Armstrong County, South Dakota

Armstrong County was 525 square miles (1,360 km²) in area.[4] As of 1978, the land that had been Armstrong County was part of the Sansarc-Opal association, except for the extreme northwest corner that was part of the Wayden-Cabba association.[6]

The county was never formally organized, and was attached to Stanley County for governmental purposes. County residents were unable to vote for Stanley County officers, only state and federal positions. This created a situation of "taxation without representation", which caused a scandal in the early 1950s. The house of resident Ethan Alexander was selected as the polling place, but not enough voters were present in the county to ever have a proper board of elections. Alexander himself served as the county's assessor for years.[4] Like its neighbors, but unlike many other counties in South Dakota, Armstrong County was not divided into townships.

In the 1928 presidential election, the county cast all seven of its votes for Democratic candidate Al Smith, the only county in the country to cast the entirety of its votes to a single candidate. For 1932 through 1940, no returns were listed for Armstrong County in particular, and its voters were instead recorded in neighboring counties. Armstrong County returned to election statistics in 1944, where it once again had a unanimous return, for Democratic candidate Franklin D. Roosevelt with all four votes.[8] Harry S. Truman, the Democratic nominee for 1948, won the county but fell short of unanimity by one vote, which went to Republican Thomas Dewey instead. The county swung to the Republicans for its final presidential election in 1952, when Dwight Eisenhower narrowly defeated Adlai Stevenson II six votes to five.

In 1940, Armstrong County was the only county in the nation without a post office.[9]

After the 1911 incorporation of Ziebach and Dewey Counties, Armstrong County had 52 people living in 8 families. The majority of county residents lived on the banks of the Missouri and Cheyenne Rivers, which were plentiful in grass and timber for the local cattle economy and whose river bottoms provided shelter.[4]

Most of the county's land was leased to cattle companies such as Diamond A. The resident Norvold family owned land both in the county and in Ziebach county.[4]

The county had no schools. The Norvold children in particular were educated in various places such as Cheyenne Agency, Eagle Butte, and other adjacent counties.[4] There were no roads in the county, nor telephones nor electric lights.[10]

In 1950, Armstrong had the distinction of being the only county in the United States without a single civilian federal employee. Spiritual Mobilization, a group opposed to government spending, wrote a song about it:[11]

All Hail to Armstrong, South Dakota,
Land of the Free
You have yet to fill your quota
With a Federal Employee!

No one from Agriculture?
How do you farm?
No one from Justice?
Who keeps you from harm?

No one from Veterans?
By whom are you paid?
No one from Commerce?
How do you trade?

No one from Housing?
Who buildeth your shacks?
No one from Treasury?
Who takes your tax?

No one from Post Office?
Who sells your stamp supply?
No one from Military?
Who keeps your powder dry?

And no one from Security?
How, then, can you be social?
If you have no single bureaucrat
To decide things equivocal?

Even the Department of the Interior
Is from Armstrong’s roster missed.
Tell me, Armstrong County,
How do you exist?

All Hail to Armstrong County,
Where there’s no 'share the pelf,'
And despite the Welfare Staters,
Each does things for himself!

• United States Department of Agriculture Soil Conservation Service; Bureau of Indian Affairs; South Dakota Agricultural Experiment Station (1978). Soil Survey of Dewey County, South Dakota. Washington – via Internet Archive.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)