Norwegian-American novelist Rolvaag worked on the 200-acre farm of Severt Eidem, two miles north of this corner, when he came to America, and his first book, The Third Life of Per Smevik, published in 1912, and later novels reflected that experience. Pure Gold is set in a neighborhood like that around Elk Point, and events in the three Beret Holm novels—Giants in the Earth, Peder Victorious, and Their Father's God—grew out of Rolvaag's first two years in South Dakota. The Indian trail in Giants resembles a nearby trail, and a hill like the Indian hill where Beret sat stands a quarter mile north of the farmhouse. In the fall of 1898 Rolvaag enrolled at Augustana Academy in Canton. He returned to the Elk Point area frequently, for Eidem's wedding in September 1898 and for summer farm work. After graduating in 1901, he made his home in Northfield, Minnesota, for the rest of his life. At Augustana Rolvaag met Jennie Berdahl and married her in 1908. At her father's house near Garretson he heard many pioneering stories that entered Giants and his other novels. In 1978 the Nordland Heritage Foundation moved the Berdahl house to Augustana College in Sioux Falls as a memorial to Rolvaag and the Norwegian pioneers of the Sioux River Valley.