Union County and environs - South Dakota

It's a leisurely drive from the Snake Creek Recreation area to Yankton, where we're booked for four days at Cottonwood, an Army Corp of Engineers campground on the Missouri River.

Monday Aug 29
Enroute to our campsite we toured the little town of Geddes, (pop. 208 in 2010) where my Great- grandmother Martin was living when she died in 1924. There isn't much left there as far as active businesses.

The old bank is still standing but empty and vandalized inside. I've no idea where her farm was, but it's interesting to see the area nonetheless.

We also looked into Avon, another little village where there were brief family connections - not much going on there either. This is the story of most little agricultural communities these days.

We meandered around the surrounding area to get a feel for the environment. All the little burgs are focused around a grain elevator, on the railroad. The sole reason for the settlement obviously being to help the farmer get his crop shipped out. Farming is still the main industry, with field after field of corn and soybeans being the primary crops in this area.

The campground we're staying in is nice. Huge spaces, right on Yankton Lake, just off the Missouri River, below Gavins Point Dam.. There are large areas where dogs can be off leash or play in the water, and plenty of 13 lined ground squirrels popping up all over the area to provide entertainment otherwise.

Tuesday Aug 30
We spent the morning checking out Utica, (pop. 65 in 2010) another little town where my dad's family lived for a few years. It's just north of Yankton and, again, there's not much left from those days.

There were more homes than we had anticipated, but little in the way of original buildings. This interesting little brick structure caught our attention though.

It looks as if it might have been a bank vault. It now sits in a vacant lot across from a lumber yard. If it was the bank vault, this would have been part of the main street business district. You'd never know that now!

Next stop, the big city of Yankton (pop. 14,591 in 2013) for a quick trip to a quilt store - they were out of license plates! Yikes! I guess that's a risk when shopping this late in the summer. I did pick up a couple of bits of fabric, so it wasn't a wasted trip.

This is the biggest city for several miles so business is booming and there are some very nice neighborhoods, especially along the river.

We've followed the Missouri River off and on for much of the trip, sort of doing the Lewis and Clark Discovery Expedition in reverse. Believe me, everyone takes advantage of the "Lewis and Clark were here" bit of history. The visitor center here at the recreation area is especially nice, with large, unique windows especially designed to frame two views of the river.

Wednesday, Aug 31
Today we visit one of the main reasons for our visit to this part of South Dakota - Elk Point. This is where my paternal grandmother and my father and his sister were born.  We drove around the little town (pop. 1,963 in 2013) to see if we could find a match to four photos I have of relevant buildings.

Columns and other decorative items from the old courthouse 

I'd already pretty well determined the old courthouse was gone. It was the setting about 1910 for the photo of my grandfather and all the other letter carriers gathered on the front steps.

That courthouse has been demolished and a portion of the entry has been incorporated in the entry to the new courthouse.


The train station, where my uncle was a conductor, is gone, replaced by grain storage silos and other agricultural equipment.

My great grandfather's meat market, which was a wooden building, is also gone. I can picture it though, tucked somewhere in between the existing brick buildings on Main Street.

We drove through residential areas hoping to find his house, where my grandmother and both her children were born, but couldn't locate it. At the suggestion of a deputy Sheriff we stopped on the street we stopped in to an antique store to talk to the owner. 'Turns out he's head of the local historical society. He couldn't help us with a location for the old Strobel house, but was very friendly and interested in the family history. He connected us with an 80+ year old history buff, Fern, who offered to meet us at the Union County Museum, where she is the curator, when it opened in just over an hour.

We hurried down the street a block or so and had a great Mexican lunch at Los Amigos (who would guess, in a little town in South Dakota?) and then headed to the west end of Main Street where the Union County Historical Society Museum is housed in the beautifully restored Charles Murtha House.

With Fern's help we searched an antique map and found Great-grandfather Abraham Strobel's homestead, in Civil Bend, which is just a smidgen east of Elk Point. She was so enthusiastic about seeing the few photos I had on my iPad I promised to send her the files of those and several others.

A quick visit to the cemetery was all it took to locate great-grandfather and great-grandmother's marker, and then we headed back to our campsite in Yankton to rescue the dogs from the trailer. I think we woke them up, but they were happy to see us.

All in all it was a successful visit. 'Good to see the little town still surviving, and many of the older homes and business buildings still standing. I'm glad to find a place to share many of the photos and documents I have too, as they consider my great-grandfather to be one of the really historic residents, and he was!

This area wasn't a state yet when he settled here in the 1870's. I can't imagine the hard, primitive lives the farmers lived then. Folks here are still farming, as the silos everywhere attest to, and all the fields are full of good-looking crops . . . the great American Heartland at its best!    

A few more pics here