Pioneer Auto Museum and Antique Town, Murdo, South Dakota

A vivid portrait emerges of a restless spirit who swapped a West Coast life for the open plains of South Dakota. “Dick” Geisler, a cigar‑chewing German‑American farmer‑turned‑entrepreneur, follows a winding road from a humble Minnesota schoolhouse to a California marriage, then back to the Midwest where he plants wheat and later opens a John Deere dealership. The narrative captures his early experiments in the automobile world—a cross‑country Ford road trip, a modest garage, and the first curious onlookers drawn to a 1913 Ford wagon parked beside a new gas station.

From those early curiosities, a modest collection of vintage cars, buggies and other relics begins to grow, each piece a reminder of a bygone era of mechanical ingenuity. The story details how family trips, chance purchases, and a yearning to preserve history transform the scattered artifacts into the Pioneer Auto Museum, a sprawling complex of buildings that mirrors a living time capsule. Listeners will feel the hum of early engines and the determination of a man who turned a hobby into a community treasure.