Downtown Sioux Falls Over 50 Years

It’s fifty degrees a few days before Christmas, which feels wrong in a way that’s becoming familiar.

The Falls don’t react.
They never have.

The water sounds the same. The rhythm hasn’t changed. But the air still tells you where you are—especially when the wind shifts and Smithfield Meats announces itself. Pungent. Metallic. Unavoidable. A reminder that Sioux Falls was built on work that didn’t need to be pretty to matter.

In 1985, that smell wasn’t a problem. It was a coordinate.