Going Back in Time at the Pioneer Auto Show

The late Dick Geisler opened the Pioneer Auto Show and Prairie Town in 1954. A Minnesota native, he moved to South Dakota in 1942 to try his hand at farming. Building on his agricultural success, he purchased a Phillips 66 gas station where he noticed that weary motorists driving across the state loved to stop in his facility and peek at the handful of vintage cars he had parked in the lot. In the way of these things, Geisler kept buying old cars, tractors and seemingly every other piece of nostalgia that he came across until, along with his sons, Dave and John, he opened what was originally called the Pioneer Auto Museum. The elder Geisler passed away in 1973, and now the third-generation of the family operates the museum complex.