Faith arose in 1910 on the prairie where Highways US 212 and SD 73 meet at the end of the Cheyenne Branch of the Milwaukee Road, a half mile above sea level on the Fox Ridge Divide. The area, bounded by the Cheyenne Reservation, the Moreau and Cheyenne Rivers, and the Black Hills, was opened to settlers in 1890, but few came at first. From 1908 to 1910, as the rails pushed westward, homesteaders filed for free land and encountered the stoic calm of the Sioux under Puts on His Shoes and Iron Lightning, two of Sitting Bull's chieftains. Large cattle outfits such as the Matador, Flying V, and Turkey Track lost their free range to plowed fields and barbed wire as settlement advanced. Grass that produced beef formed the backbone of local existence, and with the county sheriff 110 miles away, the vast prairie left little room for deceit and made a man's true stature plain. Named for the daughter of Milwaukee Railroad president Earling, Faith drew sustaining influence from its name during its first fifty years, while its livelihood depended directly on rainfall and its guiding philosophy remained, "Next Year Will be Better."