First and Only Hanging in Hughes County

What this bronze calls a hanging was a lynching. No court ordered the death: a mob took James H. Bell from the county jail early on April 18, 1885, four months after he had killed Forest G. Small, and hanged him from a ladder leaned against the county flagpole. Dakota Territory did carry out lawful executions, the first federal one at Yankton in 1877, but by this bronze's count Hughes County never held one. That is how a mob killing became, on a 1950 plaque, the county's first and only hanging.

What the plaque says

The first and only hanging in Hughes Co. was April 18,1885 when James H. Bell, who killed Forest G. Small with a hatchet on Dec. 4th. 1884, was hanged to a ladder leaned against the county flag pole here after a mob took him from the county jail early in the morning. Erected 1950 by the Hyde Holding Corp.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• South Dakota State Capitol — 0.3 mi
  A copper-domed capitol built to end three elections' worth of fighting over where the capital belonged, beside a lake fed by an artesian well with a gas flame burning in it.
• Verendrye Monument — 1.8 mi
  The hilltop above Fort Pierre where three children found a lead plate in 1913 that two French brothers had buried in 1743 to claim the West for their king.
• Oahe Dam — 6.1 mi
  One of the largest rolled-earth dams in the world, dedicated by President Kennedy in 1962, holding back a reservoir that reaches more than 230 miles to Bismarck.

More markers nearby

• Hughes County Courthouse and Library — steps away
• John Sutherland and the Capital Fights — steps away
• Pierre Was a Cowtown - Reading Brands — 0.4 mi
• Steamboat Reach — 0.6 mi