Tour Audio a Sioux Falls

Sioux Falls is named for the quartzite falls of the Big Sioux River, which cascade through the city's heart in a series of drops over pink and red Sioux quartzite bedrock, some of the oldest exposed rock in North America at around 1.7 billion years old. Falls Park, where this geological spectacle is most accessible, draws visitors year-round, though the falls are at their most dramatic in spring and early summer when snowmelt swells the river. The ruins of a 19th-century flour mill stand in the park, a reminder that the falls powered Sioux Falls' earliest industrial ambitions before the water was eventually redirected for city use.

Sioux Falls has grown faster than most American cities of comparable size over the past three decades, driven by favorable tax conditions that attracted major credit-card and financial companies and more recently by a diversifying economy with a significant refugee and immigrant population.

The SculptureWalk on Phillips Avenue, which places rotating outdoor sculptures along the main downtown street each year, has become one of the larger public art programs in the Midwest. The Washington Pavilion, a converted 1908 high school on Main Avenue, houses science exhibits, visual art galleries, and a performing arts center in a building that manages to feel neither overdesigned nor municipal.