MOVIE NIGHT: 35 Movies That Take Place In South Dakota

When it comes to South Dakota and Hollywood, we've seen our fair share of films that have used our state as the backdrop for a number of productions over the years. They may not have always filmed here, but movie folk love to set stories here.

We're all familiar with the blockbusters like 1990's Dances With Wolves, 1959's North By Northwest, and more recently, 2007's National Treasure: Book of Secrets. But our state's life on the big screen goes back nearly 100 years.

According to IMDb, it all started with Courtin' Wildcats, a 1929 film which, like so many of the 29 films on this list, is a Western set in the time before South Dakota became a state in 1889.

Living here in the upper Midwest we don't end up on national TV shows very often. That's probably a good thing in the long run.

But it is pretty cool when something from South Dakota is on TV. Three shows from the Food Network family of shows have showcased South Dakota restaurants.

You may remember when Guy Fieri and Diners Drive-ins and Dives was in Sioux Falls in June of 2020 to visit some of our city's unique establishments.

A few years ago the Travel Channel Show Food Paradise visited Deadwood.

If you remember the 'golden age' of Foot Network, back when Rachel Ray was the queen of the channel, she took her show $40 a Day to Rapid City in 2005.

The first number on a South Dakota license plate is the county that the car is registered. For example, Pennington county where Rapid City is has a '2' starting its plates. In Sioux Falls you have either a '1' or a '44' depending on your relationship to 57th street.

When established in 1956 (and revised in 1987) the first nine counties were ordered by population. Starting with 10 they are in alphabetical order through Ziebach, with Oglala Lakota County (65) and Todd (67) rounding out the list.

Today the top 10 plate numbers and populations don't correlate anymore. 1 and 2 are still 1 and 2, but Lincoln (44) is now 3rd in population. Beadle is 4 but it's now 11th in population. See the list by population here.

On January 1, 2023, South Dakota started issuing a new license plate design for license plates.

So, let's take a look back at what South Dakota license plates looked like over the last 100 years.