“YOU ARE ENTERING Day and Brown Counties”

Created west of the Sisseton Reservation Line, surveyed in 1869; from Greeley (South) and Stone (North) so named in 1873; by the Legislature of 1879; it was named for Merritt H. Day of Turner County, a member. Before that, its area had been in a Gigantic Hanson County (1870). Its first white resident was Francis Rondelle, a trader, in the area as early as 1868 and who was located by Horace J. Austin, surveyor, living 2 miles west of present Waubay in October, 1877. Earl P. Owen settled near Minnewaste Lake in April 1877 and was Postmaster at Waubay, at the east end of Waubay Lake on November 3rd, 1879.

In 1880, the Milwaukee, pushing in from the east, had its first train into Webster City, on J.P. Webster’s homestead, on October 27th. The Reporter & Farmer started in September, 1881 and on January 2nd, 1882, Charles Warner, Lansing Sykes and George Bryant, as County Commissioners, organized by Day County and named Webster county seat.

The present area of the Reservation Line was added in 1883 and its southern tier of townships taken from Clark and became part of Day in 1885.

Located in the main, on the High Coteau, its Lakes Pickerel, long and deep, Enemy Swim, Blue Dog, Waubay, and 13 lesser but sizeable lakes abound in fish and waterfowl; and its richly grassed uplands supply cover for other game birds, make the county a Sportsman’s paradise.

Brown County

Colin Campbell has an early trade post on Elm River to Waneta’s Cuthead Band of Yanctonaise Sioux. Leblanc’s wintering post of 1835 was burnt and in 1836 he built a new one at the Talles Chenes (Rondell) which later was run by Francis Rondelle.

Four settlers came to Tacoma Park area in 1877 and one, Ole Everson, returned in 1879 to build a frame house. The South half was surveyed in 1878-79 and in October 1879, a lot of ‘sooners’ and a store on the site of Columbia were located. John B. James was named P.M., 12 February 1880 and the county was organized at Columbia September 14, with Columbia the County Seat. That was the start of a lot of trouble.

The Milwaukee reached Aberdeen in 1881 and on February 17, John H. Drake became P.M. and they craved the county seat. A battle that went on for seven years at the polls, in the courts and at the legislature ensued. Brown County was created in 1879 from Beadle, N and Mills, S and named for Alfred Brown, a Bon Homme County Legislator.

Aberdeen defeated at the polls, the 1883 legislature ‘gerrymandered’ Brown into Inman, NW; Brown, NE; McAuley, SW; and Edgerton SE, but the voters would not buy it. In 1885, they created Brown N and Adams S with no different results. Finally at an election in 1887, Aberdeen won and the County Seat was moved July 20 to Columbia’s disgust.

Day/Brown County, on old Hwy 12, 5 miles east of Groton on county line