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A Gazetteer for the United States and Canada
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Our Genealogy Helper

Introduction ...

We have a couple of goals for our Gazetteer:

  • That it be a tool which helps us with planning our trips.
  • We're trying to shape our Gazetteer as a tool to help us understand the community in which our ancestors lived, the community that was part of their daily lives.
  • On our trips, we try to visit those places where our ancestors left their footprints.

By learning about Pukwana (and the surrounding area) during the time that our ancestors lived, we hope to have a better understanding of both their community and its relationship to their lifes. We hope that this tool helps to give us an insight into their world.

As we add data and organize our Gazetteer to help with our family research, we will be adding to this our Genealogical Helper for Pukwana. While we don't have information that is specific to any given person or family, we intend to expand our understanding about where and how people lived.

Neighboring Counties ...

When searching for family records, we have frequently made the mistake of not checking the neighboring counties.

For example, we have great-grandparents who lived in the northwest corner of their home county. During their lives, most hospitals and doctors were in the next county to the west. Almost all of the nearby churches and cemeteries were in the county to the north.

So when searching for records, we had our best success by looking in neighboring counties instead of the county in which they lived:  their home county contained property and probate records; the county to the west contained birth and death records; the county to the north contained their burial records. If we hadn't included the neighboring counties, we would have missed many valuable sources of information.

If you're in a similar situation, we hope that the following information helps.

Pukwana is located in Brule County.

To see how the shape of South Dakota's counties may have changed over time, we recommend the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries.

The following counties adjoin and form the boundaries of Brule County: Aurora, Buffalo, Charles Mix, Gregory, Jerauld & Lyman.

Below are the counties that are near Pukwana. For each of these counties, we show a sample of those communities that are closest to Pukwana:

  • Brule County     (The home county of Pukwana)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Pukwana, with the one closest to Pukwana listed first.
    • Chamberlain
      (7 miles [11.3 km] to the west)
    • Kimball
      (11 miles [17.7 km] to the east)
    • Lyonville
      (12 miles [19.3 km] to the northeast)
      • Lyonville is located in Brule County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Lyonville
      • Estimated population in 2014: 49 people
    • Ola
      (12 miles [19.3 km] to the south)
    • Eagle
      (14 miles [22.5 km] to the south)
      • Eagle is located in Brule County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Eagle
      • Estimated population in 2014: 17 people
    • Bijou Hills
      (18 miles [29 km] to the south)
  • Aurora County
    • White Lake
      (23 miles [37 km] to the east)
  • Buffalo County
  • Charles Mix County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Pukwana, with the one closest to Pukwana listed first.
    • Platte Colony
      (21 miles [33.8 km] to the south)
      • Platte Colony is located in Charles Mix County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Platte Colony
      • Estimated population in 2014: 51 people
    • Academy
      (22 miles [35.4 km] to the south)
  • Gregory County
    • Dixon
      (30 miles [48.3 km] to the southwest)
      • Dixon is located in Gregory County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Dixon
      • Estimated population in 2014: 118 people
  • Jerauld County
  • Lyman County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Pukwana, with the one closest to Pukwana listed first.
    • Oacoma
      (10 miles [16.1 km] to the west)
    • East Lyman
      (19 miles [30.6 km] to the west)
      • East Lyman is located in Lyman County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for East Lyman
      • Estimated population in 2019: 145 people
    • Iona
      (20 miles [32.2 km] to the southwest)
    • Reliance
      (22 miles [35.4 km] to the west)
    • Lower Brule
      (28 miles [45.1 km] to the northwest)
    • Lyman
      (28 miles [45.1 km] to the west)
      • Lyman is located in Lyman County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Lyman
      • Estimated population in 2014: 43 people
  • Tripp County
    • Hamill
      (27 miles [43.5 km] to the southwest)

For an expanded list of the communities that are closest to Pukwana, see our County-by-County Page for Pukwana.

Cemeteries Near Pukwana ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Pukwana.

This is a new section and is likely to have errors. If you find an error, such as a missing cemetery or we have the wrong name, please let us know. If you know of them, we would also appreciate learning about previous or alternate names.

Although we don't have the information ourselves, if you need information about a burial or interment, photos, transcripts, how to contact the cemetery or local authorities, please visit our list of websites on our Genealogy Helper Page for Pukwana - one of the links might be able to help.

If not found below, our Cemetery List for Pukwana covers a larger area, with the cemeteries listed in alphabetical order.

The following cemeteries are listed based on their distance from Pukwana, with the one closest to Pukwana listed first.

Nearby Communities in 1895 ...

We've built the following list with information that came from an Atlas published by Rand McNally in 1895. The Atlas had details such as the population of the community (which appears to have come from the 1890 Census) and whether there was a post office and/or railroad service available. We also indicate if the community no longer exists and is now historic.<4>

The Rand McNally Atlas shows that Pukwana had a population of 336 people in 1895 with a post office and railroad service. In 2020, Pukwana had a population of 303 people.

These communities are listed based on their distance from Pukwana, with the one closest to Pukwana listed first.

We've also created an expanded list of communities that existed in the 1890's and were located in the area around Pukwana. See our List of 1890's Communities around Pukwana.

Newspapers Published in the Vicinity of Pukwana ...

An ongoing effort between the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has resulted in the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP).

To share their results, the partnership has created the Chronicling America website. The goal of this partnership is to assemble a database about the current and historic newspapers of the United States. This includes a growing collection of scanned images from selected papers. All of it available to the public on their website.

Using information that we've taken from the Chronicling America website, we've identified 32 newspapers that have been published in the area around Pukwana.

We have organized these newspapers into two lists:

  • A Local Newspaper List - focusing on the papers published in the immediate area of Pukwana. There are actually two parts to this list - papers printed in the immediate area of Pukwana and those printed in the larger area surrounding Pukwana.
  • An Extended Newspaper List - a longer list, sorted by paper name and containing those papers published within 28 miles [45.1 km]<3> of Pukwana.

Websites to Help With Your Genealogy Research ...

When we do our genealogical research, we like to start with the websites from Cyndi's List, FamilySearch and Genealogy Trails. These websites offer the information directly or else point to where you can find it. Their information is open to everyone.

To help you get started, the following links will take you to the pages that are relevant to Pukwana:

Footnotes ...

<1>While we're fans and frequent users of TripAdvisor, you should know that we're also members of the TripAdvisor affiliate program.
<2>The Find-a-Grave website is an excellent research tool with information about a cemetery's location and interments. They also offer a forum for their members which can provide additional help. More information about Find-a-Grave can be found on their website: findagrave.com.
<3>Our distances are not driving distances, but are calculated as a 'point-to-point' distance. A straight line distance ignores things like rivers, canyons, lakes, et cetera - it's truly a line drawn from Point A (ie- Pukwana) to Point B. In other words: 'As the crow flies'.
<4>We use the term 'Historic' broadly and it generally means that the community no longer exists. However, it can also mean that the community might still exist, but was significantly larger or had a more 'official' existence in the past than it does now. Unfortunately our sources of data have proven to be unreliable. If you can provide us with more specific information about Pukwana, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.