five men, a floor, and a strong sliver of wood

On this night in 1880, Henry Hinz and four men showed up at the future townsite of De Smet, finding the Boasts and Ingallses cosily living on the shores of Silver Lake. On this night in 1879, Hinz and his friends camped on the floor of the Surveyors' House. Pa was worried that the men would freeze to death if they tried to go farther or sleep outside, so Ma cooked supper for them all, and as soon as they had eaten, Ma sent the girls up to bed, handing Laura a strong sliver of wood to force into the latch so no one could get upstairs. (See Laura Ingalls Wilder's By the Shores of Silver Lake, Chapter 23, "The Spring Rush") Ma was obviously worried about things other than those that worried Pa.

Supposedly Hinz took a look around the townsite the next day, saw the stakes marking the town but not much else, and he decided it would be a grand place to build a saloon, er, store. Except you have to wonder exactly what stakes everyone says he saw and based his decision to move there on? The town of De Smet wasn't platted until over two months later, on March 27. And there was the whole mess about where the actual town was going to be located because of problems with Western Town Lots Company's ownership of various parcels of land.

When young Mr. Hinz returned in February with "the two Mr. Harthorns" (Edelbert Harthorn and his son Frank) in tow, they - and others - simply gave it their best guess as to where to build on the townsite, mainly trying to jump the gun and beat anybody else to the good spots. Hinz wanted the corner lot closest to the future railroad tracks for his building, knowing he would get first shot at the thirsty men arriving on the railroad. He ended up missing it by two lots. That's Hinz's "billiard hall" in the photo above, the little building sandwiched between Royal Wilder's Feed Store location (on the left) and Charles Mead's hotel (on the right; the hotel occupied two lots). At the time this photo was taken, the feed store had been replaced with a different building.

Although Henry Hinz has gone down in history as the man who erected the first building in De Smet, Royal Wilder holds the honor of legally purchasing the first lot sold in the town of De Smet, beating Hinz by two whole weeks. The portion of the after-the-hard-winter site plan at left shows the hotel, saloon, and feed store; you can see how small the feed store was in relation to the other two buildings, and you have to wonder where Royal's barn went. It is said that Hinz's original building was 16x24 feet, but was torn down after a month to make way for a larger one.

Although Henry Hinz officially built a "billiard hall," he went in and out of the liquor business as the town voted the matter of license in and out. Twenty-five years of age when he arrived in De Smet, Henry married in 1889, and he and his wife had eight children. After selling his business, he became a letter carrier and served 25 years of travel by horse and team, then car. He retired only a few years before his death in 1938. Henry Hinz is buried in the De Smet cemetery.
- posted by pioneergirl at 10:49 PM