In the 1920s Pukwana billed itself as the biggest little town in South Dakota.
It might have been.
In 1920, a Pukwana inventor, John Stransky, devised a vaporizer that his Stransky Manufacturing Company said saved motorists from 25 to 60 percent on their gas bills.
It was a simple auxiliary carburetor of sorts and could be purchased by mail from Pukwana for $4. It sold like hot cakes.
At first the device worked only on Ford cars, but Stransky, soon had a devise for every make of car or truck known to man.
He sold them in this country and in 72 foreign countries, some of which even awarded him with honors and medals. During the peak years of the vaporizer, more than 100 citizens of Pukwana worked at the plant, or at home addressing envelopes, earning $12 a week.
Pukwana’a census figure for 1920 is 192.
With the literature and the vaporizers leaving Pukwana’s post office by the car load and orders arriving by the cream can full each day, the Pukwana Post Office was rated First Class, the smallest town in the nation with that rating. Five clerks processed about 20,000 pieces of mail a day.
The business continued to thrive, and Stransky retired in the 1930s. He moved to Los Angeles and turned the business over to his son, Leo, who later purchased the Devil Dog Company in Chicago. The Devil Dog was an early-day anti-car theft device, emitting a shrill sound when the car was tampered with.
Gradually, the Stransky Vaporizer lost favor, but if I’m not mistaken, the little town of Pukwana didn’t vaporize completely.
It is still there on I-90, a mere shadow of itself with about 275 people. I think, however, it still considers itself as the Biggest Little Town in South Dakota.
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