Faulkton: The County Seat That Outlasted Its Rival

Faulkton was established in the eighteen eighties and named for Territorial Governor Andrew Faulk. For its first few years the town had a rival: LaFoon had been an earlier rival for the county seat. When the railroad tracks were finally laid through the region in the middle eighteen eighties, they bypassed LaFoon entirely.

Faulkton, sitting on the rail line, won the county seat, and LaFoon faded quickly from the map. It is a story repeated across Dakota Territory with minor variations: the town on the tracks survived; the town beside the tracks did not. Faulkton has served as the county seat ever since, a compact grid of prairie streets that has outlasted the boom-and-bust cycles of Dakota homesteading by staying small, staying on the railroad, and staying useful to the surrounding grain and cattle country.