“Medary Townsite 1857-58 1871-79”

The Dakota Land Company of St. Paul, hoping to make this site the capital of a proposed Dakota Territory, started a town here, naming it for Samuel Medary, Governor of Minnesota Territory. Towns were also begun at Flandreau and Sioux Falls, the same year, 1857.

The site was settled when the Fort Ridgely and South Pass Wagon Road was built through here to the Missouri in 1857. Samuel A. Medary, son of the Governor, was the Engineer and Col.

Wm. H. Nobles was its promoter and builder. A rock ford was made over the Big Sioux. The area of South Dakota east of the Big Sioux was ceded by the Yankton Sioux in 1859.

The Sioux under a Yankton chief, Smutty Bear, regarding the white settlers as trespassers, determined to drive them away. A warning was sent to the settlers by Dr. Thos. S. Williamson. Their leader, Franklin J. DeWitt, prepared the settlers to resist but finally agreed to leave peaceably in June 1858. The Sioux burned their buildings and destroyed their crops. Flandreau was evacuated and only Sioux Falls remained until the Sioux Uprising in 1862.

In 1869 permanent white settlement began in this vicinity, again known as Medary, with the Trygstads, Jermstads, and Chris Baltrud. Settlers were of Norwegian and American stock. Brookings County was created in 1862. Medary was named as the county seat on Jan. 21, 1871 and so remained until 1879, when most of the stores and houses were moved north 7 miles to Brookings, as the railroad reached that point.

Brookings County, 7 miles south of Brookings on old Highway 77 (2006)