Old Settlers Days ran June 12 through 14 this year, and somewhere in that weekend of parade routes and a car show along Calumet Avenue, the town paused to dedicate something new spanning Main Street: a lighted welcome arch, tall enough to catch the eye of anyone driving Highway 14, timed to double as part of the town's nod to the country's 250th birthday. If you stood under it that Saturday, you could be forgiven for thinking the downtown project was finished. The kiosks are up. The flower baskets are hanging. The sculpture trail has pieces in place along the sidewalk.
None of that is the hard part, though. The piece of this plan that's actually difficult, the piece that hasn't been built yet, is a walking and biking route meant to connect Main Street to Big Slough, Silver Lake, and eventually a lake most De Smet residents already know they have to drive to reach. That's the half worth watching.
What's Already Standing
The arch itself is the most visible marker of a decade-long push, led by the town's Beautiful De Smet Committee and the De Smet Economic Development Corporation, to remake the corridor north of Highway 14. It's built with LED lights that can shift color, matching string lighting that's already gone up atop most of the businesses along Main Street. Below it, way-finding kiosks point foot traffic toward downtown storefronts, hanging flower baskets line the block, and a small sculpture trail gives the street something to look at beyond parked trucks and storefront glass.
The intent behind all of it, according to EDC director Grace Aughenbaugh, was straightforward: Highway 14 is the main east-west route through this part of Kingsbury County, and for years it was easy for a driver to pass the turn onto Calumet Avenue without ever knowing there was a downtown worth stopping for. The arch is tall enough to be seen from the highway, which was the point. It's a signal, not just a decoration.
The Money Behind the Storefronts
What's notable about how this got paid for is how little of it came from a bond measure or a tax hike. De Smet residents and the EDC have raised roughly $9 million over the past decade specifically for the town's event complex and downtown redo, and more broadly, private donors have put more than $15 million into medical, cultural, and beautification projects across De Smet over the past 15 years.
The clearest example is the De Smet Event & Wellness Center itself, finished in 2015. It cost about $5 million to build, and nearly all of that came from donations. Only $100,000 came from a federal grant and $400,000 from city tax dollars. Rita Anderson, who ran the EDC's fundraising effort at the time, remembers a city council meeting where the project looked like it might come up short at the last minute. The owner of Warne's Appliance called in and promised another $10,000 on the spot. Then local rancher and attorney Todd Wilkinson stood up and said his family would cover the remaining $7,000. The council approved it that day.
That pattern of individual, named contributions runs through the whole project. More than 1,400 separate donations came in during that initial fundraising push, and nearly all of them were matched dollar for dollar by Lyle Signs, a local company. One family reportedly sent in $25 a month, sometimes in coins, over three years, just to get their name on the donor wall inside the event center. Businesses like American Bank & Trust, De Smet Farm Mutual, Midstate Agronomy, Legend Seeds, and Maynard's grocery show up repeatedly as backers of the town's continued growth.
That local business base isn't standing still, either. In May 2026, the South Dakota Board of Economic Development approved a $400,000 SD Works loan for DeSCo Architectural, Inc. to help the company add a new product line and integrate a key component into its window systems. The expansion is expected to create six new full-time positions in De Smet, which matters for a town this size in a very direct way: more jobs locally usually means more households sticking around to keep funding the next round of civic projects.
The Half That Isn't Built Yet
Here's where the plan gets more ambitious, and more uncertain. The EDC has already started work on a trail system running from downtown out to Big Slough and Silver Lake, both places that show up by name in Laura Ingalls Wilder's books. The idea is for that trail to eventually stretch five miles south and connect with Lake Thompson, a lake with more than 40 miles of shoreline that's long been a draw for boating, walleye and pike fishing, and bird watching.
Right now, getting from Main Street to Lake Thompson means getting in a car. If the trail gets built out that far, it would be the first time residents could walk or bike from downtown to the lake without touching a highway shoulder. That's a meaningfully different relationship with a piece of geography that's currently treated as a destination you drive to on a Saturday, not a place connected to daily life in town.
The most ambitious piece of the plan is a proposed observation tower at the far end of that trail. De Smet entered an international design competition run by the French architecture firm Buildner, and the winning design, by American architect Jordan Paul Scheuermann, features a series of round viewing platforms reached by a swirling pathway. It's a striking concept for a town of 1,100 people. It's also, as of now, a concept without funding. Unlike the arch, which had a clear fundraising target and a deadline tied to Old Settlers Days, the trail and tower don't have a finish line yet.
What's Already Part of the Routine
While that bigger piece works its way toward funding, the parts of town that already exist keep doing what they've always done. Washington Park, a block north of Highway 14 at 3rd Street and Harvey Dunn Avenue, remains the largest park in town, with a sand volleyball court, two picnic shelters, and a statue honoring Father De Smet, the town's namesake. The De Smet Arts Council has run a five-show concert series since 2015, with performances once a month from April through September on Sunday afternoons at the Midstate Theater inside the Event & Wellness Center. Anyone with a membership at the Wellness Center can also use pickleball, basketball, and table tennis space through the recreation program that Kristy Hubbard oversees.
A few things worth keeping an eye on this fall and into next year:
- Whether the EDC announces a funding source or timeline for the Big Slough to Lake Thompson trail segment
- Whether the observation tower design moves from competition-winner to an actual construction budget
- Continued hiring at DeSCo Architectural as its new product line comes online
- Whether next year's Old Settlers Days, which is typically held the second weekend of June, includes any update on trail progress the way this year's included the arch dedication
Why the Arch Was the Easy Part
The arch, the kiosks, and the flower baskets prove something De Smet has already shown it can do: raise money from its own residents and business owners for a visible, finishable project with a clear deadline. The trail and tower ask something different. They ask whether that same appetite for local giving extends to a project with a five-mile scope, no fixed price tag yet, and a payoff that's more about how people move through their own town than about what greets a driver on Highway 14.
If you're watching how De Smet keeps investing in itself, that's the story to follow, not the ribbon that already got cut.
If you're thinking about what any of this means for your own home or property here, the team at Elevate Real Estate knows this town street by street. Reach out to Molly Hopper to schedule a consultation.
