Origins of Burke, South Dakota | Dakota Life

To highlight the upcoming episode of Dakota Life Burke, we interviewed Kelsea Sutton, a member of the Gregory Historical Society to share about the town of Burke and its origins.

Just in time to celebrate its 120-year anniversary, Burke is hosting a SDPB film and journalism crew to share stories about the Pride of the Prairie for the September Dakota Life segment. As a part of being a 2024 featured community, I had the opportunity to put my history degrees to work and take a deeper look into how the town was founded and named. My greatest hope is that this little piece would make Jack Broome (the late Gregory County Historian) proud, as he certainly would have been its author if he were still with us.

Gregory County, named for politician J. Shaw Gregory, was created in 1862 and organized in 1898. Its county seat Burke, named for Charles H. Burke, was founded on August 4, 1904, after the US government opened the western part of Gregory County to settlement through a lottery system. The lotteries were held at Yankton (57,432 filings), Fairfax (8,700 filings), Chamberlain (6,100 filings), and Bonesteel (35,176 filings). The chances of winning a 160-acre homestead were 1 in 46.[1]

The lottery system was possible because of the Homestead Act of 1862,[2] which had rapidly accelerated the white settlement of the western US. Prior to those settlements, Native Nations including the Ponca, Lakota, Arikara, and Ree had lived on this land, as many of their descendants still do today. The making and breaking of significant peace treaties between the US government and the Očéti Šakówiŋ—primarily, the Fort Laramie Treaties of 1851 and 1868—ultimately led to the settlement of what is now most of western South Dakota, including Gregory County.

After the Great Sioux War of 1876, most Lakota were living on reservations in western Dakota Territory, including the Sicangu Lakota on the Rosebud Indian Reservation. In 1877, the Ponca Nation had been forced from their homelands in north central Nebraska and south central South Dakota to land in Oklahoma in what is remembered as the Ponca Trail of Tears. Nine people died on the grueling journey, including multiple children.

By 1887, Congress had passed the Dawes Act, creating individual Native allotments that could be sold to settlers, but it would still be several years before the legal landscape would allow for the lottery for all of what is now Gregory County. Between 1887 and 1932, around 91 million indigenous acres would transfer ownership to homesteaders, governments, and speculators.[3]

Burke was named for Charles Henry Burke, a politician of the time. Charles was born in New York in 1861 and moved to Dakota Territory in 1882. He served in the South Dakota State Legislature in 1895 and 1897 and then the US House of Representatives from 1898-1907 and 1908-1915. The Burke Act, also known as the General Allotment Amendment Act of 1906, was one of his primary achievements. The spirit and consequences of this Act have been and likely will continue to be judged harshly by history.

Gregory Histrorical Society

The locally legendary precursor to the 1904 allotment winners that would become the Burke founders was a fever pitch of excitement and prospecting throughout July 1904.[4] The sheer number of people who were in Bonesteel registering (and looking to make money off registrants) led to an outsized amount of drinking, gambling, and general disorderly conduct.

Bonesteel was described by the Minneapolis Journal in the July 15, 1904, edition as “absolutely in the hands of grafters, thieves and thugs.” When law abiding citizens tried to run the rascals out of town on July 20, 1904, it ultimately led to a considerable exchange of gunfire now referred to as The Battle of Bonesteel.

Adeline Gnirk describes a “lonesome dozen people” who had put up white tents and yellow lumber frame shanties in that fall of 1904.[5] Now in 2024, Burke is home to just over 600 people, remains the county seat using 1934 courthouse, and maintains a K12 school system. Several Burke businesses have existed for 90-120 years, including: First Fidelity Bank (1904); The Burke Gazette (1904); Burke Building Center (1905); Gunvordahl, Gunvordahl & Norberg Law Office (1908); Clausen Funeral home (1927); and the Burke Community Memorial Hospital (1934).

The following description of Burke as a non-boom town lends insight into the economy of speculating during late 1800s and early 1900s, and begs the question of whether the current residents feel they’ve continued the wisdom and caution of their ancestors’ approach to development:

Burke congratulates herself that she has escaped all booms and their resultant evils. Not a cent has ever been invested in Burke on the strength of future hope. Buildings have been erected because they were actually needed for a definite purpose. No man has ever been disappointed in the result of an investment in Burke for the spirit of speculation has been conspicuously absent. There have been no fictitious values attached to anything. There are no empty buildings, either business establishments or residences. Ninety percent of the inhabitants of the town own the buildings they occupy, and most of them were the original builders.[6]

Many kinds of people have lived in Burke over the past 120 years and before 1904, creating a rich heritage of distinct cultures and a shared life. It is this author’s hope that in the year 2144, Burke residents will be celebrating 240 years of vibrant living in the Pride of the Prairie.

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[1] Gregory County Historical Society Blog, A Note from Cottonwood Corners, Clarence Shoemaker (January 2024), http://wp.me/p8Ozo2-gg.
[2] Gregory County Historical Society Blog, A Note from Cottonwood Corners, Clarence Shoemaker (May 2023), http://wp.me/p8Ozo2-dH (Progressively, the act did “explicitly [allow] single women to file for a claim and have their own land” but still the “act was not perfect. It proved to be no panacea for poverty.”)
[3] Our History is the Future, Nick Estes (2019), pp136-37.
[4] The Capital City Saga, Adeline Gnirk (1979), p18.
[5] A Note from Cottonwood Corners, Clarence Shoemaker (January 2024), http://wp.me/p8Ozo2-gg.
[6] Ibid.
[7] A Rosebud Review 1913, reprinted by The Gregory Times-Advocate July 1984. Author’s note: this history was put together by newspaper personnel who did everything to stress only the most favorable information about their communities. The reader of the work is cautioned that bias and incomplete information abounds.