Huron

Lah Soe speaks before the start of a Miss Knaw pageant at Huron in July 2023. (John Hult/South Dakota Searchlight)

Bridge generation: Children of southeast Asian refugees carve out niche in Huron

BY: - September 15, 2023

HURON — Until age 6, Kler Hae roamed the highlands of southern Thailand after school with his friends, hunting birds with slingshots and stones. If they got lucky, they’d bring home dinner. Now he’s a real estate agent in Huron, an eastern South Dakota town of about 14,000.  At age 12, Pywe Der moved to […]

The "World's Largest Pheasant" greets visitors to Huron. (John Hult/South Dakota Searchlight)

Desperation and renewal: How Huron embraced new Americans and thrived

BY: - September 15, 2023

That Huron came to be a major hub of Karen culture in the Midwest was at least partially a side effect of desperation. What began as desperation for workers morphed into desperation for a school system struggling to manage its migrant population and the community’s response to it.  Today, about a decade after the dust settled […]

Officials: Cause of Huron dam fish die-off unclear

BY: - January 24, 2023

A recently completed James River dam project was the site of a massive fish die-off in Huron last week, but state officials say the cause of the deaths is unclear. A state official says they are monitoring the situation on the ground and may restock the affected area of the river. The fish kill was […]

Fairgoers at the South Dakota State Fair in Huron, SD.

SD State Fair attendance nears pre-pandemic levels

BY: - October 31, 2022

More than 192,000 people attended the South Dakota State Fair in Huron in 2022, marking a return to pre-pandemic levels. The exact attendance figure released Monday by the South Dakota Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources was 192,279 guests across the five-day event in early September, with nearly 2,000 campers staying on the fairgrounds. Fairgoers […]