Eminija, Minnesota Territory

The company that platted Eminija was as much a political machine as a land venture. Governor Samuel Medary incorporated the Dakota Land Company at St. Paul on May 23, 1857, Minnesota's Democratic Party owned it, and Joseph R. Brown, William H. Nobles and Charles E. Flandrau were among its incorporators. That autumn Medary created about forty new precincts, the company's counties reported 221 of 223 votes for Henry Hastings Sibley, and a board of company directors declared the Democrat governor by 240 votes. Lincoln's appointees ended its hold in 1861.

What the plaque says

Eminija, Minnesota Territory In May of 1857, land speculators from the Dakota Land Company, of St. Paul, Minnesota Territory, surveyed and located the town site of Eminija in this immediate area. Eminija was the Santee Sioux In- dian name for the Split Rock River which flows at the base of the hill to the east. The site covered 640 acres, including the junctions of Beaver Creek, the Split Rock and Big Sioux Rivers, all south of this point. Eminija was declared to be "the county seat of Vermillion County ... on the Sioux River, 13 miles below the Falls and at the more practical head of navigation for large steamers ..." Imaginative reports by land promoters published in the Minnesota press from 1857 through 1861 extolled the virtues of this area: "groves of beautiful timber line the river ... richer soil cannot be found any- where...fields of corn and potatoes I have not seen excelled ... forests of wild pomegranate, grapes, currants grow in luxuriant abundance... there is a small class of steamers plying the Sioux as high as Eminija ... two steam boats are already in the Sioux River trade, from Sioux City to Eminija ...there are saw mills running night and day, yet not half the demand can be met..." Other town sites along the Big Sioux River surveyed by the Dakota Land Company included Medary, Flandreau and Sioux Falls City. (Continued on other side) Dedicated in 1996 by the Minnehaha and South Dakota State Historical Societies Midcontinent Foundation, Minnehaha Century Fund Judge Peder K. Ecker and Citibank Eminija, Minnesota Territory (Continued from other side) The recorded plat for Eminija, filed in a Minnesota Territory land office, has never been found. The only known reference to the lo- cation of the Eminija town site appears in the field notes of Alfred J. Hill, a prominent archaeologist, civil engineer and geographer. He visited this site in 1860, to describe and map it as a part of a re- gional study of Indian mound sites. Hill was guided by Byron M. Smith, the surveyor of the Dakota Land Company who had defined the boundary line three years earlier. Concerning the site bound- aries of Eminija, Hill stated that the north line passed through the largest of the ancient Indian mounds visible to the west. Dakota Land Company employees built a log cabin on the Eminija town site about 250 yards to the southeast of this spot. Early maps of the area show Eminija located at the juncture of the Split Rock and the Big Sioux Rivers. Several of these maps show stage- coach and wagon roads leading from Eminija to Sioux Falls City, to New Ulm and Blue Earth and following the Big Sioux River south to Sioux City. There was a stage stop at Eminija, but it and other enterprises were short lived. The nation was embroiled in the Civil War; the Sioux War of 1862 brought chaos to the Sioux Valley; and a national election, politically unfavorable to the Company, re- sulted in its collapse. Eminija became a casualty of rapid and turbulent change on the Dakota frontier. Dedicated in 1996 by the Minnehaha and South Dakota State Historical Societies Midcontinent Foundation, Minnehaha Century Fund Judge Peder K. Ecker and Citibank

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Falls Park — 6.6 mi
  The falls a town company came for in 1856, abandoned in 1862, and tried to make pay with a seven-story quartzite mill that ran for barely two years.

More markers nearby

• The Eminija Mounds — steps away
• The City of Brandon — 2.0 mi
• Iverson Crossing Road — 2.2 mi
• The City of East Sioux Falls — 2.7 mi