How Many South Dakota Places Are on National Historic Registry?

History abounds in South Dakota just about everywhere you look.

So it's no surprise that all throughout the Mount Rushmore State a number of locales have been designated for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places.

The list was created as part of the 1966 National Historic Preservation Act, which recognizes 'districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance.' There are currently more than one and a half million properties on the National Register, with 95,000 listed individually.

Get our free mobile app

In South Dakota, there are 1,366 such places, at least one in each of the state's 66 counties.

The first ten places in the state to make the register went in on day one - October 15, 1966.

Leading the list, of course, was perhaps our best-known historic locale, Mount Rushmore National Memorial in Keystone in Pennington County.

The other nine South Dakota places that made the initial national list in 1966:

Buffalo County: Crow Creek Site, Chamberlain
Buffalo County: Fort Thompson Mounds, Fort Thompson
Davison County: Mitchell Site, Mitchell
Dewey County: Molstad Village, Mobridge
Hanson County: Bloom Site, Bloom
Hughes County: Arzberger Site, Pierre
Lawrence County: Deadwood Historic District, Deadwood
Lyman County: Langdeau Site, Lower Brule
Oglala Lakota County: Wounded Knee Battlefield, Batesland

In 2021, South Dakota added five more spots to the list:

Clay County: First Congregational Church, Vermillion
Gregory County: Gregory Courthouse, Gregory
Minnehaha County: Margaret Burger Apartment House, Sioux Falls
Minnehaha County: Ole E. Fauske House, Corson
Roberts County: Louis Nigg Barn, Sisseton

The state's most populated county, Minnehaha County, also has the most South Dakota spots on the National Register of Historic Places. The county's first entries on the list were All Saints School and Carnegie Library, both in Sioux Falls, in March of 1973.

SOUTH DAKOTA COUNTIES WITH MOST ENTRIES ON THE NATIONAL REGISTER OF HISTORIC PLACES

Minnehaha - 104
Yankton - 79
Fall River - 75
Pennington - 60
Harding - 56
Lawrence - 55
Custer - 50
Brown - 45
Codington - 43
Hughes - 43

RANKED: Here are the most popular national parks

To determine the most popular national parks in the United States, Stacker compiled data from the National Park Service on the number of recreational visits each site had in 2020. Keep reading to discover the 50 most popular national parks in the United States, in reverse order from #50 to #1. And be sure to check with individuals parks before you visit to find out about ongoing, pandemic-related safety precautions at www.nps.gov/coronavirus.