When the famous Norwegian-American novelist Rölvaag came to America, he worked on the 200-acre farm of Severt Eidem two miles north of this corner, and his first book The Third Life of Per Smevik and later novels reflected this 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 Rölvaag's first two years in South Dakota. The Indian trail in Giants is like a nearby trail, and a hill reminiscent of the Indian hill where Beret sat lies a quarter mile north of the farmhouse. In the fall of 1898 Rölvaag enrolled at Augustana Academy in Canton, returned frequently to the Elk Point area for Eidem's wedding in September 1898 and for summer farm work, and after graduating in 1901 made his home in Northfield, Minnesota, for the rest of his life. At Augustana he met Jennie Berdahl and married her in 1908, and at her father's house near Garretson he heard many stories of pioneering that made their way into 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 Rölvaag and the Norwegian pioneers of the Sioux River Valley.