Chuck Cecil is a former Brookings Register columnist and a current member of the Brookings County Historical Society.

BROOKINGS — All that remains of an early 1900s plan for a railway from Brookings to Sioux Falls is a pleasant half-mile Brookings walkway bordering Medary Avenue South. 

It extends from 14th Street south to 20th Street.    

As it turned out, the Brookings to Sioux Falls Electric Railroad was something of a scam. Lawsuits prevailed into the 1920s, leaving many Brookings investors with worthless shares.

If that proposed railroad had materialized, it might have been good for Brookings for a time, but it would have left a huge, ugly scar through town, greatly diminishing Brookings’ present and comfortable footprint.

The idea first emerged in June 1907. A Sioux Falls group representing the Brookings and Sioux Falls Electric Railway Co. met with interested Brookings residents at the Opera House. The meeting may have taken place because two years earlier, as Brookings Commercial Club members were visiting with counterparts in Madison about a short-line railroad between those two communities. 

The Sioux Falls group probably concluded that they needed to get their plan up and running to end the Brookings-Madison discussions. 

James Wallace of Sioux Falls conducted the 1907 Brookings-Sioux Falls meeting here. He said he was representing an eastern company that would finance the road. Plans were to build it in two phases, with the first phase running south from Brookings and north from Egan. The railroad would have poles along the route supporting overhead electric lines for the trolley-style electric train.  

But this came with a kicker. 

To attract eastern financial backing, Brookings and others along the route would have to show “faith in the enterprise.” That “faith” would be shown by buying $50,000 worth of seven percent preferred stock in the venture. In 1907, $50,000 was equivalent to about $1.6 million today.

Within two months, Brookings investors with faith owned $50,000 in shares. The Sioux Falls railroad contingent joyfully announced that “dirt will be flying by the middle of September.” 

It was, sort of. The Brookings Register reported “the big grader was working about two miles south of Lundens [a land owner] making the first grade runs while crews of men with teams and scrapers were following them up.” That was part of what is today’s walkway on Medary.   

During the wet spring of 1908, Brookings stockholders were delighted to read that steel rails would be laid once the rains ended, and that a station location and siding had been staked out on the Lundens’ place for the depot to be called “Lunden.”

Sioux Falls backers told the Register the railroad would be operating between Sioux Falls and Brookings “within a year.” That same year, 1908, the Brookings City Council granted the rail line a 20-year franchise right of way in Brookings. 

The rail line and power poles would continue north on Medary Avenue into town, curving off Medary to the northwest so the track could cross the Chicago and Northwestern track at about Seventh Avenue. The train would then parallel the C&NW track, cross Main Street and curve onto First Avenue, exiting the city near today’s Pioneer Park. It was not explained how the company would purchase all that valuable residential and business property. And would another viaduct be needed? If it was a Brookings to Sioux Falls line, with its depot at Lunden south of town, why would the rail line even need to enter Brookings? 

On June 2, 1910, local shareholders learned the Brookings to Sioux Falls Electric Railroad had been sold to a firm planning a rail line between Winnipeg and Kansas City, passing through Webster, Watertown, Brookings, Egan and Sioux Falls. Nothing came of that.  

In 1927, a new plan was announced for railroads and Brookings. This one would build a line from near Minneapolis to Montevideo and on to Brookings and Madison.

The new company was said to be “in splendid condition financially.” Brookings investors had heard that old line before.