A TOWN NAMED BEN CLARE

BY WAYNE FANEBUST

There are stories in history books about towns that disappear from the maps, because for some reason, they could not be saved. Yet the very fact of their existence gives rise to intriguing questions because they had a start, a purpose and a destination before they weakened and died. These towns attracted people and promise. Like others, Ben Clare experienced the hammer and nails of optimism so unique to the American West. And for these reasons, historians and history buffs alike will not allow these communities to vanish completely. To do so would be like allowing an important part of memory itself to die and that, for a historian, is unthinkable.

Ben Clare came into being in 1888, just as the great Dakota Boom was winding down. It was built along the Illinois Central Railroad and served eastern Minnehaha County as did its neighbors, Rowena, East Sioux Falls and Valley Springs. Its founder, Benjamin B. Richards named it after his two sons: Benjamin and Clarence. In a short period of time, the usual forms of enterprise were created, including shops, grain elevators, homes, a post office and a train depot. A Methodist-Episcopal Church was built in

1890, and like a solitary reminder of the past, it still stands.

The town almost needed a hanging tree because of a nasty quarrel that erupted and festered between some of its citizens that resulted in a well-publicized homicide. One of the parties was a man named Frank R. Bowen, a leading grain dealer. He came to Ben Clare in 1892, and purchased the town site from Richards, and thereafter he established himself as a quarrelsome and boisterous man who made more enemies than friends. He was out of place in the quiet, peaceful town because he was hard-headed and difficult to deal with, insisting that he came out on top of any transaction to which he was a party. A biographer once called Bowen a “young man of sterling character and marked business acumen.” But to those who had to endure his oppressive behavior, the biography was a white-wash.

The feisty Bowen first became the center of controversy in January of 1895. It began with a dispute over money and land, but it took on religious and ethnic undertones as it became more intense. Bowen was an Irish Catholic living among others who were predominantly

Scandinavian-Protestant. He was a Democrat whereas most of his associates were Republicans. Bowen and his neighbors grew to dislike one another because of a disagreement over the actual town site, and while mired down in the dispute, the ethnic and religious differences added to the bad blood.

Bowen stubbornly refused to sell or lease town lots to aspiring businessmen at reasonable rates. He owned the land upon which the Post Office was built, along with the site of the Illinois Central Railroad depot, a hotel, and several other businesses. He also owned several home building sites. The anger directed at the unreasonable Bowen was hampering the growth of the new town. As such, the townsmen called a meeting to address Bowen’s outrageous attitude toward them. Bowen attended the meeting, in January of 1895, but refused to budge an inch from his unreasonable stance.

At the conclusion of the meeting, a resolution condemning Bowen’s action and attitude was passed. In it, the townspeople stated that “lots cannot be purchased at reasonable prices by those who would engage in mercantile businesses,” and those who wanted to start a business, were “sent away.” In conclusion, the citizens of Ben Clare agreed to move their town site to a place where “lots can be sold or given away to businessmen.”

Unmoved and further angered by this resolution, Bowen became unhinged and was arrested for using vile and foul language during the meeting. Soon thereafter, he pleaded guilty to the charge in nearby Valley Springs and paid a fine of $17.50. Despite this chastisement, Bowen was unmoved and unchanged. If anything he was even more angry and in the mood to sue his neighbors.

About three weeks after the town meeting, John O. Johnson, another local land owner came forward. He generously agreed to lease or rent land for business purposes. The lease was for twenty years with free rent for the first five years. Thereafter, the rent would be $3.00 per acre, with a maximum frontage of 50 feet on Second Avenue. Upon the expiration of the twenty-year lease, the lots would be sold by Johnson at a price fixed by three disinterred parties. The happy folks began to move onto Johnson’s land and defiantly called their new town “North Ben Clare.” Truly, Ben Clare had a friend in Johnson.

The next episode of the bitter struggle came on March 1, 1895, about a week before the mass exodus to the new town site. Bowen’s anger was at a white-hot point as he was upset over losing to a bunch of Scandinavians. He hired a man named Edward Harvey to beat up a Scandinavian man that Bowen disliked above all others, agreeing to pay Harvey’s fine in exchange for his services as a ruffian. Harvey assaulted and battered the man as he promised to do, but Bowen refused to pay the fine of $13.00. An enraged Harvey demanded that Bowen pay as promised, but the Irishman chose to run from away, causing a local journal to state that he “was not much of a fighter.”

Ben Clare didn’t have a newspaper, but other local papers took note of the loud and angry feud that was taking place near South Dakota’s border with both Iowa and Minnesota. On March 7, 1895, the Sioux Falls Argus Leader featured a colorful account of the affair. Noting that several businesses had already moved onto Johnson’s land, the Argus-Leader informed its readers that the Norwegian flag was hoisted in the town square of North Ben Clare and that the Stars and Stripes were on display at the blacksmith shop, while the Irish flag drooped at half-mast in the original town site, symbolizing the defeat of Frank H. Bowen.

After such a public humiliation, one might think that Bowen would leave Ben Clare, but he stayed and continued to be a successful grain dealer. Over time, however, the town Bowen refused to leave began to slip away. The post office was abandoned in January 1901, and for some weeks the mail traveled by train back and forth between Sioux Falls and Cherokee, Iowa, until finally, the federal government informed Ben Clare residents that they should pick up their mail in Rowena.

Then in 1903, a tragic event struck the prairie town with what could be called a death blow. On February 27, 1903, an angry Frank H. Bowen was shot and killed by Harry Stelgard, the station agent at the Illinois Central Railroad depot. Stelgard, described as nervous and hysterical, had quarreled with the incorrigible Bowen over a $2.00 demurrage that the Irishman owed on a load of coal. The two men had quarreled in the past and both lived to talk about it, but Bowen refused to pay the $2.00 and as a result, he was shot by Stelgard with a .38 caliber revolver, while wounding Bowen’s 12 year-old son with a second shot.

Stelgard was charged with murder and despite Bowen’s reputation as a bully, there were the usual public rumblings about hanging the station agent. His defense was that of insanity, an unpopular legal strategy that was labeled the “insanity dodge.” And yet it only took the jury an hour and five minutes to find Stelgard not guilty by reason of insanity. He was committed to the state mental facility in Yankton. Thereafter both Bowen and Stelgard fade from the record, while the town of Ben Clare continued its decline.

Little by little, buildings and homes were torn down or moved to other locations. The post office officially closed in 1912. The Illinois Central continued to run trains through the area until 1988, when the tracks were removed. Aside from the church, there is only one house left that bears the appearance of having been built during the brief, but hectic, hey-day of Ben Clare.