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Research dossier · Places & Architecture

West Bend Recreation Area

park in Hughes County, South Dakota, United States of America

Architectural plans, a scale model, maps and brass measuring instruments
Places and architectureInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 5, 2026
Entity authorityQ49578496 ↗
Source-derived summary

West Bend Recreation Area is a South Dakota State Recreation Area located along the shore of Lake Sharpe, a Missouri River Reservoir. The area is located in Hughes County. The park is open for year-round recreation including camping, horseback riding, biking, hiking and cross-country skiing.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “West Bend Recreation Area” is park in Hughes County, South Dakota, United States of America. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through West, Bend and Recreation, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewMost useful as a place-based finding aid connecting the present description to earlier jurisdictions, maps and built evidence. The current 45-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, West, Bend and Recreation is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “park in Hughes County, South Dakota, United States of America” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q49578496. Authority coordinates are 44.172, -99.717. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.

Critical limits

Modern boundaries and familiar names can conceal earlier jurisdictions or structures that do not align with the present site. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.

Best used for
  • Historic place names
  • Jurisdictional context
  • Routes into maps and plans
Verify next

Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “West Bend Recreation Area”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow West Bend Recreation Area primary sources, West Bend Recreation Area archive and West research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “West Bend Recreation Area”?
  2. What physical evidence or contemporary plan supports the description?
  3. Which authority defined the place, boundary or structure at the relevant date?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “West Bend Recreation Area” 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.