LA GRACE, S.D. — Charles Abbott Wilkins came to Dakota Territory in 1883 to seek a better future on the prairie, then opening to settlers during the bustling Great Dakota Boom.

The 21-year-old native of Henniker, New Hampshire, traveled by steamboat to a stop on the Missouri River and settled in present-day Campbell County, South Dakota, where he bought land to grow wheat and oats and raise horses.

Wilkins earned extra income as a justice of the peace. Besides keeping order in the farming communities in the county, he was in charge of small jails in Mound City and La Grace, a small trading post across the Missouri River from the Standing Rock Indian Reservation.

Mound City, with a population of 66, survives as the seat of Campbell County. La Grace, now a ghost town, back in the 1880s bo

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