Let's Talk About Red Creek

Not the cute little version that they put in the tourist brochures (like we even get any tourists around here) that outlines the annual Harvest Festival and the small town spirit. I mean the real actual history. The weird, mostly forgotten one that nobody wants to talk about.

Founded:1862

Red Creek was officially founded in the fall of 1862, smack dab in the middle of what is now Spink County, South Dakota. It was mostly a few settler families from what I can tell. In the years following the founding, they had a post office, a general store, and that was about it.

The first church was built in 1864, and the first thing that I can find of missing people was in 1865, which is handwritten in a church roster. By some of the names of the citizens in the town, it's written "Departed." More on that in another post.

In the town's first decade alone, at least a dozen settlers disappeared. I guess things were less concerning back then. You just assumed that someone was eaten by a bear and then moved on. I don't know.

Instead of panicking though, the town just adapted. People vanished, and then life moved on. The town's early newspaper had a section next to the obituaries titled Departures. It ran until, from what I can tell, the 1890s, and then it was discontinued.

1901: The Earthquake

On March 9th in 1901, Red Creek was hit by a magnitude 5.8 earthquake. Most of the town was leveled. There were few reported deaths, but nothing significant. A 5.8 is basically unheard of in South Dakota, so the fact that not only it happened but also leveled the town is impressive.

Instead of abandoning the land and rebuilding somewhere else, they built the town exactly right on top of the old one, not even properly bothering to clean up the mess from before. From what I can tell, the ruins of the old Red Creek still lie under us.

1906-1929: The "Lost" Years

From 1906 to 1929, the town records were really spotty. If i had to guess, I'd say there was a fire sometime in the late '20s that must have damaged their town records. Or maybe they were just bad at keeping records. I don't know. Town meeting logs are missing. Birth and death records are incomplete, which makes things a bit difficult to track missing people. But in those years, there's a couple different oddities:

The entire McClellan family vanished overnight, six people including a baby. Their house was left fully intact: meals half-eaten and lights still burning.

A train scheduled to stop at Red Creek never arrived. It passed the previous station and then vanished between stops. Only a wheel ended up being found in the woods 20 years later.

A "flu outbreak" killed 9 people in two weeks, but the town doctor at the time wrote in his journal (yes, I found it):

Gross. Next.

1937-1956: The Days of "Progress" and Hollow Street

In the late '30s, Red Creek received sudden funding from an unnamed federal development grant. No paperwork and no oversight from what I can see. That's when the Falls Lab began being built, even though construction didn't even finish until the '60s.

One of the head honchos of the project was some guy named James Hollow. He stayed for a week to oversee construction in 1956, mostly asking questions about the land beneath Red Creek. On the day he was supposed to leave, they found his car parked in front of the diner, keys still in the ignition.

From what I can tell, nobody ever saw him again. They ended up naming a street after him like it's some kind of tribute.

1960s-2000: People Just Stop Asking Questions

This is when things start to feel orchestrated and weird. It's a long stretch, nearly four decades, where minimal missing persons reports are filed. But according to school rosters, yearbooks, local gossip (literally anything and anywhere you look,) people are still going missing. Names just vanish from records. Kids leave mid-year and no one remembers them.

And through it all, that lab out on the east side of town? It's growing. First it was just some concrete box built in the '50s. Then it gets an underground wing (don't ask me how I know). Then they put up a tower.

You never see the employees. They built a housing neighborhood for them out over by Possum Ridge Road. They'll never talk to you. And nobody talks about them. It just exists.

2001: The Bus

Seventeen kids and one driver disappeared on September 20th, 2001. They were on their way to school just like any other day. It was a short route and clear weather.

They left at 8:14 a.m., scheduled to arrive at school by 8:56. They never made it. Police searched every road, every river, every inch of the route. There was no wreckage. No debris. Not even a skid mark.

I was 13. I played hooky that day because we had a test that I didn't want to take. Maybe that's why I'm so fascinated by all of this, knowing that if I had been on that bus, maybe I'd have the answers to everything I've asked.

But I wasn't.

The official story is that the driver went rogue. Maybe he disappeared with all the kids. Maybe he drove into the quarry. People make up what they want to hear.

I know that's not what happened. The bus drove somewhere. And nobody wants to ask where.

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So. That's Red Creek. Not the version you'll hear at the Town Museum or on the 4th grade field trip. The real version. The one that's buried under dirt, and time, and silence.

If you want to believe this town is normal and quiet? Fine. You won't see the cracks. Nobody ever does. But I think something is still down there, buried with that old town of ours. Something that we've built over and forgot.

It's not gone, though. Things like that never just disappear.