Page 10 - Brookings, SD Historic Preservation Plan

The $15 million Louisiana Purchase, which included South Dakota,
Main Street looking north, 1913; from
the South Dakota Digital Archives
(South Dakota State Historical Society) In 1851 and 1859 the Santee Sioux were forced to surrender most
Chicago and Northwestern Railroad
Depot, part of the Commercial Historic
District; from the South Dakota
Digital Archives (South Dakota State
Historical Society)
6 Brookings Historic Preservation Plan
was the greatest land deal in history, doubling the size of the United
States at less than three cents per acre. President Thomas Jefferson
charged the Corps of Discovery, led by Lewis and Clark, with the ex-
ploration of the northern reaches of the Purchase, specifically to seek
a northwest water passage from the Mississippi River to the Pacific
Ocean. The Corps, like early French and Spanish boatmen, traveled
along the Missouri River in central South Dakota.
The Sioux were resolute in resisting incursions upon their domain.
With the advance of the white frontier west of the Mississippi River,
the United States negotiated the First Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1851.
of their land in Minnesota and were assigned to a reservation where
they were directed to practice settled agriculture. Treaty violations
from the U.S. Government against the Santee Sioux led to the Dakota
War of 1962, also known as the Minnesota Uprising. After their de-
feat, the Santee Sioux were forced further westward to reservations
in Dakota Territory and Nebraska. Native people lived in and around
what would become Brookings, and their archaeological and histori-
cal record significantly contributes to the heritage of the community,
state, region and nation. Opportunities exist for preservation activi-
ties to include exploration of this archaeological and historical legacy.
In 1862, Congress authorized the construction of two railroads, the
Union Pacific and the Central Pacific, that together would provide the
first railroad link between the Mississippi Valley and the Pacific Coast.
To encourage the rapid completion of these roads, Congress devised a
grand economic development scheme which provided generous land
grants and loans to railroad builders. By 1883, the Northern Pacific
from St. Paul to Portland, the Santa Fe from Chicago to Los Angeles,
and the Southern Pacific from New Orleans to Los Angeles were also
completed, knitting east and west coasts together with rails and fos-
tering rapid growth of the western plains.
The Homestead Act of 1862, adopted in the same year as authoriza-
tion of the transcontinental railroad, allowed settlers to claim 160
acres of land for farming. Homesteaders lived and farmed on a quar-
ter section for five years, at the end of which the homesteader re-
ceived a patent on the land. The railroads brought eager homestead-
ers seeking this free land to eastern Dakota, where the thick black soil
of eastern South Dakota created by ancient seas and glaciers prom-
ised abundance.
Brookings County was created in 1862 and organized in 1871. Brook-
ings, the county seat, was surveyed and platted on October 3 and 4,
1879, with the first train arriving on October 18, 1879. W.H. Skinner
is credited with persuading the Chicago and Northwestern railway
to establish a station at Brookings. The original plat comprised five
blocks of what is now Main Avenue. Pioneers settled the area simulta-
neously with the siting of the railroad, and entrepreneurs quickly es-
tablished a variety of commercial services for incoming settlers. Mer-
chants and pioneers from nearby Medary, Ada, and Fountain moved
to the newly platted area. The city name honors Judge Wilmont W.
Brookings, a manager of the Western Town Company, Dubuque, Iowa.
Known as a courageous and able Dakota pioneer, he served as a legis-
lator, associate justice, and publisher.