Photo book captures beauty, destruction of Rapidan Dam and store | Local News | mankatofreepress.com

Rick Pepper calls himself a “scribe.” But instead of writing down what’s happening, he takes pictures.

He was in full scribe mode when nature put the Rapidan Dam and the popular adjacent Dam Store south of Mankato at risk, ultimately wiping from the world any physical reminder of the store.

He decided to collect the photos he took that fateful week — and those he took in the many years he and his wife sought out burgers and pieces of Dam Pie there — and created the book “Remembering: The Rapidan Dam & Dam Store,” about 70 pages that chronicle the horrific time. It’s available now.

The cover images show the Rapidan Dam Store as most people remember it: a simple white building with red trim, a sign that screams Americana — dominated by a Pepsi logo — hanging outside with the dam in the distance.

Between the covers, however, are images that yank at those memories: trees and branches caught up behind the dam, earth being eaten away by rushing waters pushed around the structure, that same quaint building seemingly moving closer to the river and destruction.

Pepper works in IT at Corporate Graphics, and records audio and video at his church, but photography has always been a way he records scenes important to him personally. This bug hit in 2000 when his family’s home on what is now North Victory Drive was targeted for destruction.

In realizing things would never be the same, he purchased his first digital camera and started taking pictures.

“So that kind of started actually almost as an obsession to track the whole thing,” he said, “because it was totally going to change the landscape of where I grew up, right?”

Fast forward to late June of this year when Mankato was coming off months of incredible amounts of rain and, again, there was the threat of a loved landscape being changed forever.

His wife, Rowann, was out when she heard what was happening at the Rapidan Dam and texted him. He got there that Monday morning before work, about five hours after things started happening at the dam.

“When I first saw it, I thought, ‘I’m going to need to be back for this until, you know, something changes. However this plays out.’ So, I was out there early Monday morning and almost every night that week.”

Pepper said he knows that memories are good, but they can get faulty over time. Photos capture things as they are at a specific moment in time. His personal photo collection includes more than 160,000 images, and he cares for them as the treasures they are.

Usually methodical in his process, he went against his nature to an online site and created the first version of a book quickly. Too quickly, he realized. The 10 copies he ordered cost about $30 each but didn’t meet his quality standards.

“I argued with myself for eight weeks after that before my wife is like, ‘You should do it. Just do it,’” he said.

Although not directly involved in creating books at work, he said he observed enough working more than 25 years on the pre-press aspects of various books — and knew people who could fill in the information gaps — that he knew he could do it himself.

He had added drone photos in the time since creating that first book, bringing the number of images in the new book to more than 110. A new configuration that better matches dimensions of photos accentuates the power of the images, he said.

When this book was complete, Pepper still was unsure if there would be interest. He connected with Bridget Oslund from Rapidan whose brother Pepper graduated from high school with. She helped him spread the word.

“I ordered 100 and probably sold 65 of them in 20 minutes in Rapidan the first day I showed in public (at the Rapidan Heritage Society),” he said. The very first copy went to Dave Hruska, whose family operates the Dam Store.

He realized those first sales went to people with the most personal connection to the Rapidan Dam and Dam Store, but in a second order he got 160 more copies. He connected with the Blue Earth County Historical Society, which sold 20 the first week.

“I would think (there’s still interest) because it made national news. There’s probably some other people out there. The trick is getting it in front of people that might be interested,” Pepper said.

With only a short introductory copy block, he lets his pictures do the talking.

“Remembering: The Rapidan Dam & Dam Store” is available at the Blue Earth County Historical Society, 424 Warren St., or online at blueearthcountyhistory.com. Cost is $20 if purchased in person, $25 online.

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