“Chamberlain”

1880

Named for Selah Chamberlain, Milwaukee RR official, the site was scene of an encounter between Jean Baptiste Trudeau and the Teton Sioux in 1794 and when Samuel H. Morrow surveyed the area, in November of 1868, he found a ranch on American Creek on the townsite but did not name the rancher.

The Milwaukee at Marion Junction and the Northwestern at Volga in the fall of 1879 stockpiled materials all winter for the race for the Missouri in the spring; it not being known then whether the Milwaukee would come down American Creek or go to Brule City 17 miles down-river, the county seat. The townsite survey was completed October 27, 1880, after John Lawler acquired title on some Civil War script and Henry Pilger who had moved in earlier in 1880 got the first choice of lots when the plat was filed, Lot 1 Block 3, on Main Street 200 yards from American Creek where he built a shanty and fed the newcomers. The winter of 1880-81 was a fearful one, deep snow and floods and the RR construction of 1880 was largely destroyed; the railroad reaching Chamberlain in 1882 and in the meanwhile it had been built up via the river with C.K. Peck, steamer bringing in most of the material for Chamberlain’s first buildings.

Chamberlain for 24 years was the railhead for the richly grassed White River Valley to the west and its vast herds of cattle and also for the Crow Creek and Lower Brule Reservation upriver. It beat off Brule City for county seat in the Nov. 8 election and has been the seat of an Indian School since 1897. It was the last steamboat town in South Dakota.

Brule County, Highway 16 near bridge in Chamberlain