Adkins, Mattas, Mize Family History

The Railroad

       Final Chapter

Photo  from the  Milwaukee Archives.

After World War II was over, the railroad no longer needed to provide goods and transportation for soldiers, and started its decline in South Dakota. For a while its vibrancy survived by bringing needed items into the community at a relatively low price and still providing some means of passenger transportation.

"Doc" Stirling. Circa, 1950s

My uncle, “Doc” Stirling relied on it to bring serums and medications for his veterinarian practice, according to his son, Jim Stirling. “Dad would order the stuff, it would arrive, and he paid cash.


He also bought a shotgun. I think he ordered it from Sears and Roebucks, that came on the railroad, too!”

Catalogue from the Adkins Family Archives. Circa, 1955

Like his grandmother, Helen Adkins, Jim also took advantage of the railroad to go to the Corn Palace activities in Mitchell.


In 1944, Parkston High School would allow the seniors to leave the last period of school to attend the festivities. They could buy a passenger ticket for 10 cents, spend time on the midway and be back in time for farm chores. 

Postcard from the Adkins Family Archives.

The 1950s ushered in a new era, a massive effort to build highways. The Parkston area’s dependency on the railroad was declining.


The railroad gave its best shot with promotions in the Parkston Advance, but the burgeoning trucking industry and the availability of automobiles took its toll. 

My father, Pete Adkins and his for-hire truck.  Circa, 1950s

The apartment above the depot was removed. Station agents no longer had to be there 24 hours. 

Depot photo from Parkston Historical Society.

In the 1950s a few passenger trains hung on, but people realized their days were numbered. Families and scout troops took “excursions” to Mitchell via the train. Chuck Kopel, then of Cub Scout Troop No. 5, was one of the groups that were privileged to go.


Susan (Winter) Buxcel remembers riding the train as a Brownie Scout. The passenger cars were not what they were in their heyday. She recalls, “The seats were all cracked and worn, it was a bit dirty in there.”

My family was one of those that took a final excursion. My mother, Margaret Adkins loved trains. When I was very young, she dressed my sisters, Gloria and Diane, and me in our Sunday best and took one of the last passenger trains. We went only as far as Dimock. All the way, my sister Diane remembers that Mom talked about the glory days of the railroad. 

I was too little to listen, so I wandered off and found the bathroom. It was a place of wonder! 

We had no indoor plumbing at the time, this was the best out-house I’d ever seen.


Then passenger sinks and toilets were directly dumped onto the tracks below. When you flushed the toilet, you could hear the movement of the train coming from the tracks. I have no idea how many times I flushed that toilet!


After a while my mother got concerned about my whereabouts, and there she found me. I remember nothing else about the journey but the toilet. 

Photos from the Milwaukee Railroad Archives.

The last hurrah for the passenger trains may have been in 1968. The Republican Party hired a train to cross South Dakota for a “Victory Campaign.” It stopped in Parkston, Dimock, and Ethan on August 20th for a rally. A fourteen-piece brass band made up of teenage republicans performed. All of the candidates for congressional offices and governor rode the train. 

By the end of the 1960s, there were no more passenger trains.

Ben Riefel, photo from the S.D. State University archives. Circa, 1968

However, there was one passenger who never gave up! Acey-Duecy. He may have been the best-known hobo in the town of Parkston. There is no record of when he started riding the rails, but he rode them for a long time. 

My first introduction to Acey Duecy was by my dad, Pete Adkins in the 1950s. My dad was a policeman in Parkston for years. Acey would get off the train and walk to the police station. My dad would bring him home for a meal. He would always sit at the head of the table.


As a young girl, I can remember watching him eat. The fingers on his left hand had been frozen at some time, and they no longer functioned. They would flop as he talked about what I don’t remember. I just remember the fascination of fingers flopping!


In the 1970s, when Ray Doering was station agent, Acey Duecy still road the rails. Ray tells this story:


“One afternoon, I went home for lunch. I got back into the railroad station, opened the door, and there was Acey Duecy, startled the heck out of me, in his big black hat! I didn’t expect anybody to be there!"


Nobody knew his real name or whatever happened to him. He was a legend for a long time in our community. 

For the next several decades what kept the railroad alive was freight; coal being a huge commodity. Lawrence Hauser had a dray service that delivered coal. There were six bins along the railroad track where he would collect the coal and deliver it in town. In the 60's Parkston High School was kept warm by coal, custodian Joe Shelly shoveled it into the furnace, sometimes up to 200 pounds a day!

Joe Shelley, picture from Parkston High School Annual. Circa, 1950s

Ray Doering recalled the railroad hauled mixed freight, grain, farm machinery and even the motor vehicles that challenged its existence.


But all the efforts of the railroad could not save it from the changing times.

Picture from the Milwaukee Railroad Archives.

In 1978, the Public Utilities Commission gave permission to the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul, and Pacific Railway to close its agencies in Parkston and Dimock and to remove the station buildings. In 1984, after nearly 100 years, Parkston station was razed. 

The trains no longer stop in Parkston, Dimock or Ethan. But the memories of the trains' and the railroad's impact still live in memories.

Robert Love, maintenance foreman: “1968 and '69 there was more snow than we knew what to do with. Over and over again, we went out to clear cuts for the railroad. For a whole month that is all we did!” 

Photo from the South Dakota State Historical Archives.

Henry and Christina Mattas. Circa, 194os

LaVae (Rauscher) Marquardt: “ My mother Helen, sister Amy and I rode the train to Ethan to visit my great uncle and aunt, Henry and Christina Mattas in the late 1940s.” Henry was employed by the railroad in his youth and laid ties. The story goes that he could carry two of those heavy wooden ties at a time."

The memory that seems to be shared by so many who lived within walking distance of the railroad was the penny trick. My cousin Steve Mattas said that if you laid a penny on the rail, when the train came it would flatten that penny out to be a paper-thin version of its original self.

 In the 50s, my cousin Lynette (Rauscher) Juntemann lived a short block from the railroad in Parkston. If a train whistle blew and I was visiting her, we would run to the tracks to see the train go by. Our joy was to wave at the person in the caboose. They always waved back. Trains don’t have cabooses anymore, and I don’t know if children put pennies on railroad tracks. 

Photo from Milwaukee Railroad Archives.

But I do know when I hear the sound of a train whistle, I think of my great uncle, John Welch. In 1886, he along with others from Dakota City moved lock, stock, and barrel to meet the railroad. Parkston was born because of it and Dakota City disappeared.


Some of those early believers like my great uncle chose to be buried in the Dakota City cemetery. This memorial day weekend, I visited his grave.  You can hear the train whistle from there.

Special thanks to these resources: The Hutchinson County Register of Deeds, South Dakota State Historical Society, The Center for Western Studies, Augustana University, Mitchell Area Historical Society, archives of the Parkston Advance, Ray Doering, and Terry Grajkowske. 

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