BROOKINGS COUNTY Of the dozen or more Brookings County hotels that existed or were to be built after the railroad chugged its noisy way west across Brookings County in 1879, only one is still standing.
The three-story Sawnee Hotel in Brookings ceased being a hotel in 1972, but its still at the intersection of Third Avenue and Fourth Street, where it was a hotel under several different names in its early days.
The arrival of the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad in Brookings County three years after the Battle of the Little Big Horn was a game changer for everyone. It brought with it much-needed lumber, national newspapers, magazines and books, tablecloths, shoes, kerosene lamps, buttons, bows, buckets, wallpaper, pianos, phonographs, stoves and thousands of other items common in civilized life.
The railroad also brought people in need of temporary shelter. Hotels near railroad depots were just the ticket.
Traveling salesmen swarmed into the area which was filled with new customers. Often, if their product was too fragile or cumbersome to carry in a suitcase or fit on a buggy, Edison phonographs or heavy stoves, hotels set aside what were called drummers rooms where those products were displayed to help drum up business.
Hotels were important enterprises in every county town, large or small. Often, what was referred to as a hotel was nothing more than a large house with a few spare rooms to rent.
Volga
As hotels were being added to the Brookings County landscape, Volga was already basking in hotel heaven.
A larger community than Brookings at the time, Volga had five hotels filled and prospering by the winter of 1879- 80. Credit some of that hotel abundance to the Chicago Northwestern Railroads decision to halt track laying in Volga to wait out the winter. Many railroad laborers with no permanent homes, spent the winter months in Volga.
The first two of Volgas five hotels were hastily hammered together in late 1879 to meet the anticipated needs. The Pioneer, Volgas first hotel, rather than regular walls, had Civil War army surplus blankets hanging from the rafters to designate individual rooms.
Eventually Volga was home to the Farrington, the Pioneer, the Rich, the Willson and the Stan hotels. A rooming house known as the Skandinvisk welcomed Norwegians intending to homestead in the Volga area.
Volga was a vibrant place, and the hotels there were particularly busy.
The 1880 census indicates the Farrington Hotel, holder of Brookings Countys first-ever annual $400 liquor license, had 48 occupants. The nearby Willson Hotel had 23 guests, the Rich Hotel had 50, the Stan Hotel had 9 and the Pioneer had 50 guests.
Of the first five hotels, Volgas Farrington Hotel was still in business in 1929.
Oakwood
Brookings and Volga werent the only county towns with at least one hotel.
Even before the railroad arrived in the county, a hotel was operating at the soon-to-disappear town of Oakwood on the shores of Lake Tetonkaha north of Volga. The three-story Oakwood Hotel was built in 1878.
The Oakwood area before railroads was the center of a large trade area in the countys northwest quadrant. The town was expected to grow, so a hotel there made sense.
It served the needs of area teachers, lawyers, mail carriers, land seekers, drummers and visitors. At one time, the Oakwood stage line headquartered there and provided that areas transportation needs.
The Oakwood Hotel had six nice rooms on the second floor and a large dining room on the first floor. Bunkbeds lined its attic with each bed rentable for 50 cents a night.
Lumber to build the sturdy Oakwood, which was dismantled in 1969, was hauled by ox teams from the railhead at Canby, Minn. Canby was a long, hard pull of four days away. At small rivers and streams, the wagons carrying the lumber were unloaded and the lumber carried across the muddy waterway by hand to be reloaded on the wagons.
At that time, nearby Bruce didnt exist. It was created when the Chicago Northwestern laid a track north off its main line in 1883, branching off at the Sioux Valley Junction midway between Brookings and Volga. A part of that rail line still exists. It crosses Highway 14 and continues for more than a mile north to a cement storage facility.
Bruce
Bruce had a hotel by the 1890s. In the June 9, 1899, issue of the Volga Tribune, it was briefly mentioned: Hotel business at Bruce is working at full capacity now. That hotel was located across the street from todays remaining lone elevator in Bruce, but its name has been lost in history.
A second Bruce hotel, the two-story Commercial, was operating in the 1920s and 1930s. It was built by Frank Ribstein, who also operated the towns hardware store.
The Main Street site of the Commercial is now the location of the Bruce museum that today displays the hotels stairway newell post.
Bruce was also home to the famous W. F. Durland Rooming and Boarding House, which operated from the early 1900s into the 1940s and 1950s.
Fountain, northeast of Brookings, was home of the Watkins Hotel, but the future of both the Oakwood and Fountains hotel, and the villages themselves, were brief.
White and Bushnell
White and Bushnell were without train service until 1884 when the north-south Burlington, Cedar Rapids and Northwestern Railroad arrived. By then, Bushnell already had a hotel, but White had only a boarding house, the Palmer House.
