SCOUTING REPORT | Making early South Dakota tractors, SDSU’s AgDay, data centers cometh

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When you think of hot spots for early 20^th century factories and assembly lines, South Dakota doesn’t top the list. Most people think of Henry Ford and Michigan.

But South Dakota had its own flirtation with manufacturing. Nothing like Ford’s Model Ts, but with farm tractors.

Veteran newspaperman Chuck Cecil has written a new book on two inventors who brought tractor production to South Dakota. Geroge Washington Elliott, a minister who led a church in Brookings, also converted his barn in De Smet to a manufacturing plant, inventing the Dakota Tractor.

Around the same time, William Mielke set out to invent a gas-powered tractor, setting up shop in Hartford. Mielke created the Farm Horse Tractor, according to Cecil.