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South Dakota ( də-KOH-tə; Dakota: Dakȟóta itókaga, pronounced [daˈkˣota iˈtokaga]) is a landlocked state in the Upper Midwest region of the United States. It is also part of the Great Plains. South Dakota is named after the Dakota Sioux tribe, which comprises a large portion of the population and has historically dominated the territory. South Dakota is the 17th-largest by area, the fifth-least populous, and the fifth-least densely populated of the 50 United States. Pierre is the state capital, and Sioux Falls, with a population of about 213,900, is the most populous city. The Missouri River bisects the state into two geographically and socially distinct halves colloquially known as "East River" and "West River". South Dakota is bordered by North Dakota to the north, Minnesota to the east, Iowa to the southeast, Nebraska to the south, Wyoming to the west, and Montana to the northwest.
Humans have inhabited the area for several millennia, with the Sioux becoming dominant by the early 19th century. In the late 19th century, European-American settlement intensified after a gold rush in the Black Hills and the construction of railroads from the east. Encroaching miners and settlers triggered a number of Indian wars, ending with the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890. As the southern part of the former Dakota Territory, South Dakota became a state on November 2, 1889, simultaneously with North Dakota. They are the 39th and 40th states admitted to the union; President Benjamin Harrison shuffled the statehood papers before signing them so that no one could tell which became a state first.
Major events in the 20th century included the Dust Bowl and Great Depression, increased federal spending during the 1940s and 1950s for agriculture and defense, and the industrialization of agriculture, which has reduced family farming. Eastern South Dakota is home to most of its population, and a variety of crops grow in the area's fertile soil. West of the Missouri River, ranching is the predominant agricultural activity, and the economy is more dependent on tourism and defense spending. Most of the Native American reservations are in West River. The Black Hills, a range of prominent pine-covered mountains sacred to the Sioux, is in the southwest part of the state, and contains Mount Rushmore, a major tourist destination. South Dakota has a temperate continental climate, with four distinct seasons and precipitation levels ranging from moderate in the east to semiarid in the west. The state's ecology features species typical of a North American grassland biome.
Several Democrats represented South Dakota for multiple terms in both chambers of Congress, but the state government is largely controlled by the Republican Party, whose nominees have won the state in each of the last 14 presidential elections. Historically dominated by an agricultural economy and a rural lifestyle, South Dakota has recently sought to diversify its economy to attract and retain residents. South Dakota's history and rural character still strongly influence its culture.
Humans have lived in what is today South Dakota for several thousand years. The first inhabitants were Paleoindian hunter-gatherers, and disappeared from the area around 5000 BC. Between 500 AD and 800 AD, a semi-nomadic people known as the Mound Builders lived in central and eastern South Dakota. In the 14th century, the Crow Creek Massacre occurred, in which several hundred men, women, and children were killed near the Missouri River.
By 1500, the Arikara (or Ree) had settled in much of the Missouri River valley. European contact with the area began in 1743, when the LaVérendrye brothers explored the region. The LaVérendrye group buried a plate near the site of modern-day Pierre, claiming the region for France as part of greater Louisiana. In 1762 the entire region became part of the Spanish Louisiana until 1802. By the early 19th century, the Sioux had largely replaced the Arikara as the dominant group in the area.
In 1803, the United States purchased the Louisiana Territory, an area that included most of South Dakota, from Napoleon Bonaparte, and President Thomas Jefferson organized the Lewis and Clark Expedition to explore the region. In 1817, an American fur trading post was set up at present-day Fort Pierre, after which began continuous American settlement of the area. In 1855, the U.S. Army bought Fort Pierre, but abandoned it in 1857 in favor of Fort Randall to the south. Americans and Europeans were by that time rapidly settling in the area, and in 1858 the Yankton Sioux signed the 1858 Treaty, which ceded most of present-day eastern South Dakota to the United States.
