Land Sale South Dakota

The Dakota Territory, which ultimately was divided into the states of North Dakota and South Dakota, wasn’t recognized until 1861. For the next three decades, however, events unfolded pretty fast. At the end of that period, any sign advertising “Land Sale South Dakota” would have drawn a lot of attention.

In 1872, the Northern Pacific Railroad arrived in the Dakota Territory. In 1874 gold was discovered in the Black Hills. Toward the end of 1889, North Dakota was admitted to the union as the 39th state and South Dakota was admitted as the 40th state.

The Northern Pacific Railroad, one of the industrial giants of the time, presents an interesting analogy between an operating business and underlying land values. The railroad, an immense undertaking at the time, was built between 1870 and 1883 and stretched from the Great Lakes to the Pacific Northwest. The total cost of the original construction was approximately $70 million. As part of the 1862 and 1864 Pacific Railroad Acts, signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln, the Northern Pacific Railroad received millions of acres as a land grant to assist in the cost of building the railroad.

It was reported to the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1917 that gross receipts from land sales by the Northern Pacific had amounted to $136 million, and there was a large amount of acreage still available for sale.

Would you rather engage in the risky operation of a railroad with all the labor problems and economic ups and downs to struggle with, or would you rather own thousands of acres of land and simply hammer your sign into the ground, “Land Sale South Dakota”—and wait for buyers to start handing you checks?

To view some land for sale in South Dakota, please click here.