Corn Palace

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So here's the one and only Corn Palace, the famous municipal auditorium in Mitchell, South Dakota. Every year the exterior of the building is decorated with multicolored murals made of corn. The murals are slowly eaten by birds over the course of the next year, and after the next harvest a fresh new mural design goes up. The murals shown here date to 1996-97 and have a hunting and fishing theme. Which I imagine is a popular theme in this part of the world.

Having come from a non-corn-growing part of the country, we had never heard of the place when we stumbled across it. But apparently it's a major tourist attraction in this part of the world. There's even a gift shop across the street, offering Corn Palace-themed knicknacks and doodads. We wandered inside to look around, but inside it just looks like any old small town auditorium. They were setting up for a high school basketball game and we didn't want to get in the way, so we didn't stick around long.

As a small bonus (since I only have one picture of the Corn Palace itself), here's a picture of the town's cool Art Deco City Hall, which sits right next door to the Corn Palace.