On New Year's Eve 1936, about 160 yards west of this spot, a large powder storehouse exploded at 9:35 p.m. with 310 25-pound kegs of powder, over 3000 pounds of dynamite, and an unconscious man inside, blowing a crater 25 feet deep and 50 feet in diameter, breaking hundreds of windows within a 40-mile surrounding area, being heard more than 60 miles away, and registering on seismographs in California. The blast grew out of a bizarre chain of events that began when Helen Sieler of Sioux City, Iowa, became the companion of paroled California convict Floyd H. Parker, who introduced her to Lee Bradley, Harry "Slim" Reeves, and William Nesbit. Those four men conspired with a Sioux City jewelry wholesaler to stage a fake burglary so the jeweler could remove jewels and cash, collect insurance, and divide the proceeds, but when the sham burglary was botched and police grew suspicious, Parker and Sieler headed for Omaha and Parker later sent Nesbit a telegram demanding money. Fearing exposure, Bradley, Reeves, and Nesbit picked up Parker and Sieler and drove to Sioux Falls on December 31, then that evening took them to the Larson Hardware powder house on the Fred and Freda Dawley farm three miles east of Sioux Falls. There, Nesbit and Parker helped Bradley break into the building while Reeves and Helen Sieler stayed in the car; after Bradley attacked and felled Parker, Nesbit brought Sieler to the powder house, where the men beat her with a hammer and shot her several times. Believing both victims incapacitated, Bradley, Reeves, and Nesbit dumped the badly wounded pair in the powder house, lit a 10-foot fuse tied to a stick of dynamite, and fled, but the fuse burned slowly enough for Helen Sieler to escape and crawl away before the five tons of explosives detonated. Neighboring farmers Ed and Sheldon Lacey found her in a ditch more than 100 yards from the crater, and although doctors at the Moe Hospital in Sioux Falls later found eight bullet wounds in her body, she survived and recovered. Whether Parker had died in the explosion was settled in late February when Fred Dawley found a blackened human finger at the site, a city lab technician recovered a fingerprint from it, and it matched Parker's print on file; Bradley, Reeves, and Nesbit eventually received lengthy prison sentences.