LeBeau was the terminus of a branch line of the Minneapolis and St. Louis Railway (M&StL) built westward in 1907 from Conde, South Dakota.
For a time, LeBeau was a boom town, and a major cattle-shipping point for the large ranches on the opposite side of the Missouri.
The M&StL planned to continue building its line westward from LeBeau, and began initial work on a Missouri River bridge there.
Those expansion plans never materialized, however, and LeBeau quickly went into decline after the competing Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad completed its own lines into the region west of the river.
In the summers of 1954 and 1955 the University of South Dakota fielded an archeological dig under the leadership of Dr. Wesley Hurt.