Yankton South Dakota History & Facts

Yankton is a city in and the county seat of Yankton County, South Dakota, United States.

Yankton had a population of 14,454 at the 2010 census and it is the principal city of the Yankton Micropolitan Statistical Area, which includes the entirety of Yankton County and which had an estimated population of 22,662 as of July 1, 2017. As the first capital of Dakota Territory, it was named after the Yankton tribe of Western Dakota people; Yankton is derived from the Dakota word I-hank-ton-wan ("the end village").

Yankton is located on the Missouri River just downstream of the Gavins Point Dam and Lewis and Clark Lake, and just upstream of the confluence with the James River. The United States National Park Service's headquarters for the Missouri National Recreational River are located in the city. The Human Services Center was established as a psychiatric hospital in 1882 and is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Yankton is commonly referred to as the "River City", due to its proximity to the Missouri River and the importance the river played in the city's settlement and development. Yankton has also earned the nickname "Mother City of the Dakotas", due to the early important role it played in the creation and development of the Dakota Territory, which later became the 39th and 40th U.S. states of North and South Dakota.

Owing to the early exploitation of Fort Hays Limestone for cement manufacture, including shipment of cement to the construction of the Panama Canal, Yankton once also had the nickname "Cement City".

Yankton is located at 42°52′54″N 97°23′33″W (42.881647, −97.392485). in southern South Dakota on the state's border with Nebraska. The city is located on one of the last free-flowing, natural stretches of the Missouri River; this segment of the river, between Gavins Point Dam four miles west of Yankton, and Ponca State Park in Nebraska, has been designated by the U.S. National Park Service as the Missouri National Recreational River.

The city is located approximately six miles west of the point where the James River flows into the Missouri.

The central business district of the city is located on a natural landing along the Missouri River, and city rises in the west to "Mount Marty" (actually a high bluff along the river). The city is also intersected by the Marne Creek, which also flows into the Missouri River. Lewis and Clark Lake is located four miles west of the city.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 8.45 square miles (21.89 km2), of which 8.21 square miles (21.26 km2) is land and 0.24 square miles (0.62 km2) is water.

Yankton has been assigned the ZIP codes 57078-57079 and the FIPS place code 73060.

Famous Peoples From Yankton South Dakota

Ella Cara Deloria
(January 31, 1889 – February 12, 1971), also called Aŋpétu Wašté Wiŋ (Beautiful Day Woman), was an educator, anthropologist, ethnographer, linguist, and novelist of European American and Native American ancestry. She recorded Native American oral history and legends, and she also contributed to the study of Native American languages. According to Cotera (2008), Deloria was "a pre-eminent expert on D/L/Nakota cultural religious, and linguistic practices." In the 1940s, Deloria wrote a novel titled Waterlily, which was published in 1988, and republished in 2009.

Deloria was born in 1889 in the White Swan district of the Yankton Indian Reservation, South Dakota. Her parents were Mary (or Miriam) (Sully) Bordeaux Deloria and Philip Joseph Deloria, the family having Yankton Dakota, English, French and German roots. (The family surname goes back to a French trapper ancestor named Francois-Xavier Delauriers.) Her father was one of the first Sioux to be ordained as an Episcopal priest. Her mother was the daughter of Alfred Sully, a general in the US Army, and a Métis Yankton Sioux. Ella was the first child to the couple, who each had several daughters by previous marriages. Her full siblings were sister Susan (also known as Mary Sully) and brother Vine Deloria Sr., who became an Episcopal priest like their father. The noted writer Vine Deloria Jr. is her nephew.

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