The area where Blood Run Creek passes toward the Big Sioux River was inhabited by Native Americans between 1300 and 1750, with as many as 4,000 Oneota Indians living on the fertile prairie. European explorers and traders arrived in the late 1600's, and pioneers followed in the 1870's Sioux River Valley, building dugouts and sod houses. At the request of Richard and Bessie Pettigrew and Samuel and Bell Tate, D. C. Rice surveyed and staked out blocks, lots, and streets in the southwest quarter of Section 19, Township 100, Range 48 on June 12, 1886. The town of Iuka was officially filed on March 14, 1887, and its name was officially changed to Granite in late 1887. Stagecoach trails connected the area to and from Dakota Territory, and railroads crossing the prairies brought the Cedar Rapids, Iowa Northwestern Railway in 1886, later replaced by the Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific Railroad in 1903. In 1893, the Board of Supervisors established a Granite Highway through the village of Iuka. By 1900, fifty people lived there. The depot on the southeast edge of town served a daily westbound passenger train about 10 a.m. and its return at 3 p.m. Two grain elevators stood next to the tracks, and stockyards and a scale house served farmers bringing livestock to Granite. Each year, a special trainload of cattle was shipped to the Chicago Union Stockyards with right-of-way over all rail traffic for the 36 hour trip, and these shipments peaked shortly after World War I. J. DeZotell's Store, begun in 1918, became a community gathering center with a gas station and later a night club in the basement. A ball park on the north edge of town hosted the Granite team against nearby towns, and in 1920 J. C. Zimmer opened a drug store with a soda fountain. The Grand View Swedish Evangelical Lutheran Mission Church parsonage also served as a gathering place. Chartered in 1920, the Granite Savings Bank was the only bank in Lyon County to remain open through the Great Depression, but in the fall of 1934, as the village was disappearing, the bank and its building moved to Larchwood. There it became known as the Security Savings Bank, the oldest chartered bank in Lyon County. The flood of 1972 destroyed the railroad tracks, and most businesses became fading recollections, though the community continued to remember and honor those who had lived there before.