Town of Rowena Dakota Territory

Rowena outlived its quarries as a census-designated place of 68 people in 2020, on Highway 42 a little over a mile north of the Iowa line. Its best-known daughter was born here on February 6, 1931, as Joan Lucille Olander, only child of Warner Carl Olander and Lucille Harriet Bennett. The family left for Sioux City in 1939 and Los Angeles in 1942, and after a Miss Palm Springs title in 1949 and contracts with RKO and Universal she made her name in films as Mamie Van Doren. Television towers nearly 2,000 feet tall now stand nearby.

What the plaque says

The Town of Rowena Dakota Territory On July 27, 1888, Thomas Ryan of Dubuque, Iowa, purchased land for the Rowena townsite in the SE¼, Section 26, Split Rock Township from Nelson Webster. On October 10, 1888, Ryan platted the town into 43 city blocks and named the streets after various kinds of stone. He named the new town "Rowena" for the heroine in Sir Walter Scott's novel, "Ivanhoe". Ryan contracted with Madison and Winfield Webster to open stone quarries on their adjacent farm. He formed the Minnehaha Granite Company and erected the "Mastadon Jasper Crusher", the first stone crusher in Dakota Territory. The artistry and skill of immigrant Welsh and English stone cutters was soon evident in the quartzite buildings designed by "Prairie Architect" Wallace Dow and others. Many miles of streets were paved with hundreds of railroad cars of cobblestones from area quarries, shipped to Omaha, Kansas City, Chicago, Detroit and other cities. (Continued on other side) Erected 1989 by the Minnehaha County Historical Society, the S. D. State Historical Society and the S. D. Department of Transportation The Town of Rowena Dakota Territory (Continued from other side) A post office was established October 17, 1888. The new town included a town hall, railway depot, the Dixon Hotel, a tenement, meat market, the "Black Diamond" saloon, a livery barn, creamery and blacksmith shop. During the spring of 1889, a publication, the "Skyrocket", appeared and the first babies born in Rowena were named for the town: a boy, Rowein Costine and a girl, Rowena Jones. The Illinois Central Railroad built a stockyard which prospered because of its direct access to the Chicago markets. Later two grain elevators, a store building and a quartzite bank building were added and in 1902 the Methodist Episcopal Church was built. Following the Depression of the 1930's and the growing use of cement, the quarry industry declined and Rowena became a quiet trade center for area farmers. Erected 1989 by the Minnehaha County Historical Society, the S. D. State Historical Society and the S. D. Department of Transportation

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Falls Park — 8.5 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

• Iverson Crossing Road — 1.7 mi
• The City of East Sioux Falls — 2.4 mi
• The Eminija Mounds — 3.3 mi
• Eminija, Minnesota Territory — 3.3 mi