A local businessman built White an opera house in 1893 and in 1900 converted it to become the Palace Hotel. It remained so on and off for nearly a century, but eventually well into the 2000s, it became just the Palace Caf, although its rooms were still available for rent if need be. A few years ago, that former Palace Hotel turned Palace Caf was razed.
Ahnberg and Sinai
In the southwestern area of the county, the towns of Ahnberg and Sinai waited until a north-south railroad, the Dakota Central, arrived in 1907. A year later, a hotel, its name unknown today, was established in Sinai on the south side of Main Street next to the Mercantile Store. The two-story hotel was managed by Harriet Richardson, but it didnt last long and over the years was home to many businesses, the last being the Farmers Mutual Telephone Company.
Meanwhile, across the approximate center of Brookings County, the Chicago Northwestern Railroad was creating the need for hotels in its four depot communities of Elkton, Aurora, Brookings and Volga.
Elkton and Aurora
Elkton, originally called Ivanhoe in far eastern Brookings County, happily welcomed the Chicago Northwestern track layers in early 1879 as the men and the work train labored on to the Coteau de Prairie through what became known as the Hole in the Mountain west of Lake Benton, Minn.
During Elktons heyday, it was home to the Metropolitan Hotel, the Elkton House and the Dakota House.
Aurora, east of Brookings. was the next stop westward for the Chicago Northwestern, and the Aurora House there became the popular town layover.
Brookings
The rail tracks, resting on about 3,000 rail ties a mile, and the work train of supplies and bunks for work crews, arrived in Brookings at 6 p.m. on October 18, 1879. As tons of measured lumber began to arrive daily aboard railroad flatbed cars on the newly laid rails, more hotels were rising up, like the Brookings House Hotel at 220 Main Avenue that enjoyed an ideal location just across the street from the depot.
In June of 1881, the Brookings House registered 240 guests.
A year later it announced it would have an Edison phonograph on display in its drummer room. In October of 1886, 27 drummers were counted dining in the Brookings House. In 1898, the local Brookings newspaper advertised the hotels need for a laundry girl. Pay would be $3 a week.
The expected long and prosperous future for the Brookings House was doused in March of 1910 when fire damaged the popular spot beyond repair. The best location for hotels in Brookings after the Brookings House fire was the 300 block of Third Avenue a block west of Main Street.
Other hotels in Brookings popped up during the last several years of the 1880s and 1890s, including Brookings hotels like the Central House, the Commercial, built in 1880 at 301 3rd Street, the Christiana at 408 Main Street, the Cottage House, the Northwestern and one or two others.
What is now the Sawnee on the corner of 3rd Avenue and 4th Street was the Jordan House Hotel, one of four operating in Brookings in 1890, according to records in the Brookings County Museum in Volga.
Hotel rates then were from $l to $2 a day.
The Jordan was sold in 1896 and renamed the Leon Hotel. During 1901, the Leon registered 749 guests and advertised that it had both hot and cold running water. In 1922, the Leon was sold and became the Dudley. The new owners remodeled the building in 1923 and again in 1926, adding 20 rooms.
That year, the Blue Goose Bus Line designated the Dudley as its Brookings stop. In 1928, the short-lived Brookings radio station KGCR broadcast from the hotel.
By the 1930s, the Dudley Hotel at 321 Third Avenue and the Metropole Hotel at 303 Third Avenue were the only two remaining major lodging houses in town.
The Metropole was sold in 1930 and became the Bates Hotel. Eventually, use of the Bates Hotel dwindled and the building stood empty for several years before it was sold to the city for $85,000. It was demolished in 1963, and a new City Hall and the present fire and police building were constructed on the site.
In 1940, another new hotel in Brookings started up on the second floor of what was then the Watson Clinic, located in the building still immediately north of the Post Office. It was called the Sheldon Hotel.
When the Dudley was sold in 1946 to become the Sawnee, apparently named after a Georgia mountain, it had about 60 rooms. The Sawnee flourished and its dining area for a time was the largest in Brookings, becoming the weekly meeting site for several service clubs and for other public dining events.
In 1955, by a slim count of 1,459 to 1,448, voters approved a municipal liquor store. The city rented a small portion of the Sawnee Hotel as the citys first liquor store, which had sales of $14,210 in its first month of operation.
In 1972, Brookings built a new liquor store at 302 6th St. on the site of an old Brookings soda pop factory.
Throughout the era of hotels in Brookings County, the days of railroad passengers slowly dwindled, and a new mode of transportation, the internal combustion machine, was gaining favor. Soon, motels, not hotels, became popular.
The last Chicago and Northwestern passenger train passed through Brookings in 1960, ending eighty years of service in Brookings County.
By 1967, the Sawnee was the only hotel in Brookings County still holding on, but barely. It would continue to be a hotel until 1972 before becoming home to other businesses.
In todays computer world, hotels and motels no longer have drummers rooms. They offer wi-fi networks.
Chuck Cecil is an author, former Brookings Register columnist and a member of the Brookings County Museum board of directors.
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