candy bar. The Prairie Homestead is located just 2 miles south on Highway 240, the east entrance to the Badlands National Park. |  |
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Mailing Address
(605) 433-5400 Call Anytime - 24 hours/day |
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