In October 2025, a 10-person crew in Mitchell, South Dakota, began nailing halved corn cobs to the first of nine new murals on the Corn Palace, a 20-by-30-foot piece called “We The People,” according to the Mitchell Republic.
The job went to Pro Contracting, a Mitchell company, on a $75,000 contract approved by the city council in September. “They definitely have a bigger workforce,” maintenance supervisor Jeff Hanson told Mitchell Republic. Crew supervisor Oscar Tiul admitted, “I was surprised that we were going to do this, but glad it’s turning out OK.” Two murals face Main Street and seven sit above the Corn Palace Plaza, with a deadline set later that November.
The theme of the mural was “250 Years of America,” Dakota News Now reported. Dakota Wesleyan University design students create the artwork, per Cowboy State Daily.
The tradition goes back to 1892, when Mitchell held a harvest celebration called the Corn Belt Exposition to encourage settlement. It was “created as a meeting place for after the harvest season,” Tiffany Batdorf of the Mitchell chamber of commerce told Cowboy State Daily, a place where farmers could celebrate and share with neighbors.
That first palace has since been replaced twice. A second one went up in 1905, and the current building opened in 1921. The Russian-style onion domes and Moorish minarets arrived in 1937.
Each year’s murals use roughly 325,000 ears of corn in 12 naturally occurring shades, according to Cowboy State Daily. A machine cuts the cobs in half, and crews nail them to the walls, about 1.5 million nails in all. It works a bit like paint by numbers.
More than 500,000 people visit each year, the outlet reported. “It’s always exciting when they change,” Corn Palace Director Dave Sietsema told the Mitchell Republic. The 2026 designs were slated to stay up until October 2026.
The building itself has been a hot topic as of late. In 2025, the city weighed a plan to expand the east side of the Corn Palace, which would more than double the seating and nearly triple the event space, KELOLAND reported. The cost estimate had climbed from $12 million in January to between $18.8 million and $19.9 million.
The reaction was mixed. Council President Kevin McCardle said the city was waiting on “some big donors” who were “really, really interested.” Council member Mike Bathke said, “It’s too much money.” By July, the council had tabled a version costing up to $23 million with no date set to revisit it, the Mitchell Republic reported.
Next year’s theme will be safari, The Corn Palace board announced on Feb. 17, the Mitchell Republic reported. Dakota Wesleyan students whittled 54 drafts down to nine concepts. The switch came after a different idea ran into copyright trouble. “We were looking at trying to get permission for copyrighted works, and that permission was not made available to us in a timely fashion,” city council liaison Tim Goldammer said.
If you are planning a South Dakota road trip, Mitchell has company on the roadside. Wall Drug is another stop that made a roundup of roadside attractions still worth pulling over for.