How Come They Called it Presho

In 1862, when Dakota Territory extended from south of Canada to the Rocky Mountains, the legislature granted J.S. Presho a ferry license across the Missouri River at Yankton. In 1872, as officials sought a name for a large new county being carved from the Great Sioux Reservation, they chose Presho. In 1889, the government began reducing that reservation and opening it to white settlement. Settlers arrived wanting mail service, and on June 30, 1891, Chris Hellekson received the Presho post office. The community then grew slowly, trading in cattle and shipping hay. In 1915, Presho shipped more than 20 trainloads of hay, a record matched by only one other place in a single year. The same legislature that established Presho also created Lyman County on the river and named it for Major W.P. Lyman, one of Presho’s ferry customers, and that county eventually absorbed the larger Presho area.

Presho, South Dakota · United States