Historical Marker · No. 276

Bristol

Erected by Henry F. Hansmeier and the State Highway Commission, 1959

The hotelkeeper the bronze names had a famous great-grandson. Richard P. Brokaw's Brokaw House, the first structure in Bristol, began a family line that produced Tom Brokaw, born at Webster on February 6, 1940; his father, a construction foreman for the Army Corps of Engineers, moved the family through Bristol, Igloo and Pickstown before they settled at Yankton. The town the hotel started peaked at 675 people in the 1940 census and counted 288 in 2020. It still sits on the old Milwaukee main line, now BNSF, beside US 12.

What the plaque says

Bristol 1881 Indians from the Lake Region now Northeastern South Dakota visited this area frequently in the early 1800's and white traders also traveled this way while buying furs. The government survey party of Horace J. Austin arrived June 21, 1879, and began work. On October 15, 1880, the Hastings & Dakota Division of the Milwaukee Railroad reached Siding No. 70 near this site. The Railway Townsite Company laid out a townsite and C. P. Prior, townsite agent, named it for Bristol, England. The first building was a hotel built by R. P. Brokaw to serve railroad workers. When the railroad crews moved on westward, Brokaw remained and was joined in 1882 by a small band of people who established homes and formed the nucleus of the new town. F. W. Lowell was first postmaster 4 October 1881. The first general store was erected by Matt Evans in 1882 and the first school with Kate Northrup as teacher for a salary of $25 per month and board, was built in 1883. Bristol was incorporated as a village in 1889 and as a city in 1921. Located near the western edge of the Coteau Hills, it has an altitude of 1775 feet. It is surrounded by a fertile farming country and is the third largest city of Day County. Erected 1959 by Henry F. Hansmeier and the State Highway Commission

Where it stands

45.34744, -97.74965 · Directions

Worth the stop nearby

Fort Sisseton Historic State Park — 24 mi
A stone fort on the Coteau des Prairies built to watch the Dakota after 1862, renamed for the Sisseton who scouted for it, restored by the WPA and saved again by a boy who grew up loving it.

More markers nearby

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