After South Dakota entered the union in 1889 and western South Dakota opened to settlement, surveying the next summer led to the establishment of Midland, named for its location halfway between the Missouri and the South Fork of the Cheyenne River. Construction began in 1890 when J.C. “Charlie” Russell hauled supplies from Pierre and built the first store, while Addie Avenell operated a hotel and restaurant and Charles Baker became the first postmaster; Charlie Russell later served as postmaster for 21 years. The town’s first wedding took place in 1895 when Charlie Russell married Jennie, Emily Hall’s daughter, and their daughter Grace became Midland’s first child born there and one of its first two high school graduates. Businesses expanded in 1904 and 1905 with a livery stable, the Western Star newspaper, a small furniture and undertaking store, Christopher Hellekson’s grocery, and the Bastion Roundhouse, some of them first built in east Midland before being moved to the present town site. Midland’s boom came in 1906 and 1907 as the Bank of Midland received a charter, a hardware store opened, regular train service began, lots were sold, the Great Western Telephone Company’s westbound line arrived, and passenger train service to Rapid City started on October 15, 1907, continuing until October 1960. The Midland State Bank opened in 1908 and closed on January 8, 1932, while a new schoolhouse built in 1909 opened for classes in 1910, and the Bank of Midland opened in 1909 in a new building of Stanley County brick and Black Hills sandstone that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In the decades that followed, Midland added electricity, sidewalks, a water system, a sewer system, municipal artesian wells, and in 1982 a new water tank and treatment plant; in 1939 John and Violet Stroppel also added an artesian well for hot mineral baths at the Bastion Roundhouse.