Red Shirt is a small unincorporated Oglala Lakota village southeast of Hermosa in Shannon County, South Dakota, United States. It is on the Pine Ridge Reservation, just outside Badlands National Park.
Red Shirt is located just past the east end of SD 40, which becomes BIA Highway 41 at the bridge over the Cheyenne River (boundary between Custer County and Shannon County and of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The built-up area of the community, including Red Shirt School, is located on the flats of the valley of the Cheyenne River, below the north end of Red Shirt Table, a prominent feature of the landscape of northwestern Shannon County.
Red Shirt, as are many Oglala and Lakota communities, was named for chief Red Shirt, (Ógle Lúta, ca 1845-1925) whose band settled in the area in the late 1870s.[1]
In 2009, the village consisted of approximately 23 houses (including some mobile homes) in two clusters (Upper and Lower Red Shirt), the Red Shirt School (both the modern (constructed 2005-2008) school with two large domes, and the older school buildings), a dance ring, sports fields, several community buildings, and a sewage plant. As the community is the closest on Pine Ridge Reservation to Rapid City, it is a desirable place to live as it offers a relatively easy year-round commute. Red Shirt is the last community (that is, at the end of the pipeline) served by the massive Mni Wiconi water project which pumps water from the Missouri River near Fort Pierre, South Dakota up to the Rosebud and Pine Ridge Reservations. The village is located near the Cheyenne River but outside the Special Flood Hazard Area (100-year floodplain) of the river.
Red Shirt School is part of the Shannon County School District, and is an elementary school, but also is a campus/coordinating/test center for the Shannon County Virtual High School (SCVHS),[2] which provides instruction via internet and is the only public high school located on the Pine Ridge Reservation.[3]
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