North Wall Yankton Stockade

The sod wall that went up first sheltered nearly three hundred people for several weeks in the autumn of 1862. Robert B. Roberts, in his Encyclopedia of Historic Forts, writes that the well at Ash's hotel inside the square was their water and that women and children had first claim on space under a roof, with blockhouses at the northeast and southeast corners. No war party attacked the stockade in force, and it was given up as a fortification before the year was out. Fred Strunk, whose family had reached Yankton that June, later remembered helping to build it.

What the plaque says

North Wall Yankton Stockade This 6-foot wall of sod and earth with a ditch in front was located about 150 foot South of this marker. This wall 450 foot long was com- menced on Sept. 1, 1862, the first construction. Erected 1960 by St. John's Lodge No. 1 A. F. & A. M.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Spirit Mound Historic Prairie — 22 mi
  A lone hill north of Vermillion that Lewis and Clark walked to on a scorching day in 1804, now one of the few places left where you can stand exactly where they stood.
• Santee Sioux Nation Museum — 23 mi
  The Isanti Dakota nation's museum and research room beside its headquarters at Santee, with census rolls from 1866, the mission school's photographs and a Dakota-language newspaper that ran for 68 years.

More markers nearby

• East Wall Yankton Stockade — steps away
• Yankton Stockade — steps away
• First Dakota National Bank of Yankton — steps away
• West Wall Yankton Stockade — steps away