Early Deadwood’s reputation as a raucous and unlawful place in the 1870s is well known and much deserved, but another of Dakota Territory’s first towns was just as wild. When Dakota was opened to white settlement in 1859, businessmen, lawyers, and politicians of every stripe flocked to the brand new town of Yankton seeking once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to grab land, cut deals with the railroads coming west, and above all, write laws and policies for their own benefit. Crystal Nelson is the executive director of the Yankton County Historical Society and describes a political culture so rough that it cost a Territorial governor his life.
"Edwin McCook. His family, the McCook family, is legendarily known as the 'Fighting McCooks' and really, it came down to the two brothers who had a ton of sons and they just, kind of, were everywhere during the Civil War. I guess they had a real hot temper. That's a big part about, I think, what made them very successful in what they did. So McCook, after the war, he comes out to Dakota Territory and has a big political drive when he's here and everybody kind of knew him as a guy with a short temper. At that time, 1870, they'd been trying to get a railroad to Dakota Territory for years and years. They finally do achieve that in 1871. It rolls into town in 1872 and this whole railroad issue split the town of Yankton. You had literally the gangs of Yankton. You had the Broadway gang and you had the Capital Street gang. Businesses were choosing sides. People that were supporting Broadway gang supported Broadway gang businesses, and vice versa with the Capital Street gangs. Oh, it was a real issue. And the town was split in half. And then really what the issue had to do was over the payment of the Dakota Southern Railroad that was coming to Yankton, how it was being financed.
And there were certain individuals who were selling at a high profit, selling rights and interest in the railroad to investors on the east coast, which was how they were making way more money than the railroad was even worth. And so that's the other side of it. (Some of them) were getting cheated out of this investment scheme that was going on. So, things continue to escalate and tempers are high. And the whole murder of McCook, it was a week long process, really. It started earlier in the week. Edwin McCook was on one side of this argument, and another banker by the name of Peter Wintermute of Yankton was on the other. And Peter had this little business meeting or interest meeting to talk about what's going on when McCook crashed that meeting.
It was supposed to be really a closed meeting, but he's like, 'No, it's supposed to be a public meeting, so I'm inviting myself.' And then the two individuals on opposite sides were in charge of this welcoming committee for some investors, and that didn't go well. They were just at each other's throats. The whole thing was just getting really violent in the comments to each other. And that's really what it came down to was they were at the saloon before a meeting. And it's at what today is the Sir Charles Gurney hotel apartments - the Charles Gurney apartments. At that time, the building on the corner of 3rd and Capital Street of Yankton was actually the federal court room above one of the businesses. And in the basement of it was a saloon.
Well, Wintermute had arrived and did not have, apparently, a smoke, and he'd seen that McCook had an extra smoke. And so he had asked him for a smoke. And they don't really say exactly what he said. It turns out must have been something pretty nasty. And then in a little fight ensued, and McCook had basically thrown a spittoon full of you know what all over Wintermute in his face, rubbed his face in it, and had a little brawl. McCook was quite a bit bigger than Wintermute. And Wintermute basically said, "You're going to pay," and left. Had gotten a pistol, went to the public meeting, and during some of the arguments of the public meeting, Wintermute open fired and shot McCook.
McCook, he'd been shot more than once and he continued to fight. The man was shot up pretty serious, but he was big. And he fought until he was just about to throw Wintermute out the second floor story window when he finally collapsed. And that's how he met his end. And McCook actually, too, a lot of people don't realize he was acting governor of Dakota territory at the time. So he just shot a very high positioned individual. Wintermute ended up getting off, but he sat in prison for two years in Vermilion and he had a trial in Vermilion because, of course, they didn't think one would be very fair in Yankton. And he got off, but ended up dying of, I think tuberculosis or something that he contracted while in prison. So he died within a couple years after, about three years after he shot McCook. And then McCook got sent back to his family out east, and he was buried there. But it was after that, the city of Yankton, all the residents sat down and said, 'This has gone too far.'"
Today's McCook County, which includes the towns of Salem, Canistota, and Spencer, was named for Edwin McCook.