This week in History’s Attic

Wheeler South Dakota’s own Lost City Of Atlantis. Established in the late 1800s along the wild Missouri River, Wheeler was a steamboat landing and served as a temporary County seat of Gregory County until it was established in Fairfax. It later served as the seat of Charles Mix County, which was wrested away from it in 1916 by Lake Andes. Also one of the factors was that Wheeler had no railroad connection, which served as a death knell for it. Even though they were thinking of rail connections when the Rosebud Bridge (or Wheeler Bridge) was built a couple miles downstream in 1925. The Rosebud Bridge was built with pin connectors so it could be removed to make way for a railroad bridge that never happened but was later moved to Chamberlain anyway. In 1947, the below picture was taken by the Corp of engineers before the town was covered with water by the fort Randall dam.

The last buildings (pictured above) were sold and demolished for lumber and used in some buildings in Platte. It is a shame as you can see the wonderful farm land that surrounded the town was all lost to the water, and a lot of Gregory County’s history is underwater, too. Wheeler went into decline even after the bridge was built in 1925 and by 1947 the town was pretty much gone. It suffered the same fate as many of the inland towns did on the Rosebud with no rail connections

Author Richard Papousek, January 2024