Following the establishment of the 1897 Taopi Creamery at the future townsite of Colton, interest grew in a farm-to-market railroad. Paul F. Sherman of Sioux Falls and John E. Colton led efforts to build a line from Sioux Falls through Colton to Madison. The Sioux Falls to Madison Railway was incorporated in April 1902, but inadequate funding led four months later to the creation of the Sioux Falls and Manitoba Railway for the same purpose. Although surveys were completed from Sioux Falls to the Lake County line, that company neither graded rights-of-way nor laid ties and rails. In April 1904, a third company, the South Dakota Land Company, began with stockholders purchasing $16,000 shares and capital of $160,000, and it started laying track in May 1904 to build the South Dakota Central Railway in hopes of selling it profitably to a major railroad. The first track ran from Sioux Falls to Crooks and Lyons, crossed Skunk Creek, climbed a steep grade to Colton, and covered about 20 miles, while Sioux Falls passenger service used the Illinois Central Railroad depot. In late summer 1904, the owners learned that the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway was surveying its own line from Madison to Sioux Falls, ending hopes for a quick sale and pushing management to pursue another route. The line was then extended to Chester, Wentworth, Rutland, and Nunda and reached Watertown in 1907. Undercapitalized and heavily in debt, the South Dakota Central struggled until entering receivership in 1916 and was eventually acquired by the Great Northern. In 1970 the original short line became part of the Burlington Northern & Santa Fe. The competing Milwaukee line linked Renner, Colton, and Madison in 1907, but it also declined, with abandonment beginning in 1935 and the Madison-to-Sioux Falls line ceasing to exist in 1942.