Ben Clare, in Dakota Territory, was platted by Benjamin B. Richards on September 24, 1888, soon after the Illinois Central Railroad entered Minnehaha County. Created in the enthusiasm of the Dakota Boom and named for Richards's sons, Benjamin and Clarence, it was intended to serve the surrounding agricultural community by sparing farmers wagon trips to Sioux Falls or Valley Springs. The town quickly developed two grain elevators, two grocery stores, stockyards, a lumber yard, a hardware store, a post office, and a blacksmith shop, and it became an important shipping point for grain and livestock through direct railroad access to Chicago markets. In the early 1890s it prospered like other prairie towns, organizing a Methodist-Episcopal congregation in 1890 that first held tent revival meetings before dedicating a church on January 12, 1894, while a town band and the Tri-State Literary Society added to community and cultural life. Its early success did not last. In 1892 Richards sold the town site to Frank Bowen, whose quarrels, lawsuits, and exorbitant prices for town lots angered residents so deeply that some businessmen and citizens moved their buildings farther north and founded North Ben Clare. In 1903 Bowen was shot and killed at the Illinois Central Railroad station while signing for a delivery, and his twelve-year-old son was also wounded; station agent Harry Stelgard, who had often quarreled with Bowen, fired the shot, was found not guilty by reason of insanity, and was committed to the state asylum in Yankton. In the decade after the turn of the century Ben Clare declined and never regained its early prosperity, the post office closed on September 30, 1912, residents gradually left, buildings were torn down, streets and avenues were plowed under, and after more than 100 years only the Methodist church remained.