LeBeau was a town in Walworth County,

South Dakota South Dakota (; Sioux language, Sioux: , ) is a U.S. state in the West North Central states, North Central region of the United States. It is also part of the Great Plains. South Dakota is named after the Lakota people, Lakota and Dakota peo ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. It was on the east bank of the Missouri River, near the mouth of Swan Creek.

History

LeBeau was the terminus of a branch line of the Minneapolis and St. Louis Railway (M&StL) built westward in 1907 from Conde, South Dakota. For a time, LeBeau was a boom town, and a major cattle-shipping point for the large ranches on the opposite side of the Missouri. The M&StL planned to continue building its line westward from LeBeau, and began initial work on a Missouri River bridge there. Those expansion plans never materialized, however, and LeBeau quickly went into decline after the competing

Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad The Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad (CMStP&P), often referred to as the "Milwaukee Road" , was a Class I railroad that operated in the Midwest and Northwest of the United States from 1847 until 1986. The company experience ...

completed its own lines into the region west of the river. The M&StL trackage to LeBeau was removed in 1924. In the summers of 1954 and 1955 the University of South Dakota fielded an archeological dig under the leadership of Dr. Wesley Hurt. They excavated a large earth lodge complex next to the old town of LeBeau. One of the student diggers, Tyler Bastian, spent weekends excavating in the cellar pits of LeBeau. Bastian went on to get his Ph.D. and become state archeologist for Maryland. LeBeau at that time was located on the ranch of Dean Boehmer. The former LeBeau townsite is now beneath the waters of

Lake Oahe Lake Oahe () is a large reservoir behind Oahe Dam on the Missouri River; it begins in central South Dakota and continues north into North Dakota in the United States. The lake has an area of and a maximum depth of . By volume, it is the List of l ...

References

* Hofsommer, Don L. “A Promise Broken: LeBeau and the Railroad.” ''South Dakota History'' 33 (Spring 2003): 1-17.

Notes

Ghost towns in South Dakota Geography of Walworth County, South Dakota {{SouthDakota-geo-stub