Home of the Second Corn Palace

Mitchell built its first Corn Palace in eighteen ninety-two, calling it the Corn Belt Exposition. It was a wooden castle on Main Street, raised quickly to show off the richness of South Dakota soil and lure settlers to the prairie. But the little palace soon proved too small.

In nineteen oh five, city leaders tore it down and built a second, larger Corn Palace. They had a bold motive. Mitchell was trying to convince the state to move the capital here from Pierre, and a grand new palace seemed a fine argument.

The new building was decorated, inside and out, with murals made of corn. Mitchell never won the capital, but the Corn Palace tradition endured, and the town still bills itself as home of the world's only Corn Palace.