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Manchester was a small unincorporated community in Kingsbury County in the east-central part of the U.S. state of South Dakota. On June 24, 2003, the town was completely annihilated by a large F4-rated tornado, and has since become a ghost town. In 2004, the State of South Dakota officially disincorporated the town of Manchester. ==History== Like many South Dakota towns of the era, Manchester was a planned community founded primarily to serve as a stop on the Chicago and North Western Railway, which was the primary line carrying grain east through South Dakota and supplies and settlers west. Manchester was established with the opening of the Manchester post office on June 29, 1881 and named after the town's first postmaster, C. H. Manchester. With the influence of the railroad, Manchester underwent rapid expansion, including the building of "numerous homes, a town hall, grocery stores, livery barns, a lumber yard, two grain elevators, a depot, a restaurant, a cream station, a bank, a pool hall, auto repair, blacksmith shops, gas stations, two churches, a system of township schools including Manchester High School, a hotel, a newspaper and a fabled town pump".〔http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM1X4P_Manchester_South_Dakota〕 Grace Ingalls Dow, sister of ''Little House on the Prairie'' author Laura Ingalls Wilder, spent a significant part of her adult life in Manchester. She worked as a teacher in the local school and died in 1941. Her sister Mary Ingalls lived with her for a while as well. Laura Ingalls Wilder spent many years (and set several of her ''Little House'' books) in De Smet, a similarly sized town seven miles to Manchester's east along the railroad line. Into the 20th century, the diminishing importance of the CNW line through Manchester slowed train traffic and cut into the town's expansion, causing many to leave the town. This slide continued into the Great Depression as the line lay idle and more residents were forced to close their businesses and move elsewhere to find work. Despite road contact finally being made through Manchester in the late 1930s, little remained to induce people to linger and the few remaining residents began to die off or move away, with many relocating to nearby De Smet or Huron. Having lost many of its residents and its primary means of attracting more, Manchester's population steadily dwindled until a core population of no more than 100 residents remained, with most operating farms and ranches outside the town limits. The CNW railroad officially announced its permanent abandonment of the railroad line in 1986 and stopped maintaining the tracks. By 2003, less than a dozen structures (including two operating businesses) remained standing on the original Manchester town plot along US-14 and 425th Avenue. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Manchester, South Dakota」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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