Vegetation-Wright Chronicles
Wright in Spearfish Canyon…"A
Noble Inheritance"
 Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959),
America's greatest architect who championed 'organic' architecture, gives
a most dramatic and poetic description of the beauty of the Spearfish
Canyon as seen on his trip through the Badlands and Black Hills in September,
1935.
It was early September. The
Canyon was most certainly experiencing its fall chill heralding autumn's
colorful palette. Mr. Wright entered the Canyon at its confluence from
the north where it widens to the lush green valley floor of Spearfish.
"not very interesting
at first. I have seen so many; the Western States are full of them,
as everyone knows". The road here is haphazard as hazard was and
is none too good."
The canyon roadway was the recent
remnants of the flooded Burlington rail bed abandoned one year earlier
in 1934. It was very rough, muddy and chuck-holed...a true test of endurance.
"But shortly, things
began to happen". We would be headed straight for gigantic white
walls tabulated (horizontal beams) in ledges from which pines sprouted
and grew in precisely the manner of the pictorial dreams of the great
Chinese painters, the greatest painters that ever lived. We were in
the land of the Sung and Ming masters. Whoever knows their idealization
of nature in the Chinese landscape painting of those great periods,
and they were mostly landscapes, can see the character of the Spearfish
ensemble."
The
“Spearfish ensemble” Mr. Wright referred to is the rich canyon vegetation
caused by the unique convergence of four biomes. The biomes, or plant
communities include: Rocky Mountain Coniferous Forest dominated by ponderosa
pine, Northern Coniferous Forest dominanted by white spruce, Eastern Deciduous
Forest dominated by aspen and birch, and Northern Great Plains Grassland
consisting of oak and cottonwood.
.
In the 10th Century, Daoism
had preached that the True Way, or Dao, was manifested in the changing
forms and eternal laws of nature. The Dao was achieved through the balance
of opposing yet complimentary forces, such as mountain (shan) and water
(shui) the two words that form the Chinese term for landscape. The landscapes
in the northern province of Song and Ming are very similar to the topography
and vegetation found in Spearfish Canyon.
Mr. Wright was an avid collector
of Chinese Dao landscape paintings. The Chinese artistic treaties of nature
were inspiring to Wright's vision of architectural expression. Early on,
Wright defined the principles for what he called "organic" architecture.
Appropriate to time, place and man, an organic architecture "proceeds,
persists, creates, according to the nature of man and his circumstances
as they both change".
"But how is it that
I've heard so little of this miracle and we, toward the Atlantic, have
heard so much of the Grand Canyon when this is even more miraculous"
Obviously, the Canyon was an
inspiring landscape to Mr. Wright.
 "great
horizontal rock walls abruptly rising above torrential streams, their
stratified surfaces decorated with red pine stems carving stratified
branches in horizontal textures over the cream white walls, multiplied
red pine trunks and the black green masses of the pine rhythmically
repeating patterns, climbing, climbing until the sky disappears or was
a narrow rift of blue as the clear water poured over pebbles or pooled
under the heavy masses of green at the foot of the grand rock walls."
How marvelous that the landscape
hasn't changed that much in nearly sixty five years. The same visualization
of canyon images is experienced today by the multitudes of Canyon travelers.
Even today, with one hundred and twenty more cabin homes, and a million
annual visitors traveling on a very comfortable and safe paved highway,
the Canyon endures.
"Well, here was
something again different. As different as could be from Bad Lands or
Black Hills or anything I had actually seen, a stately exposition of
what decorated walls on enormous scale can do and be. The Chinese predicted
and depicted it. This continues for miles and miles without palling
or growing in the least stale." We drove out , finally,... two
architects drunk with primal scene painting."
