The story
from WikipediaRead it all ↗Two early surveyors, Lane and Ray, found the area so attractive for settlement that in 1855 they illegally laid a claim and built a cabin in section 12 of Barnes Township and over-wintered there. William S. Lee was a wealthy New Yorker who came to Sioux Rapids in 1858, staked a very early claim, and soon controversially acquired around 60,000 acres of “swamp land” at 16¢ per acre. For this he was contracted to build a courthouse and construct a bridge over the Little Sioux River, but never did. He sold large amounts of this land, but after years of legal action, Lee and his purchasers lost all their claims in 1882 in a final case against them. Lee returned to New York in 1863 to educate his children, returning in 1868 to find his early claim had been “jumped” by a William Fuller. In 1870, after reversal of an earlier decision, Fuller was allowed to keep his land, in a protracted case fi…
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
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Sioux Rapids, decade by decade
2000
1 historic place in Sioux Rapids
1 place in Sioux Rapids is on the National Register of Historic Places, the country’s official list of buildings and places worth saving.
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Then & now
When neighbors add old photos, retakes from the same spot appear here side by side.
Stories next door
nearby towns’ historyFrom Wikimedia Commons (2) and the National Register (1). Images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.