Goodbye Old Friend: Augi's Berdahl-Rolvaag House Moves to Iowa

Sioux Falls said goodbye Thursday to a long-standing piece of Augustana University history.

The Berdahl-Rolvaag House located in Heritage Park literally hit the highway.

Dakota News Now reports that Thursday morning (September 22) a construction crew relocated the historic house to its new destination on the Granite Threshing Grounds at Granite, Iowa.

If you're not familiar with the Berdahl-Rolvaag House, it was named after the author Ole Rolvaag, who wrote novels about Norwegian Immigrants moving to the area in the 1870s. The Berdahl family actually built the house that has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

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Thursday's move is another piece of Augustana's Viking Bold Plan: The Journey to 2030. A strategic plan designed to lead Augustana through 2030.

The plan is built upon three different phases that actually started back in 2019 and will continue to the year 2030. Various strategic goals are tied to the Viking Bold plan that will help to enhance Augustana's position as a top-ranked regional university in service to its students and elevate the university’s national profile in service to its alumni, the city of Sioux Falls, and the Upper Great Plains region.

According to Dakota News Now, Augustana also plans to relocate three other buildings in the future that are also part of Heritage Park. The Rolvaag Writing Cabin will eventually be moved to another campus location near the Fryxell Humanities Center. And the Beaver Creek Church and Eggers Country School will be relocated to Harrisburg to become part of the Meadow Barn and the Country Apple Orchard.

The transformations being done right now to Heritage Park just off 33rd Street between Grange and Prairie Avenue are all part of Augustana's plan to pave the way for their new state-of-the-art 3,000-seat hockey arena scheduled to open in the fall of 2023.

Source: Dakota News Now/Augustana University

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For Sioux Falls, the earliest views are from 2008 and the latest from early 2022.

Some of the looks aren't the clearest, but it still gives a real good look at how dynamic the east side of Sioux Falls is.

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If you've traveled the east side of Sioux Falls you've probably noticed the progress in the school's construction. It is located at Faith Ave. on the cites east side just northeast of Harmodon Park off 41st Street.

Sioux Falls' newest middle school bears the name of Benjamin Reifel, also known as Lone Feather. So who is Ben Reifel?

Source: Goodbye Old Friend: Augi’s Berdahl-Rolvaag House Moves to Iowa