Land speculators founded two of eastern South Dakota's largest present-day cities: Sioux Falls in 1856 and Yankton in 1859. In 1861, the United States government established Dakota Territory in 1861 (this initially included North Dakota, South Dakota, and parts of Montana and Wyoming). Settlement of the area—mostly by people from the eastern United States as well as western and northern Europe—increased rapidly after the passage of the Homestead Acts, and especially after the completion of an eastern railway link to Yankton in 1873, in a period known as the Dakota Boom.
In 1874, gold was discovered in the Black Hills during a military expedition led by George A. Custer and miners and explorers began illegally entering land promised to the Lakota. Custer's expedition took place despite the fact that the Sioux had been granted the entire western half of present-day South Dakota (West River) in 1868 by the Treaty of Laramie as part of the Great Sioux Reservation. The Sioux declined to grant mining rights or land in the Black Hills, and war broke out after the U.S. failed to stop white miners and settlers from entering the region. Eventually, the U.S. won and broke up the Great Sioux Reservation into five reservations and settled the Lakota there. In 1980, the Supreme Court and Congress ordered compensation to be offered, but the Lakota still refuse to accept it, insisting on return of their land.
A growing population in the Dakota Territory caused political dissatisfaction between northern and southern territory residents, with the southern half being always more populated. Following the territorial capital being moved from Yankton to Bismarck in the northern part, calls for dividing the territory increased. South Dakota held constitutional conventions in 1883, 1885, and 1889. Other account(s) state that the real reason for the split was a political lure for four Republican senators instead of two from the Republican-dominated Dakota Territory and in their push to split the territory, Republican congressmen also ignored the uncomfortable fact that much of the land in the anticipated state of South Dakota belonged to the Sioux. Eventually, in the 1887 general election, Dakota Territory residents voted for the division.
On February 22, 1889, outgoing Democratic President Cleveland signed a bill dividing the Territory of Dakota in half and authorizing the people of Washington, Montana, North and South Dakota to hold conventions to decide on statehood and produce constitutions. The bill had been passed by a Democratic controlled House of Representatives and a Senate divided 38 Republicans, 37 Democrats, and one independent.
The four new states would be admitted into the Union in November 1889. Republican President Benjamin Harrison signed proclamations formally admitting South Dakota and North Dakota to the union on November 2, 1889. Harrison had the papers shuffled to obscure which one was signed first and the order went unrecorded.
On December 29, 1890, the Wounded Knee Massacre occurred on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Commonly cited as the last major armed conflict between the United States and the Lakota Sioux Nation, the massacre resulted in the deaths of at least 146 Sioux, many of them women and children. 31 U.S. soldiers were also killed in the conflict.
During the 1930s, several economic and climatic conditions combined with disastrous results for South Dakota. A lack of rainfall, extremely high temperatures and inappropriate cultivation techniques produced what was known as the Dust Bowl in South Dakota and several other plains states. Fertile topsoil was blown away in massive dust storms, and several harvests were completely ruined. The experiences of the Dust Bowl, coupled with local bank foreclosures and the general economic effects of the Great Depression, resulted in many South Dakotans leaving the state. The population of South Dakota declined by more than 7% between 1930 and 1940.
Economic stability returned with the U.S. entry into World War II in 1941, when demand for the state's agricultural and industrial products grew as the nation mobilized for war. In 1944, the Pick–Sloan Plan was passed as part of the Flood Control Act of 1944 by the U.S. Congress, resulting in the construction of six large dams on the Missouri River, four of which are at least partially in South Dakota. Flood control, hydroelectricity, and recreational opportunities such as boating and fishing are provided by the dams and their reservoirs.
In recent decades, South Dakota has been transformed from a state dominated by agriculture to one with a more diversified economy. The tourism industry has grown considerably since the mid-twentieth century, with the Black Hills becoming more important as a destination. The financial service industry began to grow in the state as well, with Citibank moving its credit card operations from New York to Sioux Falls in 1981, a move that has been followed by several other financial companies. South Dakota was the first state to eliminate caps on interest rates.
