Charles Badger Clark

• Name — Charles Badger Clark • Born — 1883 • Birthplace — Albia, Iowa, U.S. • Died — 26 September 1957 • Place of death — Rapid City, South Dakota, U.S. • Education — Dakota Wesleyan University (did not graduate) • Occupation — Poet

Charles Badger Clark was born on January 1, 1883, in Albia, Iowa. His family moved to Dakota Territory, where his father served as a Methodist preacher in Huron, Mitchell, Deadwood and Hot Springs, preaching at Calamity Jane's funeral. Charles dropped out of Dakota Wesleyan University after he clashed with one of its founders, C. B. Clark. He travelled to Cuba, returned to Deadwood, South Dakota, where he contracted tuberculosis, then moved to Tombstone, Arizona to assuage his illness with the dry weather. He returned again to South Dakota in 1910 to take care of his ailing father.

While in Arizona, Clark had spent four years watching a remote ranch. With time on his hands, he wrote letters back to his family in South Dakota, sometimes describing his new world in verse. His stepmother liked one of his Arizona poems so much that she submitted it to The Pacific Monthly magazine. Pacific published it in 1907 as the poem Ridin and sent Clark a check for $10. He later recalled thinking, "If they'll pay for such stuff, why here's the job I've been looking for all along - no boss, no regular hours [or] responsibility." • Illustration — Badger Hole, Clark's cabin in Custer State Park Clark published his first poetry collection in 1917. In 1925, he moved to a cabin in Custer State Park in the Black Hills of South Dakota, where he lived for thirty years and continued to write poetry. Clark was named the Poet Laureate of South Dakota by Governor Leslie Jensen in 1937. His work was published in Sunset Magazine, The Pacific Monthly, Arizona Highways, Colliers, Century Magazine, the Rotarian, and Scribner's.