Historical Marker · No. 621

Replica Bon Homme School

Bon Homme County · South Dakota

The replica honors one of two Dakota firsts. The 1998 National Register study of South Dakota schools calls Bon Homme's the first organized school in the territory but notes that it ran for only three months in 1860. It gives the first permanent schoolhouse to Vermillion, a log cabin of Missouri floodplain timber raised in 1864, which soldiers of the First Dakota Cavalry and townspeople built in a day. The flood of 1881 carried it away. Vermillion built its own replica in 1939 and replaced it with a new one of cottonwood logs in 2014.

What the plaque says

Replica First Schoolhouse In Dakota Territory 1860 Dedicated to Frank Hatwan 1887 1959 Pioneer and master builder

Where it stands

42.87945, -97.76362 · Directions

Worth the stop nearby

Santee Sioux Nation Museum — 5.5 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.
Ponca Tribal Museum and Old Ponca Agency — 20 mi
The Ponca Tribe of Nebraska's museum, powwow arena, talking trail and bison herd at the old agency near Niobrara, on homeland the nation was forced from in 1877.

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