Redfield: Railroad Crossroads and County Seat Prize
South Dakota
Redfield is the county seat of Spink County, but earning that title took six years of political fighting. The first settlers arrived in eighteen seventy-eight, and the post office opened under the name Stennett Junction. In eighteen eighty-one the name changed to Redfield, honoring J.
B. Redfield, a Chicago and North Western Railway official. The town boomed as the crossing point of two competing railroads, the Chicago and North Western and the Milwaukee Road, making it a genuine junction of freight and commerce.
After a long contest among rival towns, Redfield was declared county seat in eighteen eighty-six. Today it remains the trade center of an agricultural county on the Dakota prairie, about twenty-two hundred people holding a place that was once considered the busiest rail stop on the James River plain.
