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It
seems that General Campbell thought there should be a stage
route for mail from Yankton and that a post office should be
established. He wanted to call the place Gunnville but
father and the other Gunns refused their permission..The
General swore and said: "We will call it
Scotland,
then!" and
Scotland it was and Scotland it is.
*excerpted
from The Gunns of Kinlochlaggan: A Scottish Disapora by Kathy
Gunn Sullivan.
In
the spring of 1870, General Charles T. Campbell established a
stagecoach stop for the Firesteel Trail. This stop,
which included his residence, an inn, a general store and a
large horse barn became the original town of Scotland South
Dakota. Campbell, along with about 100 families of
Scottish and English ancestry, located this stop on a flat
area beside Dawson Creek, about a half-mile southeast of the
Chalk Rock Museum. In 1879, Campbell encouraged his
friend Alexander Mitchell to build a railroad line through
Scotland from Marion Junction which was northeast of Scotland.
When
the railroad arrived in 1880, the town moved
"upland" to meet it onto land owned by John Stafford
who deeded the land to the railroad and platted 80 acres for
the new town. With the railroad spurring new growth,
other additions were platted by Phillip Becker, Johanna,
Bertha, and Sara Korb, John Lawler and Abel Stafford. By
1884, Scotland's
population was up to 1200 with railroad service connecting it
to the east and south. By 1891 the population had risen
to 1500 but was beginning to feel the effects of new
homesteading in Charles Mix County and points west.
Scotland
remained a strong business town through both World Wars and
the Great Depression, Saturday and Sunday nights being
excessively active nights--the theater held 400 and would have
two showings to sold-out houses, while the stores and cafes'
stayed open until midnight to accommodate the crowds.
This
is but one of hundred stories of westward expansion after the
Civil War by the hearty Scots whose homes on the east coast
were destroyed by war. The western frontier held a
mystique for freedom and justice the Scots, Irish and English
and German emigrants could not resist.
Scotland
South Dakota
is a thriving community with excellent medical facilities,
strong schools and many churches and other amenities that
comprises a Small Town with a Big Heart.
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