Isn’t it strange? Have you ever noticed that 100 South Main and 100 North Main Street in Chamberlain are down in the middle of town rather than at the inter-section of King and Main (by Norwest Bank and McDonald’s) where they "should" be? After we published the article about naming the streets in Reliance we (office staff) got to talking about the street layout in Chamberlain.

A hundred years ago when I was little … er, young … we crossed the Highway 16 bridge at the old Harry K. building. I think there was a Knox Service Station there on the right as you came east and the road went up past the Black Hills Café (owned by Mr. and Mrs. Orton Ritchie, both now deceased. The building is now the Black Hills Bar.

The highway went on up Beebe Avenue to the top of the street to intersect with Grace Street where the Powers family had this beautiful "rock garden" with a rock tower in the center of it that was used for a storage. Every child, with any kind of an imagine, had wonderful visions of what the tower (castle?) was all about. It seems to me there was also a goldfish pond, but that’s a little fuzzy. 

   On with the highway ... It curved at the top of Beebe and went south to King Avenue and up southeast across the hills. At that time, the railroad came into town from Pukwana along American Creek. Good grief … is this boring, or what? Why did I even start this? Just in case anyone is interested in this little (and probably inaccurate) history lesson, I will continue my train (speaking of railroads!) of thought.