Snow-Aberdeen TB

Please drop this item in rural or Premium Member Only caches.  Do not drop it in an urban cache or leave it behind at a caching event.  Transport the bug in the original plastic bag for as long as the bag lasts; this prevents the chain and tag tangling with other items.  Otherwise, take this travel bug anywhere you wish.  No permission needed to leave the U.S.

This series of “snow” travel bugs each commemorates a cold US city.  I am not sure how one determines the coldest US cities in the winter.  Does one rank the record lows, lowest monthly averages or lowest winter averages?   Many of the cities would appear on all three lists.  Rather than try to assign a ranking, I will simply include some cities or hamlets from each of the criteria.  Regardless of ranking, we have to  acknowledge that all of the locations identified in this series are really, really cold places in winter.

Aberdeen, South Dakota recorded a historic low temperature of -46 in both 1912 and 1895.  Aberdeen is a city in and the county seat of Brown County.  The city population was 26,091 at the 2010 census, making it the third largest city in the state.  Aberdeen is the home of Northern State University.

The region was inhabited by the Sioux Indians from approximately 1700 to 1879. The first appearance of Caucasians was with the founding of fur trading posts during the 1820s.  The first "settlers" of this region were the Arikara Indians.   The first group of Euro-American settlers to reach the area was a party of only four people, three horses, two mules, fifteen cattle, and two wagons.  This group of settlers was later joined by another group the following spring, and eventually more and more settlers started aa town in 1879.  

The majority of the settlers were Euro-American, with the next largest group being Native American, a trend that has continued to this day.  Aberdeen, like many towns of the Midwest, was built around the newly developing railroad systems.  Alexander Mitchell was responsible for the choice of the town name, was born in Aberdeen, Scotland.  Aberdeen had four different railroad companies with depots built in the newly developing town. With these four railroads intersecting here, Aberdeen soon became known as the "Hub City of the Dakotas".