South Dakota South Dakota South Dakota () is a U.S. state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It is named after the Lakota and Dakota Sioux Native American tribes, who compose a large portion of the population and historically dominated the territory. South Dakota is the seventeenth largest by area, but the fifth smallest by population and the 5th least densely populated of the 50 United States. As the southern part of the former Dakota Territory, South Dakota became a state on November 2, 1889, simultaneously with North Dakota. Pierre is the state capital and Sioux Falls, with a population
Merritt, South Dakota Merritt, South Dakota Merritt is a ghost town in Lawrence County and Pennington County, South Dakota, United States of America. Merritt was a small logging community that once included a school, post office, and a ranger station. It provided fuel and wood for the mines near Lead and Deadwood. It has since been abandoned. In the 1970s, all that remained of the town was a trout ranch. The old site is located on the county line between Pennington and Lawrence Counties in the US state of South Dakota, on the west side of US 385. Merritt is inside of the