Beyond the Markers: Disasters of Minnehaha County, South Dakota
The plains are where extreme disasters can occur from each elements: earth, air, and fire.
This tour includes damages that have impacted both people and resources. Many devastating disasters have started occuring in the Minnehaha County as early as the nineteenth century and have continued to have tragic consequences.
Come along to experience a trip through history of catastrophes in the Siouxland area of South Dakota.
The 1879 Split Rock Creek Tragedy
Landscape and Memory in Eastern South Dakota
In 1879, two families tried to cross Split Rock Creek near Brandon after several days of rain. The carriage was swept downstream, killing four people and leaving behind a tragedy later preserved through newspapers, cemetery records, and local history.
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A Quake on the Great Plains
Earthquakes are rare phenomena for the Great Plains, more common in places along the edges of tectonic plates, like on California’s San Andreas Fault, instead of their far interior. But earthquakes can still happen, as experienced by Sioux Falls in 1938.
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Foster Children Tragedy
The Foster Children Tragedy marked a sad moment in the history of Minehaha County settlement. Despite their misfortune, the family found a way through the darkness and flourished.
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Peter Byg, Prairie Fire Victim
If you were to ever face a raging fire, would you go back in or run away and never look back? One Danish immigrant’s story illustrates the unpredictable nature of homesteading the South Dakota prairie.
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