Pickstown, SD

Pickstown is a town in southern Charles Mix County, South Dakota, beside the east side of Fort Randall Dam on the Missouri River. Its 2020 population was 230, a small present-day scale for a place built to house the workforce of one of the state's largest construction projects. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers laid out Pickstown in 1946 for people building Fort Randall Dam, with 425 homes for workers and families. The town was named for Lewis A. Pick, a co-creator of the Pick-Sloan Plan; the dam was completed in 1956 and formed Lake Francis Case.

Pickstown's present-day map still follows the dam-era plan. U.S. 18, U.S. 281, and South Dakota 46 bring people to the town, the river, and the lake; the Fort Randall visitor center and nearby North Point Recreation Area sit along the reservoir corridor. The Pickstown & Fort Randall Museum, housed in the Rainbow Room Complex, preserves four chapters: Old Fort Randall, the 1946-56 dam-and-town build, the 1947-68 school, and the community's later life. A school once enrolled 400 students, and Tom Brokaw spent part of his childhood here. Today the museum, dam operations, reservoir access, and local roads keep that federal construction story visible in ordinary geography.