There are quite a few such books of this area, and I think we have all of them. Your comments make me want to dig that one out and read it again while I'm still wearing a cast and not able to have much active fun at the present.
The Pioneer Club still struggles along. It has combined with other such groups in the area. Originally, several counties were all together as Stanley county and the people in the west end of that which ended up as Haakon, Jackson, Jones, and the current smaller Stanley Counties started the pioneer club, if I remember correctly. There was considerable pride over being descended from the earliest settlers, as opposed to being homesteaders who came in 1905 or so, which made it difficult to combine the various 'early citizens clubs' into an organization with enough people to keep it going. Our annual meeting is coming up the last Sunday of Oct. and we have gotten some new, younger members on our museum board who have been doing lots of work refurbishing it this summer and fall. They were also able to recruit a couple of people willing to open it when someone wants to look around the buildings. We have nearly a full block on mainstreet with the old rail road depot as the centerpiece and several other buildings. We were not able to save the original old rock bank building, and it fell over a couple of years ago, but have quite a little memorabilia from it. It is surprising that quite a few people passing through the area, with no connection, find it interesting. And some intentionally come to look up where their ancestors homesteaded, etc.
Both Shorty and I had pioneering grandparents who were here early. My grandpa Calhoon came with his parents from Marysville, KS when his dad decided there wasn't enough room there for his family of about a dozen, mostly sons, so they trekked to Blunt, SD and farmed till wanderlust and time took their toll, and only about four of them remained scattered across SD. Shorty's grandpa Berry also came from NE (have you seen the Berry Bridge east of Valentine, on the Niobrara, I believe?) I think that was the area his parents lived. His grandpa Jones id the opposite of many in those times, moving from west to east. Lewiston/Clarkson area was his home, and he trailed horses from there selling to anyone wanting horses, including at Ft. Robinson, and east to Ft. St. Paul before 1890, staying here in 1892 when the horse market plummeted for a while. He was searching for a place that looked good fro raising cattle all the while, and liked this best of the areas he saw. Probably the fact that land was available here was a good drawing card, but so was the water situation, with the creeks having good 'water holes' through the winter, and even in the dry summers. The quality was pretty dismal, but humans and cattle learned to adapt when they didn't have rain water available. I don't know how early it began, but they deep holes in the ground, usually about four to five feet across, and plastered the bottom and sides, to catch rain water off the roofs. We have one here which is still functional, although we haven't used it in several years. I suspect vines have breached the plaster and that it leaks badly. I hope to replace it with a 'plastic' one of these days. I do like the rain water, and think it prudent to have an alternate to the rural water system.
mrj
