Skeletons of the Prairie: Abandoned Rural Codington County, South Dakota

Long before the first homesteader settled in South Dakota the Lakota Native Americans who lived here followed a tradition of placing their dead on scaffolds erected on the open prairie. Left tot the elements, the body returned to the earth. To some extent, white pioneers followed this tradition. The buildings they lived in, worked in, played in, and sometimes died in, are now abandoned. These scaffolds were left standing long after the people they held passed on. They are silent reminders to a way of life now gone—unmarked gravestones in a forgotten cemetery.