Kingsbury County was a region of buffaloes and Indians until the 1870s, with Indian mounds at Spirit Lake. In 1838 the Nicollett-Fremont party skirted the northeast corner. In 1857 Inkapaduta’s renegade Indians passed through with two white women captives from the Spirit Lake massacre in Iowa, and in a skirmish several of the renegades were killed by Agency Indians near Lake Thompson. Nobles Trail was built west in 1857, passing south of that lake. The Yankton Sioux ceded the region to the government in 1859. It was part of Buffalo County in 1864 and Hanson County in 1870. On January 8, 1873, it became Kingsbury County, named for George W. Kingsbury of Yankton, a legislator, editor, and historian. Surveyed from 1873 to 1875, it began general settlement in 1878, and the railroad arrived in 1879 and 1880. The county was organized on February 18, 1880, by H.W. Palmer, H.J. Burvee, and Benjamin Loken. De Smet, the county seat, was named for Father Peter John De Smet, a Jesuit missionary. In 1880 the county had 1,102 people; by 1890 it had 8,562. Its area is 36 by 24 miles, or 552,960 acres. Its lakes include Thompson, Henry, Spirit, Preston, Whitewood, and Albert, and pioneer days there were depicted by former residents in Rose Wilder Lane’s novels, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s children’s stories, and Harvey Dunn’s paintings.