South Dakota: Railroads, Droughts, and the Great Depression

The extension of railroads (particularly the Milwaukee, which was the only transcontinental line passing through South Dakota) encouraged further expansion of agriculture, but new droughts (especially that of 1910–11) brought a brief period of emigration. Many new farmsteads were abandoned, and a turn toward political radicalism developed. The Progressive party, led by Peter Norbeck (governor 1917–21) and operating as a branch of the Republican party, revived the attempts of Populist reform programs to regulate railroad rates and raise assessments of corporate property. The Progressives also entered into experiments in state ownership of business.

Prosperity-depression cycles again affected the state after the boom of World War I. The combination of droughts and the Great Depression brought widespread calamities in the late 1920s and early 30s, and the state's population declined by 50,000 between 1930 and 1940. Vigorous relief measures were instituted under the New Deal, and higher farm prices during World War II and the ensuing years brought a new era of hopefulness.

Sections in this article:

• Introduction
• Postwar Changes
• Railroads, Droughts, and the Great Depression
• The Dakota Land Boom, Statehood, and Agrarian Reform
• Gold Fever and the End of Sioux Resistance
• Settlement
• Early Inhabitants, European Exploration, and Fur Trading
• Government and Higher Education
• Economy
• Geography
• Facts and Figures
• Bibliography

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