Vermillion / Historic Highway

On August 24, 1804, Lewis and Clark camped near the White Stone, or Vermillion, River, and the next day visited Spirit Mound eight miles north. After 1855, the military road from Sioux City to Fort Randall and steamboats provided access, and A. C. Van Meter ran the ferry. In 1859, permanent settlers arrived as the Yancton Indians went to their reservations. The town stood on the Missouri under the bluffs east of the Vermillion. Dr. Franklin Caulkins had a private school, and the 1860 census counted forty families and 215 people in the Vermillion area. That fall, John Ball surveyed the township, Compton and Deuel had a store and sawmill, Samuel B. Mullholland, the hotel keeper, became postmaster on April 17, and in August Brother C. D. Martin established a Presbyterian church of logs. On April 8, 1861, Abraham Lincoln located Dakota's Land Office here with Jesse Wherry and Henry Kennerley as receiver and register, and on July 18, Clark and Bedell established the Dakota Republican. Private schools continued until Captain Nelson Miner of the Dakota Cavalry built a permanent one in the winter of 1864. The Dakota Southern reached the town on November 25, 1872, the village was organized in 1873, and it was incorporated in 1878. Although the 1862 legislature named Vermillion as the site of the University, the first classes were not held until October 18, 1882. Meanwhile, the great flood of 1881 wiped out the town below the bluffs and moved the Missouri south to the Nebraska bluffs, beginning a new era for Vermillion atop the bluffs.

Vermillion, South Dakota · United States