Rapid City revival

As I took a bite of venison with chucker cherry sauce, Ronald Reagan had my back. He smiles in ranch-ready attire just outside Tally's Silver Spoon Restaurant, life-sized and bronze. Cater-corner across 6th Street, Jimmy Carter waves a big howdy back at him.

While most visitors blast past Rapid City, S.D., to see Washington, Roosevelt, Jefferson and Lincoln at Mount Rushmore, the entire lineup of U.S. presidents graces the streets of this cusp-of-the-West city. It's a walk through U.S. history, with each poised in fitting tableaux.

Thomas Jefferson writes the Declaration of Independence. Franklin D. Roosevelt delivers his "day that will live in infamy" speech after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. John F. Kennedy holds hands with his young son in a happy moment during turbulent times.

Only Barack Obama has yet to be bronzed. He did, though, join celebrities in the ever-changing Art Alley, a graffiti explosion between St. Joseph and Main streets. Quotes from the president, Garfield, Homer Simpson, Disney characters and rock stars share the gritty, witty, brick-and-dumpster-canvas there.

Art seems to be everywhere in Rapid City, blossoming with a downtown renaissance that flows along Main Street and onto nearby blocks peppered with boutiques and galleries. Downtown's tallest landmark, the 10-story, 1928 timbered Alex Johnson hotel, underwent a major renovation in 2010. A new Main Street Square, designed for live entertainment, gatherings and farmer's markets, should be finished in October.

The dry, temperate climate extends the outdoor dining season, and ever more restaurants are raising the bar on cuisine once dominated by bison burgers and cowboy stews. These days the aroma of roasted garlic and local vegetables, smoked pheasant, quail with curried pineapple chutney, and bison roast draped in cocoa orange sauce wafts from doorways as diners head inside.

Whether hungry for western heartland cuisine or heaping servings of American history, it's worth slowing down and stopping by.

If you have to pick just one Rapid City destination, beeline for the bronze Lakota woman and a young girl that stand outside Prairie Edge Trading Co. and Galleries at 6th Avenue and Main Street. This downtown anchor brings together what could be several stores or museums, but it all flows seamlessly. The airy Native Art Gallery feels like a Smithsonian exhibit with colorfully beaded clothing, elaborate peace pipes, decorated cradleboards, buffalo robes and drums.

Upstairs, art works range from paintings of prairie storms to a meticulously crafted 7-foot ghostly white cast paper sculpture of a buffalo hunt. Going price: $55,000.

Downstairs, the Sioux Trading Post sells synthetic eagle feathers, sweetgrass bundles, bones and shells.

In the lofted bead museum, every variation of color shines within thousands of numbered glass jars. They line wooden cases like a coveted rainbow of rare medicines. Other displays show off millefiori (flowered) beads, striped panes of glass and bright patterns.

Prairie Edge contains one of the world's largest collections of Venetian glass beads. Surprising at first, it makes sense when seeing firsthand the importance of beads to Indian tribes and the artistry they still weave.

Later, gazing outside my window at the Alex Johnson Hotel, a neon cowboy artfully lights up the skyline on a stock-growers association sign. It's good to see that even with changes, Rapid City's culture and history still burn brightly.

St. Cloud-based Lisa Meyers McClintick is the author of Sutro Media's "Minnesota Lake Vacations" digital travel app and "Off the Beaten Path Guidebook to the Dakotas" from Globe-Pequot Press.