The first settlers came to this area about 1880. LaGrace, 9 miles southwest, was the first town and the county seat until 1888, when it gradually disappeared. Pollock was founded in 1901 at the end of the Soo Line Railroad and was named after R.Y. Pollock, an early settler, community leader, and lay preacher. The town was to be flooded by the Oahe Reservoir, and in 1955 ground was broken for the present town and its two churches, Presbyterian and Lutheran. The old town site, one mile north of this point, is now covered by Lake Pocasse. The South Dakota covered wagon in the National Bicentennial Wagon Train to Valley Forge, Pa., made its official start in Pollock on October 7, 1975, accompanied by the North Dakota wagon and a Pennsylvania wagon.