Earlier this year I got to give a talk on Seney Island at a fundraiser for Friends of the Big Sioux River, and I have to tell you not a lot of people have heard about Seney Island because, spoiler alert, it doesn’t exist anymore. Seney Island used to be an island just South of the Falls but it was eaten up by progress and misuse.  

A historical marker in Kiwanis Park near where Seney Island was suggests 1869 a group of Dakota Native American families who left Niobrara Nebraska as a result of the Fort Laramie treaty made camp at Seney Island on their way to settle in Flandreau. Once Sioux Falls is settled and starts growing into a city the Island would become a spot for recreation. 

George Seney a banker from New York City ends up being the owner of the land around the falls such as the area that will be the Queen Bee Mill and the Island...  Seney Island is now called Seney Island. 

It is a place of picnics and 4th of July Celebrations, concerts, veteran get togethers, suffragette speeches, church gatherings but also garbage dumping, gambling and sewers emptying.  

A lot of people wanted Seney Island to be a park but in the early 1900s the area by the falls was full of industry and progress interrupting the ecosystem of the island, and our parks system was young and possibly not able to handle the challenge of reclaiming Seney Island, so we lost it.  

In 1907 a dam is built that diverts the water from Seney island, the channel is filled in and ultimately Seney Island is bought by the Milwaukee Railroad. The Island is no longer an island. What is left of the island is now part of the West bank of the Big Sioux River.