Dewey County opens satellite office on reservation, staving off petition to move county seat

It’s an afternoon off work — an 82-mile round trip — for residents of Eagle Butte to visit the Dewey County Courthouse.

But it’ll now be a matter of minutes for Eagle Butte residents to visit Dewey County’s first ever satellite office opened earlier this month — the third county satellite office in the state. It’ll also serve as an early voting center during elections.

The decision, made by the county commission in February, was in response to a failed effort to move the county seat from Timber Lake (population 579) to Eagle Butte (pop. 3,152). Dewey County is one of a few South Dakota counties that is within a Native American reservation, in this case the Cheyenne River Reservation. The county’s population is 74% Native American, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The South Dakota Legislature and governor passed a bill in February making it more difficult to move county seats, by raising the petition-signature threshold to force an election from 15% of registered voters in the county to 20%. 

Petition organizer Carl Petersen’s drive to move the county seat was mostly focused on historic inequities affecting Native Americans in South Dakota — especially around access to government and voting rights.

“This is the best we can hope for at this point,” said Petersen, a Parade resident, member of the Oohenumpa band of Lakota, and Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe member.

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Petersen said he does not plan to bring another petition forward in the future.

The other county satellite offices in South Dakota, in Faith and Wall, were established to improve accessibility to county services in rural areas, where it would take hours to drive to the courthouse and back.

Sen. Ryan Maher, R-Isabel, who introduced the bill tightening county seat restrictions last session, said it “just makes sense” to open satellite offices in some parts of the state. He added such offices can save taxpayer money — especially compared to moving entire county seats to a new town.

“For rural counties like this, it’s just a good move,” Maher said.

Maher suggested satellite offices could be beneficial for Perkins County, where the county seat of Bison (pop. 384) is 44 miles away from its largest city of Lemmon (pop. 1,252), and Buffalo County, where the county seat of Gann Valley (pop. 12) is 26 miles away from Fort Thompson (pop. 1,266), which is located on the Crow Creek Reservation.

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Oglala Lakota County and Todd County, located on the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Reservations, do not have their own county seats. Instead, the counties’ administrative duties are handled at the Fall River County Courthouse in Hot Springs, which is 64 miles from Pine Ridge, and the Tripp County Courthouse in Winner, which is 55 miles from Rosebud. However, both Pine Ridge and Rosebud have South Dakota vehicle registration kiosks.

Colleen Meier, treasurer for Dewey County and an enrolled member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, first suggested an Eagle Butte satellite office or kiosk to county commissioners nearly two years ago.

Meier grew up north of Timber Lake, just a half mile into Corson County, and her family would drive nearly 120 miles round-trip to McIntosh.

“I understand that we live in a high poverty area and that it’s hard for people to make that long of a trip,” Meier said. “I wanted it to be more convenient and accessible.”

Meier did not know the cost to establish the Eagle Butte satellite office. Maher said the “threat of a multimillion dollar expenditure” to move the county seat is what convinced commissioners to fund it.