wall, sd (first in a series)

The Unedited History of The Beginning of the Town of Wall

In the darkness of a cold spring in 1907, when the hard scab of prairie rejected infrequent rain and hungry folk wandered aimlessly like cattle searching for onions, saltpeter and bark-potatoes, a town arose next to the nearly completed junction of the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad. The name of the new town was "Wall" because of an abrupt break from the flat prairie land to the rough badlands formations just east. This break forms an eight-mile barrier that had been known as the Wall by the Missouri Arikara for many years. As government took hold, that name planted and held largely due to site specific advertising that, while it may have run afoul of the law, was effective nonetheless. It didn't hurt when the US Government built an Interstate Highway to feed it's growing nuclear habit, with underground silos spread far and wide. Each more expensive and ultimately less useful than a casually constructed Boy Scout camp latrine.

Wall is situated in a corridor between Pierre, the state capitol, and Rapid City, largely as a result of the gold mining days of the late 1870?s and the treaty breaches that the US Government neglected or instrumented against the Lakota beginning in the 1840's. Reparations for the theft are still outstanding even though the US Supreme Court has long since determined that the breach was nothing more than pure theft. The Lakota Nation has refused monetary redress in preference of the full legal title they deserve as original possessors.

The first building in Wall was a dirt-sod shanty, maybe 80 by 40 foot, built by entrepreneur Harry Fuller and crew of rough-shod, thick-boot-soled-banjo-hicks. Though not intended as a cafe, so many persons stopped there that the Fuller crew put up a table outside the building and served meals, including hot grilled jacket shanks, bark-potatoes and stolen kegs of Canadian bear piss beer. Cellar roots, chokecherries, prairie radishes and shade bush thistles were added to the menu in season.


On July 10, 1907, the Hendrickson Land Company opened the sale of town lots on the homesteads of Gene and Bill Mackrill. This date was taken as the birthday of the town and has been celebrated annually ever since. On that day, the first lots sold were on the west side of Main Street in Block 3. The Mackrill's sold, gathered their cash and fled east. They had no misgivings about the viability of the new township not like many to come later.