In the early 1880s homesteaders settled this part of Dakota Territory and established the villages of Dolph, three miles west, and Poinsett, five miles east, but reaching markets and supplies required travel by foot, oxen, or horse-drawn wagons to railroad stations twelve to seventeen miles away. In 1906, as the South Dakota Central Railroad extended a line northward from Sioux Falls to Watertown, local landowners met company officials at the Roisum School one mile west of here, offered $100 per quarter section of land, and donated thirty-five acres for a townsite to bring the line through this place. The railroad staked out what became Lake Norden on October 15, 1907, and soon businesses appeared, buildings were moved in from Dolph and Poinsett, the first train arrived on December 31, 1907, and a depot, four grain elevators, and stockyards were built near the tracks. By 1909 the town had thirty-three businesses. Early locomotives were steam powered, and diesel electric engines came into use in the 1940s. In its early years, as many as two freight trains and two passenger trains made daily round trips between Sioux Falls and Watertown, serving Crooks, Lyons, Chester, Wentworth, Rutland, Nunda, Sinai, Ahnberg, Arlington, Badger, Lake Norden, Hayti, Thomas, and Foley. The railroad struggled financially from the beginning, and after a March 4, 1916, accident near Thomas in which a train crashed through a fire-weakened bridge, killing three people and destroying the entire train, a bankruptcy court ordered its sale to the Watertown and Sioux Falls Railway. By 1928 the Great Northern Railroad controlled the line, and after later mergers it became part of Burlington Northern and then BNSF Railway. The last passenger train passed through Lake Norden on December 30, 1952, and the last freight train departed on May 22, 1980, ending seventy-three years of railroad history and leaving the town of Lake Norden, which existed because of the South Dakota Central Railroad.