G.E. Lemmon
George Edward Lemmon (born 1857 - died 1945) was among the elite cattlemen at the turn of the 20th century. Lemmon is credited with starting the Western South Dakota Stockgrowers Association, helping the Chicago Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad through South Dakota, and founding a town along that railroad named Lemmon, South Dakota. He was also a prolific writer that preserved a firsthand account of the history of the West.
Early years
Lemmon was born at Bountiful, Utah. He began his days of working as a cowhand when he was twelve or thirteen years old. He worked as a cowhand and foreman for many different ranches in the Great Plains area.
Lemmon began managing the Sheidley Cattle Company in 1891 and in 1893 sold his shares of the company and went into business with Richard Lake and Thomas Tomb.
Later years
While selling cattle in Chicago every year, Ed Lemmon got to know many important members of the city including the director of CM&SP Railroad, R.M. Calkins. Calkins then asked Lemmon to help with a route for the railroad coming through South Dakota. Ed then picked a route from Mobridge, South Dakota through the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. He founded a town on the west side of the reservation. In honor of Ed, Mr. Calkins named the railroad town Lemmon. The original site that Ed Lemmon chose for the town was actually four miles east of its present location and into North Dakota. North Dakota having prohibition laws against saloons, Ed chose to locate the town just on the South Dakota-North Dakota border, thinking that this would help it in becoming a boom town. Also being on the border, Lemmon hoped to hold a dual county seat in Perkins County, South Dakota and Adams County, North Dakota, but neither of those hopes came true.
In the later years, Ed Lemmon spent much of his time recording his life’s tales by publishing story articles in the Belle Fourche Bee, in Belle Fourche, SD, every week. He started writing the stories in 1932 and kept writing until the 1940s. These weekly stories were compiled into a book, by Phyllis Schmidt, called The West As I Lived It.
G.E. “Dad” Lemmon died on a Saturday, August 25, 1945, in the town he founded.
Bibliography
- Schmidt, Phyllis, The South As I Lived It. Published by State Publishing Co. 2007 by Phyllis Schmidt
- Yost, Nellie Snyder, Boss Cowman: The Recollections of Ed Lemmon, (1857–1946). Copyright 1969 by the University of Nebraska Press. Edited by Nellie Snyder Yost
- Holtzmann, Roger, “Boss Cowman’s Own Words”, South Dakota Magazine, vol. 23, no. 6 March/April 2008, pgs 51-56.