Governor #12: William J. Bulow

Pierre, South Dakota

In office 1927-1931

William Bulow only became governor of South Dakota because the previous candidate had been trampled to death by a bull six weeks before election day. He was an occasional hellraiser who left a massive state debt for his successor and who spent most of his post-gubernatorial life in Washington, DC, where he was a member of the Alfalfa Club, named for a plant that would "do anything for a drink."

Bulow's statue, by sculptor James Van Nuys, shows him waving his cowboy hat in the air while his other hand rests on a pediment decorated with images representing his life and career, such as the time he was attacked by a goose while trapped underneath the front porch of his house, and his pardoning of Deadwood's "Poker Alice" Ivers after she had been convicted of bootlegging and operating a brothel at the age of 77. There's also a small Mount Rushmore on the pediment, because Bulow was the one, so he said, who convinced sculptor Gutzon Borglum to limit his mountainside sculpture to the President's giant heads.