The Divorce Colony

In the eighteen eighties and eighteen nineties, American divorce law was mostly punitive. New York required proof of adultery, the only recognized ground, and even then the courts were reluctant. Many states were similar. A marriage, once made, was for life unless you could demonstrate betrayal in a courtroom and withstand the newspapers printing your name in connection with it.

South Dakota saw an opportunity. The territorial and then state legislature had established one of the most permissive divorce frameworks in the country: numerous legal grounds, and a residency requirement of only ninety days. Ninety days in South Dakota, and the courts would consider you a resident with standing to petition for divorce. When five railroad lines ran through Sioux Falls, and when the Cataract Hotel offered comfortable accommodations for months-long stays, the arithmetic was obvious.

Unhappy spouses began arriving by train from New York, Boston, and Chicago in the late eighteen eighties. They took rooms in hotels and boarding houses, established nominal residency, attended enough social events to avoid obvious transience, and waited out their ninety days. The lawyers of Sioux Falls did very well. So did the hotels, the shops, and the restaurants.

Reporters from the eastern papers also came, and they were not sympathetic. They called Sioux Falls the divorce mill, the divorce capital, the scandal of the nation. The residents of the city were divided: some welcomed the business and the interesting class of visitors it brought; others, particularly those aligned with the bishop of the local Catholic diocese, found the whole arrangement an offense against the institution of marriage.

A special census report later found that between eighteen eighty-seven and nineteen oh six, only thirty-five point six percent of the divorces granted in South Dakota went to permanent state residents. The rest, nearly two-thirds, went to people who had come precisely because the door was open.

South Dakota eventually tightened the residency requirement. Nevada, with an even shorter term and better desert scenery, absorbed most of the traffic after that.