On March 22, 1883, three hundred members of a Welsh colony arrived by train at Aberdeen, South Dakota. Thirty families led by William E. Powell arrived here on the 29th and built the Big Shanty, or Shanty Mawr, on the Hugh Griffin claim on Section 9, one and a half miles north, where they all lived until moving to their own homesteads and until their families arrived from North and South Wales. The Big Shanty was moved here, and a post office with Morris Jones as postmaster was set up on July 7, 1883. A general store run by J.T. Llewellyn, a blacksmith shop, Central School with John A. Williams as teacher, a Calvinistic Methodist Church with Rev. John W. Morgan as pastor, and a Congregational Church with Rev. J.T. Lewis as pastor were organized and built. All but the general store and the C.M. Church were disbanded because of death, discouragement, and hardship, and only the hardiest farmers remained. On June 2, 1911, a tornado destroyed the Methodist Church, badly damaged the store, and wiped out four farmsteads. Determination of the new generation to continue worship in faith led to the church's immediate rebuilding, and it was dedicated on its present site on Thanksgiving Day, 1911. On June 8, 1958, the congregation of the remaining church, then Presbyterian, celebrated the seventy-fifth anniversary of the establishment of the settlers' faith and loyalty.