Red Shirt, South Dakota
Red Shirt is a small unincorporated Oglala Lakota village southeast of Hermosa in Oglala Lakota 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 whose band settled in the area in the late 1870s.
In 2009, the village consisted of approximately 23 houses in two clusters, the Red Shirt School, 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 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 of the river.
Red Shirt School is part of the Oglala Lakota County School District, and is an elementary school, but also is a campus/coordinating/test center for the Shannon County Virtual High School, which provides instruction via internet and is the only public high school located on the Pine Ridge Reservation.
