Ghost Town of Argonne

In 1886, the town of St. Marys was platted by Dr. Louis Gotthelf and named for his daughter Mary. According to a notice of his death in 1905, Dr. Gotthelf was born in Berlin, Prussia, in 1821, graduated from medical college in 1843, and was brevetted by King Wilhelm IV for outstanding military service during the revolutions of 1848.

Gotthelf immigrated to the United States in the early 1850s and practiced medicine in Missouri and then Minnesota. In 1881, he and his family came to Miner County and patented land claims in Sections 14 and 15 of Green Valley Township. Gotthelf eventually became disenchanted with the lack of progress in St. Marys and moved to Parker, S.D. in 1889.

In 1919, a post-WWI land boom spurred the establishment of new businesses, and St. Marys began to see significant growth as a trade center on a Chicago and North Western Railroad branch line. In 1920, because a St. Marys post office already existed, the town's name was changed to Argonne to honor the American soldiers who died in the World War I battle of Meuse-Argonne.

Lewis H. Canfield, formerly the postmaster of Canova, S.D., became Argonne’s first postmaster. In February 1920, the town dedicated a new $100,000 consolidated school. On January 17, 1933, the Argonne Consolidated School was destroyed in a fire that displaced 116 students and their six teachers. The town remodeled the Argonne Farmer’s Cooperative and a former pool hall building to serve as makeshift classrooms until they finished rebuilding the school later that year.

Twenty years later in 1953, the Argonne Arrows high school basketball team made history when they played the Canova Eagles. Delbert Gillam, the “Argonne Ace,” scored 72 points against Canova and shattered the state record for the most points scored by a player in a single game. Gillam made thirty-one field goals and ten free throws, which helped the Arrows defeat the Eagles 126-81.

At the time, that game was also the highest scoring game in state history. Although other high-score games have now replaced that, Delbert Gillam’s 72-point record still stands in 2023. Unfortunately, in the 1970s, the school closed, the railroad ceased service, and the last resident moved out of Argonne—leaving it a ghost town.

No buildings remain standing. The Argonne town site is located 4.3 miles west and 0.4 miles north of the intersection of 229th Street and 433rd Avenue (S.D. Highway 25). Erected by the Miner County Historical Society.