Yankton’s Railroad Gets Swallowed

The residents of Yankton County may have possessed great ambition and foresight in their pursuit of the Territory’s first railroad; however, this pursuit came at a great cost, as Yankton County had to assume almost complete responsibility for funding the railroad. As it turned out, the initial advantage of having the Territory’s first railroad soon evaporated as other railroad companies extended their lines west of Minnesota and Iowa. And by this time, the territorial population was such that railroads did not need government subsidies to build new tracks. Consequently, as more railroads came into the Territory, and as the steamboat business declined, Yankton County lost its trade predominance. Moreover, Yankton County even ended up losing any influence in the railroad it had funded. As its stock holding in the railroad continued to erode, Yankton County finally sold its interest in Dakota Southern for a small fraction of what it had invested a decade earlier.