Oakwood Lakes, called by the Sioux Te-tonka-ha, meaning the place of the Great Summer Lodge, lie in a scenic state park 7 miles north and 3 west. The first recorded visitors were Nicollet and Fremont on July 8, 1838. During the Indian Disturbances of 1859, Capt. D. Davidson with 2 companies of the 2nd U.S. Infantry from Ft. Randall camped at these lakes and probably built the breastwork still visible on the north shore of Round Lake. Later, during the War of the Outbreak from 1862 to 1865, small detachments of soldiers used the lakes. Byron E. and Warren Pay settled on the east shore in 1873, and while celebrating the 4th of July, Hattie, Byron's wife, christened their claim Oakwood, which became the name of the lakes and of a village that flourished for a time from 1877 to 1879 until the coming of the railroads made it a ghost town. James S. Cummins became the first postmaster on 4 May 1877. The Big Sioux River, 2 miles east, was the western limit of the Sioux Cession made by the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux in 1851 and the eastern limit of the Yankton cession of 1858, which extended west to the Missouri. Volga was the 1879 terminus of the Dakota Central, and on 2 December Erick Nelson became its first postmaster. From Volga, as a supply base, the race for the river between the Milwaukee from Marion Jct. and the Dakota Central (North Western) was staged in 1880.