 Wright's
Prophecy
Mr. Wright had traveled nearly
twenty miles on the primitive road, certainly a bit weary, but inspired
by the nature he had witnessed in Spearfish Canyon. He had passed the
rugged spires at Robison Gulch, the igneous intrusion at Bridal Veil Falls,
the clear waters of Squaw Creek, the three sides of the imposing Victoria's
Tower, the haunting narrow gulch at 11th Hour, the rickety bridge spanning
Iron Creek which a year early had flooded the railroads demise, the massive
limestone high walls and thunderous Spearfish Falls at the quaint little
village of Savoy, a one mile side journey, no doubt, to the picturesque
Roughlock Falls in Little Spearfish Canyon, the flowering marshlands adjacent
to McKinley Gulch, the railroad crossing at Annie Creek Gulch leading
to the little village of Elmore, the pools of sweet water near Raspberry
and Sweet Betsy Gulches, and exiting at Cheyenne Crossing.
"Unique and unparalleled
elsewhere in our country"
"No, I shall be
burned for a heretic when I make the statement. But, I should be thanked
as a prophet and hailed as a discoverer by that jaded public who have
'seen everything' and stick to the 'through lines'. The greatest scenic
wonders of the world I know now are touched on grand safe highways but
not on railroads.
My hat is off to South Dakota Treasures..."
" Go
to South Dakota, but drive there. It is so near to us all and yet I
never knew, nor had ever heard much about its southwestern treasure
house until Gutzon Borglum went out there to work and Senator Norbeck
invited me to see it. I like those South Dakota folk; I want to see
them all again sometime if I can"
"I hope the noble
inheritance , for that is what it is, won't be exploited too much and
spoiled as lesser beauty spots in our country have been spoiled and
will not continue to be marred by the nature imitator with his rustic
effects, piled boulders, peeled logs, and imitation of camp-style primitive
gabled buildings. Nature seeds from man not imitation but interpretation".
Wright's Invitation to South
Dakota
Frank Lloyd Wright was invited
to South Dakota by Senator Norbeck at the urging of Huron publisher Robert
Lusk, vice president of the state planning board, to consider designing
a new lodge at Sylvan Lake. The lodge had burned in June of that year.
Wright had envisioned a design of "simplicity and the picturesqueness",
unlike the rustic log cabins that he criticized throughout the Black Hills.
Mr. Wright was quoted as saying,
"So far the buildings
in the Black Hills have been extremely exaggerated in rusticity of which
there are enough now. This building would be entirely different in design
and make-up than any building in this section".
 Such
a design would have brought international notoriety to South Dakota. Regrettably,
the Custer State Park board and Wright did not see eye-to eye. The board
insisted that he immediately prepare a preliminary sketch plan for their
review like any other architect who was to be considered. Wright told
the board that he had a lot of other work to complete and if the board
wanted one of his designs, they would have to wait in line. The board
was impatient to replace the lodge, and selected one of its own, Harold
Spitznagel, founder of the TSP architectural firm in Sioux Falls. Spitznagel,
affectionately called " Spitz" by Mr. Wright, had escorted Wright
through the Black Hills, and with Norbeck had urged the board to select
Mr. Wright as the architect. Spitznagel was quoted as saying, " the
board's request of Wright was insulting, like someone requesting a noted
surgeon to perform an operation on a dog before they tried it on the patient."
Had it not been for the disagreement between the park board and Wright,
Sylvan Lake today might boast a building as famous as Fallingwater or
the Prairie-style Robie House.
Frank Lloyd Wright grew up in
rural Wisconsin in the decades following the Civil War and witnessed nearly
a century of unprecedented technological inventions and scientific discovery
before his death at the threshold of the Space Age in 1959. Wright's architectural
career revolutionized residential design, lowering overall heights, eliminating
basements and attics, and braking up the boxlike Victorian spaces by introducing
freeflowing interiors, creating what became known as the Prairie Style.
He later founded the Taliesin School of Architecture. He caught an unsuspecting
world by surprise with the dramatically cantilevered Fallingwater home
in Pennsylvania. He died just months before the completion of the aspiring
Guggenheim Museum in New York. Recently, he was honored with the completion
of the beautiful Monona Terrace Convention Center on Lake Monona a few
blocks from the State Capital building in Madison, Wisconsin. He had designed
it in 1938. Mr. Wright's glowing expose of Spearfish Canyon is inspirational
to us all, and has elevated this landscape to a national treasure worthy
of preservation and its designation as a National Scenic Byway.
Mr. Wright's
letter and biography were provided compliments of the Frank Lloyd Wright
Archives, Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona.
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