The Chautauqua had the look and
feel of a lakeside resort, but was much more. It was a place
where people gathered to hear lecturers, take classes and listen
to the various musical entertainers that booked shows there.C.E.
Hager, a Methodist minister, proposed during a ministerial
meeting in Madison, South
Dakota in the summer of 1890 to
develop the first Chautauqua in South
Dakota at Lake Madison,
he was encouraged to pursue the project. A
public meeting was held July
23, 1890, at Morena Beach on
the northwest end of Lake Madison,
the proposed sites. A stock company was organized in order
to purchase the sixty-acre tract. Stocks
were sold for $100 each.
In the spring of 1891 the grounds were developed. This development included the Grand View
Hotel, the Auditorium, boat and bathhouse, dining hall, several
barns, drives and paths and sites for 300 tents. The
first Lake Madison Chautauqua opened on July 15th and
closed on August 5, 1891. It
attracted a large audience from all over the region, including Sioux
City and Minneapolis. Its early and continued success
was the result of three important factors: the early decision to make it a statewide
rather than a local project with board members from across
the state, the hard work of community activists willing to
pursue the project and the availability of railroad transportation
directly to the grounds*. A
narrow-gauge railway ran four miles from Madison to
the lake. The steam motor line was gone by 1900,
but in 1906 was replaced with a spur off a rail line running
into Madison form
the southeast. The permanent Chautauquas shared
a singe high standard of respectability and built the tradition
of Chautauqua as a “provided of uplift, inspiration,
morality, the poor person’s college, and good fun” (Case,
18). The Lake
Madison Chautauqua booked talent independently of the circuit
Chautauqua agencies as circuit entertainment was considered
superficial as circuit programs were designed to make money
for their promoters rather than aspire to some high ideal. The Chautauqua programs
were characterized by variety. Lectures
and orators, band and orchestras, vocalists, readers, impersonators
appeared at lake Madison . Among the well-known personages were
Reverend T. DeWitt Talmage, Booker
T. Washington, Eugene
V. Debs, William Jennings Bryan and President
William Howard Taft. The
Lake Madison Chautauqua offered many opportunities for study
and instruction in addition to the Chautauqua. Literary and Scientific Circles met for
home study throughout the year. These
circles were the forerunners of reading societies, book clubs
and correspondence schools and extension courses. A
summer-school was offered at the Lake Madison Chautauqua as
a three week school for teachers with instructors coming from
several colleges and university in the region who taught psychology,
geology, Greek, shorthand and many other subjects. In 1891, classes were held in nine large
tents arranged in two rows in the Grove of Cottonwoods bordering
the Chautauqua grounds. One
of the most popular schools was the Women’s
Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). The
WCTU School of Methods trained young women for “doing
work” for the community. Topics included alcohol, prisons, and
the dangers of cigarettes and patent medicines. The
pushed for prohibition of
alcohol. The
WCTU state headquarters were at Lake Madison and
they raised money by operating the dining hall of the Chautauqua
grounds. *Lake Madison Chautauqua: Its
History and Impact, Rise Smith
Excerpt from
Smith, Risë L. "Introduction." In Prairie Chautauqua,
by Lucile F. Fargo, reprint edition, vii-xxiv. (New York:
Dodd, Mead & Company, 1943; reprint Dell Rapids, SD:
Smith Publishing Co, 1991).
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