Wood and water were essential to pioneer road builders and in 1857, when the Fort Ridgely & South Pass Wagon Road was built by Col. W.H. Nobles, the springs at Wessington Hills was a natural on the Reconnaissance to the Missouri River. On the return, when mounds were erected every ¼ mile, Samuel A. Medary, the Engineer, said: 'A favorable ascent of the coteaus on a narrow divide between two ravines...forming an easy grade to the highlands.' That grade is directly east ½ mile. First known to white men when LaFramboise, enroute by cart, to Ft. Pierre in 1817 passed; it had been known to Indians for centuries as their artifacts, of tribes other than the Sioux, marked this as a rendezvous. It was on a second official thoroughfare when the Minnesota & Powder River Wagon Road of 1865, located by George N. Propper as Engineer for W.W. Brookings, Superintendent, made this a point enroute up this same easy grade. Tradition has a trapper named Wessington killed near the Springs in 1862. The first settler, Levi Haines, who built a cabin at the foot of the hill, was here in 1876 and in 1878 Wessington P.O. Peter R. Barrett, P.M., was established, renamed Elmer in 1882 and finally Wessington Springs in 1884.
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