Presho

Written in a comic drawl, this 1955 bronze cheers the year the government, as it puts it, started to small down that big reservation and let white folks in. That was the act of March 2, 1889, which cut the Great Sioux Reservation into separate reservations and opened the land between them to homesteading, over the protests of Lakota leaders such as John Grass. Presho's post office followed in 1891. The bronze's punchline is that little Lyman County swallowed the big county once named Presho.

What the plaque says

How Come They Called It Presho Wal partner, in 1862 when the Civil War was being fit and Dakota Territory took in everything South of Canada to the Rocky Mountains, the legislature gave a ferry license across the Old Muddy down at Yankton to J. S. Presho. Come 1872 they were casting round for a name to call a great big new county they were a carving out of the Great Sioux Reservation. Someone said Presho and that was it. It was 1889 till the Guvment started to small down that big reservation and let white folks in. The whites came a filtering in and hankering for mail. Chris Hellekson allowed he'd try postmastering and on June 30, 1891 they gave him Presho P. O. and we've been growing by jerks and slow motion since, a peddling cattle and shipping hay. Why in 1915 we shipped out mor'n 20 train loads of hay and that was a record, son. Only one other point ever shipped that much hay in one year. That same legislature that set up Presho started a little dinky county down on the river and called it Lyman for Major W. P. Lyman, one of Presho's ferry customers. You know what! That little dinky Lyman County just plum swallowed up that big Presho. And them's all facts, folks. Erected 1955 by Preshokiya Club and State Highway Commission

Where it stands

More markers nearby

• Civilian Conservation Corps Camp - Presho — 7.2 mi
• Medicine Creek Rest Area — 7.2 mi