Parkston, SD

The railroad-era move of Dakota City created Parkston in 1886, and the Hutchinson County city still carries that origin. The name honors R. S. Parke, a landowner connected with the town site, while Dakota City's buildings and businesses moved to Parkston that summer. That history gives the place its shape: a small Main Street city surrounded by southeastern South Dakota farm country, with Olivet serving as the county seat and Mitchell about 20 miles to the north. Parkston School District 33-3 keeps the town's prekindergarten-through-12th-grade school system in one local frame, and the city library preserves the Parkston Advance newspaper archive, including digitized issues from 1880 through 2018. The relocated predecessor, school, library, and fields beyond Main Street tell most of Parkston's story.