05/29/2026
Dandelions seem to be having a banner season in Aberdeen, but evidence from local newspaper archives shows that the annual fight against them extends to pre-statehood days. Although many now consider them unwanted weeds, dandelions were deliberately introduced to the Hub City - and possibly all of Dakota Territory - by one Rev. Brandt, an early minister of First Presbyterian Church, who "missed the cheerful bloom of the dandelion as he had known it in the East." Ground Zero for dandelions in Aberdeen was apparently his yard in the 400 block of South Kline, just south of the church. (The current building was completed in 1927, but an earlier one occupied the same spot already in the 1880s.)
Since that time Aberdeen homeowners, community boosters, and local leaders have annually waged an uphill battle against the windborne puffballs through a variety of creative means: manual digging; dousing with kerosene, gasoline, and various herbicides; offering a bounty per bushel; deputizing children, vagrants, and Normal School students (the latter plied with cake and ice cream following an afternoon of weed-fighting); and even planting potatoes on the courthouse lawn to crowd them out.
We were alerted to this history thanks to the most recent article attached here - a 2006 column by Sue Gates, then Director of Dacotah Prairie Museum. Sue's "Looking Back" columns were also compiled into two volumes which are held in our collections.
