Aberdeen: Where Baum Dreamed Up Oz
Near Aberdeen, South Dakota
Aberdeen, South Dakota was named for Aberdeen, Scotland, hometown of the Milwaukee Railroad president who platted the city in eighteen eighty-one. By the late eighteen eighties, several rail lines converged on Aberdeen from every direction, earning it the nickname Hub City of the Dakotas. One newcomer who arrived in eighteen eighty-eight was L.
Frank Baum, who ran a variety store called Baum's Bazaar and later published a local newspaper, the Saturday Pioneer. Drought ravaged the Dakota plains during his years here, and when the store failed and the paper folded, Baum moved his family to Chicago. He brought with him a memory of flat, wind-scoured, gray prairie that became the Kansas of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, published in nineteen hundred.
Scholars believe the drought-beaten landscape around Aberdeen gave Dorothy her longing for somewhere better.
