How Highmore, South Dakota Got Its Name (High Ground, Mostly)

Highmore, South Dakota, got its name because it sits on high ground, though the old sources don’t agree on exactly what it was supposed to be the highest point between. The “high” part is the easy bit. What the “more” is doing there, nobody wrote down.

Where the name comes from

A 1908 railroad guide to place names explains Highmore twice, and the two answers don’t match. In its list of towns, it says Highmore “was so named because it was located on the highest ground in South Dakota between the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers.” In its list of counties, it says the town “stood on the highest ground between the James and Missouri Rivers.”

That’s a big difference. The James River runs through the eastern half of South Dakota. The Mississippi is hundreds of miles farther east, in another state. The U.S. Geological Survey’s place-name record went with the Mississippi version.

What the town says

The local school district’s community page gives a third version of the high-ground idea: that the town site was the highest point on the Northwestern Railway between the Missouri River and the eastern border of Dakota Territory. All three versions agree on the main point: the town sits on high ground.

Two other stories

The same school page lists two more theories. One says the town was named for a surveyor who worked for the railroad. The other says a foreign worker described the rising slope by saying “high more, high more.” The page doesn’t give a source for either one, and we didn’t find one, so take them as local stories. The high-ground explanation is the one that shows up in the oldest written source.

Sources & further reading

• W. H. Stennett, A History of the Origin of the Place Names Connected with the Chicago & North Western and Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis & Omaha Railways (1908). A public-domain railroad guide. Gives two different versions of the high-ground explanation, one in its town list and one in its county list.
• GNIS feature 1255553 (U.S. Geological Survey). The federal record for Highmore. Quotes the guide’s Mississippi-to-Missouri version and gives 1882 for incorporation.
• Highmore-Harrold School District, “Community.” The railroad high-point version and the two other local stories.