In 2007, the site of the recently closed Homestake gold mine near Lead was chosen as the location of a new underground research facility, the Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory. Despite a growing state population and recent economic development, many rural areas have been struggling over the past 50 years with locally declining populations and the emigration of educated young adults to larger South Dakota cities, such as Rapid City or Sioux Falls, or to other states. Mechanization and consolidation of agriculture has contributed greatly to the declining number of smaller family farms and the resulting economic and demographic challenges facing rural towns. Gallup-Sharecare State of American Well-Being Rankings in 2018 named South Dakota the happiest, healthiest state in the United States.
South Dakota is in the north-central United States, and is considered a part of the Midwest administrative grouping by the U.S. Census Bureau; it is also part of the Great Plains region. The culture, economy, and geography of western South Dakota have more in common with the West than the Midwest. South Dakota has a total area of 77,116 square miles (199,730 km2), making the state the 17th largest in the Union.
Black Elk Peak, formerly named Harney Peak, with an elevation of 7,242 ft (2,207 m), is the state's highest point, while the shoreline of Big Stone Lake is the lowest, with an elevation of 966 ft (294 m). South Dakota is bordered to the north by North Dakota; to the south by Nebraska; to the east by Iowa and Minnesota; and to the west by Wyoming and Montana. The geographical center of the U.S. is 17 miles (27 km) west of Castle Rock in Butte County. The North American continental pole of inaccessibility is between Allen and Kyle, 1,024 mi (1,648 km) from the nearest coastline.
The Missouri River is the largest and longest river in the state. Other major South Dakota rivers include the Cheyenne, James, Big Sioux, and White Rivers. Eastern South Dakota has many natural lakes, mostly created by periods of glaciation. Additionally, dams on the Missouri River create four large reservoirs: Lake Oahe, Lake Sharpe, Lake Francis Case, and Lewis and Clark Lake.
South Dakota can generally be divided into three regions: eastern South Dakota, western South Dakota, and the Black Hills. The Missouri River serves as a boundary in terms of geographic, social, and political differences between eastern and western South Dakota. The geography of the Black Hills mountains, long considered sacred by Native Americans, differs from its surroundings to such an extent it can be considered separate from the rest of western South Dakota. At times the Black Hills are combined with the rest of western South Dakota, and people often refer to the resulting two regions divided by the Missouri River as West River and East River.
Eastern South Dakota generally features higher precipitation and lower topography than the western part of the state. Smaller geographic regions of this area include the Coteau des Prairies, the Dissected Till Plains, and the James River Valley. The Coteau des Prairies is a plateau bordered on the east by the Minnesota River Valley and on the west by the James River Basin. Further west, the James River Basin is mostly low, flat, highly eroded land, following the flow of the James River through South Dakota from north to south. The Dissected Till Plains, an area of rolling hills and fertile soil that covers much of Iowa and Nebraska, extends into the southeastern corner of South Dakota. Layers deposited during the Pleistocene epoch, starting around two million years ago, cover most of eastern South Dakota. These are the youngest rock and sediment layers in the state, the product of several successive periods of glaciation which deposited a large amount of rocks and soil, known as till, over the area.
The Great Plains cover the majority of South Dakota. West of the James River the landscape becomes more arid and rugged, consisting of rolling hills, plains, ravines, and steep flat-topped hills called buttes. In the south, east of the Black Hills, lie the South Dakota Badlands. Erosion from the Black Hills, marine skeletons which fell to the bottom of a large shallow sea that once covered the area, and volcanic material all contribute to the geology of this area.
The Black Hills are an outlying subrange of the greater Rocky Mountain system in the southwestern part of South Dakota and eastern Wyoming. This range of low mountains covers 6,000 sq mi (16,000 km2), with peaks that rise from 2,000 to 4,000 feet (600 to 1,200 m) above their bases. The Black Hills are the location of Black Elk Peak (7,242 ft or 2,207 m above sea level), the highest point in South Dakota. Two-billion-year-old Precambrian formations, the oldest rocks in the state, form the central core of the Black Hills. Formations from the Paleozoic Era form the outer ring of the Black Hills; these were created between roughly 540 and 250 million years ago. This area features rocks such as limestone, which were deposited here when the area formed the shoreline of an ancient inland sea.
Text from the Wikipedia article “South Dakota”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.