St. Marys was platted in 1886 by Dr. Louis Gotthelf and named for his daughter Mary. According to a notice of his death in 1905, Gotthelf was born in Berlin, Prussia, in 1821, graduated from medical college in 1843, and was brevetted by King Wilhelm IV for outstanding military service during the revolutions of 1848. He immigrated to the United States in the early 1850s, practiced medicine in Missouri and then Minnesota, and in 1881 came with his family to Miner County, where he patented land claims in Sections 14 and 15 of Green Valley Township. Disenchanted with St. Marys's lack of progress, he moved to Parker, S.D. in 1889. In 1919, a post-World War I land boom spurred new businesses, and St. Marys grew significantly as a trade center on a Chicago and North Western Railroad branch line. In 1920, because a St. Marys post office already existed, the town was renamed Argonne to honor American soldiers who died in the World War I battle of Meuse-Argonne, and Lewis H. Canfield, formerly the postmaster of Canova, S.D., became its first postmaster. In February 1920, the town dedicated a new $100,000 consolidated school. On January 17, 1933, the Argonne Consolidated School was destroyed by fire, displacing 116 students and six teachers, and the town remodeled the Argonne Farmer's Cooperative and a former pool hall to serve as makeshift classrooms until the school was rebuilt later that year. In 1953, the Argonne Arrows high school basketball team made state history against the Canova Eagles when Delbert Gillam, the "Argonne Ace," scored 72 points on 31 field goals and 10 free throws in a 126-81 victory, setting a single-game state scoring record that still stood in 2023. In the 1970s, the school closed, the railroad ceased service, and the last resident moved away, leaving Argonne a ghost town with no buildings remaining.