“Yankton”

Mother City of the Dakotas

Frost, Todd & Company, under the guise and license of trade stores along the Missouri and at the Struck By the Ree camp at Yancton, were able to get in on the ground floor of potential community sites, when others could acquire no rights. A rival concern, out of Sioux City, ‘squatted’ C.J. Holman in March, 1858 near the river at Yancton but Frost, Todd soon thereafter erected a post near the foot of present Walnut Street. John Ball surveyed the township in the fall of 1860 and soon thereafter Moses K. Armstrong platted the area up Walnut and on both sides.

J.B.S. Todd had an office at 2nd and Broadway and H.C. Ash an hotel at 3rd and Broadway, Downer T. Bramble erected the first store in town near Walnut & Second and on April 17, 1860 was named Postmaster of the town of YANCTON. Charles F. Picotte, who had a land grant at Yancton by the Treaty of 1857 had a house in the east end of the town. Governor William Jayne arrived in late May, 1861 and set up the Territorial Capitol in a log cabin near Ash’s Hotel, with William Gleason, Attorney General as a water carrying cabin mate. Not long after, on June 6, 1861, Frank M. Ziebach started the Weekly Dakotian. There were ten advertisers in that first issue including W.W. March, who ran the Ft. Randall stage. When the Indian War of the Outbreak brought trouble in August, 1862, the Yankton stockade protected the settlers. There are 21 Historic markers in and about Yankton.

Yankton County, SD 50 (4th St) east of Douglas Avenue in Yankton