1951 Map of Volunteer

About this map

The Belle Fourche River dominates this early 1950s landscape, winding through a series of dramatic meanders along the Butte Co Meade Co border. This area, mapped as part of the Department of the Interior's Missouri River Basin development program, reveals a rural network of small schools and creek drainages that sustained the local ranching community. Educational hubs like Wetz Sch, Meyer Sch, and Fourmile Sch are spaced across the terrain, serving the scattered farmsteads of the era. The small settlement of Volunteer sits in the southeast corner near Butte Creek, while the presence of a Footbridge over a river bend and several Gravel Pits point to the local infrastructure and land use during this period of mid-century growth in the western Dakotas.