Newell: Water and the Opening of the Butte County Plains

Newell exists because someone figured out how to get water to the high plains of western South Dakota. The town grew up around the Belle Fourche Irrigation Project, one of the early reclamation efforts authorized under the Reclamation Act of nineteen oh two. Construction ran through the first decade of the century, and by nineteen eleven the project was delivering water to what had been dry rangeland, bringing tens of thousands of acres into irrigation along the Belle Fourche River.

Where ranchers had grazed cattle on leased range, homesteaders planted alfalfa and corn. The Orman Dam held the reservoir that made it possible. Newell became the agricultural service town for the project, and the Belle Fourche Valley Railway connected it to the main line at Belle Fourche to the east.