Swan Lake

The towns that outlasted Swan Lake took their names from railroad men. Parker was laid out in 1879 by railroad surveyors who first called it Kimball City for surveyor J. W. Kimball, then substituted his wife's maiden name; Turner County's own history says the seat went there in 1885 with the help of lobbyists and the territorial legislature. Hurley, platted in 1883 along the line the bronze dates to 1882, was named for R. E. Hurley, a railroad engineer. In 2020 Parker counted 1,194 people and Hurley 379.

What the plaque says

Swan Lake November 13, 1866, James C. Bunker and his survey crew reached Swan Lake and surveyed the lands adjacent thereto. The Yankton to Sioux Falls stage road then ran around the west side of the Lake. In 1869, William W. Aurner and his sisters-in-law, Helen S. and Anna J. Bachelor, filed on the NW, SW & NE quarters of Section 9 adjacent to the Lake on the north. Valentine P. Thielman perfected title to the SE quarter in 1871 and on May 13th filed a plat of Swan Lake laying about one half mile north of this marker. The 1871 Legislature created Turner County and named Swan Lake, County Seat. The County was organized on June 13th with Aurner, Thielman and Lewis H. Elliott as County Commissioners. By October, 1875, the Swan Lake Era was published and advertised S. Olney, Druggist; Thielman, Real Estate; Alfred Flagg, Lawyer; Jorg Jorgensen, Blacksmith and Gustav Gilbert, Merchant. Aurner was the first postmaster, 20 Sept. 1869. Joseph Allen was postmaster, 1 April 1878. The coming of the railroad to Hurley in 1882 upset Swan Lake as the metropolis. Allen became postmaster at Hurley, 12 April 1883. But until then Swan Lake was the stage line hub of Southeastern South Dakota. An ad in the Yankton P & D tells the story. "YANKTON & SWAN LAKE, John N. Moore, Proprietor, Stages Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Connects at Swan Lake with stages to Parker, Sioux Falls and Vermillion." Swan Lake clung to its County Seat through three elections against Marion, Parker and Hurley but the 1885 Legislature, acting on a legal technicality, awarded Parker the County Seat subject to a new election. Parker won, Swan Lake was doomed. It would still be an attractive location for a town. Erected 1966 by Boy Scout Troop 48, S.M. Don Olmstead, A.S.M. R.G. Adams, Sioux Falls, S.D.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Spirit Mound Historic Prairie — 25 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.
• Falls Park — 30 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

• Swan Lake General Store — 0.4 mi
• Turner County Poor Farm — 10.0 mi
• Harney Hospital — 14 mi
• Southeast South Dakota Experiment Farm — 16 mi