Old Elm Spring Colony, South Dakota
census-designated place in South Dakota, United States

Old Elm Spring Colony, formerly called the Old Elmspring Hutterite Colony, is a Hutterite colony and census-designated place (CDP) in Hutchinson County, South Dakota, United States. The population was 114 at the 2020 census. It was first listed as a CDP prior to the 2020 census.
It is on the northern edge of the county, bordered to the north by Hanson County. It is on high ground on the east side of the James River. It is 24 miles (39 km) north-northwest of Olivet, the county seat, and 17 miles (27 km) northeast of Parkston. New Elm Spring Colony is 3 miles (5 km) to the west, across the James River.
It began as a Hutterite colony in 1876. In 1982 it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as part of the Historic Hutterite Colonies Thematic Resource, and included six contributing buildings over 8 acres (3.2 ha), including the Good Samaritan Home.
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This entry incorporates text from “Old Elm Spring Colony, South Dakota” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.