Pioneering in Dakota

Prairie Fires Pioneering was never easy. In Dakota, drought, and grasshoppers, blizzard, and prairie fires were all occupational hazards. In sparse timbered areas, the settlers lived in dugouts and sod houses, enduring the hardships common to all frontiersmen. Betsy Dalager, a widow with five children, accompanied by her mother, Guri, (Mrs. Peder Anderson Schobakken) migrated from Glenwood, Minnesota to Raritan township, Day County in May, 1884, by oxdrawn wagon.

By 1886, they had a house, a barn, a well, several cows, and the vitally necessary plowed fireguards. On April 17, John Dodd, living three miles to the south, set a fire to burn out his slough. A strong window took his fire beyond his control. It fired the haystacks near the barn. Betsty and Guri, in seeking to save the livestock, were trapped by the fire in the burning barn.

Betsy ran out, her clothes aflame and jumped into the well. The barn became Guri’s funeral pyre. The children had sought safety in the plowed firebreak and after the hot earth had cooled, helped their mother out of the well. Betsy lived through a long battle with burns, but rheumatism left her a cripple.

For 36 years this slight figure in a wheel chair was the symbol of the indomitable spirit which had brought her to Day County. This episode happened four and one quarter miles west from this marker. This marker is designed as a tribute to the courage of those who suffered tribulation and deprivation in the settlement of Day County.

It is believed by kinsman to be the first recorded death by a prairie fire in what is now South Dakota.