Leonard Renner, a German immigrant and Union Army Civil War veteran, came to Dakota Territory in 1878 and acquired farmland in Mapleton Township. Years later, the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad built a track across his property, and in 1898 the unincorporated village of Renner was founded along the railroad right-of-way. Although Renner was one of the last towns established in Minnehaha County, the first homesteaders in the area arrived in 1866, when Jonas and Anne Nelson traveled from Minnesota by oxen-drawn covered wagons with John and Kirsti Thompson. After stopping at Fort Dakota in what is now downtown Sioux Falls and learning that civilians could not settle within the military reservation, the Nelsons continued on and claimed a homestead about two miles northwest of present-day Renner. The area's first post office was established in the Nelson home with Jonas Nelson as postmaster, and the site was named Republican on early maps of Dakota Territory. Renner quickly became the trade center for Mapleton Township, with Renner Mercantile in a large two-story building that also housed a barber shop, pool hall, post office, and dance hall, while a grain elevator, stockyard, and small passenger and freight depot stood near the railroad tracks. Later businesses included a cafe, several trucking companies, a garage, a lumber yard, and the First State Bank of Renner, which was held up at gunpoint by a mother and daughter bandit team on November 27, 1925, before they were later arrested and prosecuted. Baseball has been a major recreational activity in Renner since 1899, with the local team first called the Flyers and later the Monarchs, and the village has hosted the South Dakota Amateur Baseball Tournament four times while Renner teams have won seven state championships. The Renner Band was organized in 1921 and played concerts at the bandshell in Renner Park and at fairgrounds northwest of the village, where a grandstand and one-half-mile dirt track drew crowds of several thousand for auto races and where the Minnehaha County Fair was held from 1927 through 1935. Despite adversity over the years, including occasional flooding from the nearby Big Sioux River, Renner steadily evolved into a vital and progressive community.