The arrival of the railroad in 1878 caused a boom in the city's population, and today, Sioux Falls holds the headquarters of the Dakota, Minnesota & Eastern Railroad Corporation and the Iowa, Chicago & Eastern Railroad Corporation. BNSF also has many rail lines through Sioux Falls.
Quarrying and polishing of rose quartzite, found throughout the region and used for monuments and construction, was an important industry in the 1880s. Financial problems and a plague of grasshoppers caused an economic downturn in the 1890s, but improvements began in the early 20th century, including the opening of a meatpacking plant in 1909. (Encyclopedia Britannica)
In the 1980's, South Dakota removed usury laws on credit cards, and the Supreme Court made a law that said that usury laws could be enforced in the bank's home state, not the consumers. That brought so many major banks to Sioux Falls (Citi Bank, Wells Fargo, US Bank, and First Premier Bank was founded in Sioux Falls) because of low taxes, and the fact that you could charge whatever interest rate you want on credit cards! (PBS)
Today, Sioux Falls is (and always has been) the biggest city in the state of Sioux Falls. The US Census Bureau predicts the city to be between 190,000-200,000 people residing in the city. The biggest industries in the city remain finance, medicine (Sanford Health is leading the industry with many different innovative ways to cure and treat diseases, headquartered in Sioux Falls), and agriculture, and meat processing (South Dakota is a huge farming state so that is no surprise there).
That, in a nutshell is the history behind my hometown of Sioux Falls, South Dakota!