1197 - Elk/Pleasant Cemetery/Medicine Creek
This black-and-white photo shows a headstone marking Pleasant Cemetery, established in 1886, with the inscription “It Is Well With My Soul,” standing in a fenced prairie field in Sully County, South Dakota.
Situated on the trail from Fort Pierre to Minnesota, many early expeditions passed through eastern Sully County. The prominent Medicine Knoll west of Blunt served as a landmark to guide early travelers, including John C. Fremont and Joseph Nicollet as they conducted their mapping expedition in 1839. In 1856, Captain Alfred Sully, Sully County’s namesake, came to the area for the first time as the topographer accompanying Major Abercrombie from Fort Ridgely to Fort Pierre. Sully and Abercrombie traveled along the south side of the north branch of Medicine Creek, crossing through what are now Pleasant, Elk, and Lake Townships.
Elk Township, conveniently located north of the town of Blunt and the railroad station, opened for settlement in the early spring of 1883. Homesteaders quickly staked their claims, dreaming of the fortune to be gained by owning your own land. These settlers quickly learned that fortunes don’t come easily: pioneer life was hard, plagued by blizzards, fires, droughts, and the privations of solitary life far from medical care or conveniences such as running water or trees for wood to build houses or warm a home.
Howard Holton, a bachelor who lived on a homestead in the southern part of Elk Township, had a team of oxen he used to break the sod on his claim. He would rise early and bake his pancakes for breakfast and be out walking behind his oxen by sunup. When the noon hour came, he prepared his dinner while the oxen dined on prairie grass. He eventually tired of the pioneer bachelor life and returned east.
It is telling that Elk Township was organized as a civil township for the purpose of making fire guards to protect the settlers from fires. Fireguards were made all around the township and through the center each way. These were plowed every year and burned in between each fall when the grass became dry.
A pioneer cemetery located in Pleasant Township, just north of Elk, bears testimony to the heartbreaking reality of trying to raise a family on the Dakota prairie. Of the 22 graves marked in the cemetery, 11 are for children under the age of 4. Ole T. Strand, his wife Anna, and their 4 little boys-Carl, Edward, Jacob, and John--lie together for eternity in this little plot on the top of a knoll overlooking pasture and fields that stretch on forever beneath the blue sky.