LeBeau was a town in
Walworth County,
South Dakota
South Dakota (; Sioux language, Sioux: , ) is a U.S. state, 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 Dakota people, Dakota Sioux ...
,
United States
The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...
. It was on the east bank of the
Missouri River
The Missouri River is a river in the Central United States, Central and Mountain states, Mountain West regions of the United States. The nation's longest, it rises in the eastern Centennial Mountains of the Bitterroot Range of the Rocky Moun ...
, near the mouth of Swan Creek.
History
LeBeau was the terminus of a branch line of the
Minneapolis and St. Louis Railway
The Minneapolis and St. Louis Railway (M&StL) was an American Railroad classes#Class I, Class I railroad that built and operated lines radiating south and west from Minneapolis, Minnesota for 90 years from 1870 to 1960. The railway never reached ...
(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 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.
See also
*
List of ghost towns in South Dakota
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
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