The people of the prairies are like the land they love. They draw strength from the winds that blow across their plains and they draw warmth from the sun that melts the snow or beats mercilessly on the parched earth of summer. They are gentle as the snow that falls and as determined as the blizzard that drives all before it. Prairie people are as refreshing as the early rains of summer and as honest and open as the plains that stretch for endless miles. They endure like the timeless mountains that rim the prairies edge. Their lives sing like the meadowlark in spring and bring fragrance and beauty like the wild roses that fill the valleys or the buttercups and crocuses that dot the hillsides. They are curious and free like the coyote that howls at dusk or the antelope that bounds across the hills. The peoples of the prairies are like the land they love... As Eva Anglesburg wrote in "The Prairies Own" "For where a land lies level, as far as eye can see; Where nature's moods are so diverse, Where so tremendous is the spanning sky That one seems centering the universe. It is not strange the prairie's sons have grown To be like her, have virtues like her own." Printed on a historical marker near Fox Ridge on Hwy 212 east of Faith, South Dakota