Black Hills Tourist Attractions

I will be writing about the different Black Hills
tourist attractions at various times.
Today I will write about the attractions in the
northern part of the Black Hills.
There are five (six) towns in the northern part
of the Black Hills. The five are Sturgis, Deadwood,
Lead, Whitewood and Spearfish. Even though
Belle Fourche is a few miles north of the Black
Hills, I have chosen to include it in the northern
Black Hills town lineup, which makes the number
of northern hills towns six.

I will start with Sturgis, since it is my home town
and is located in the complete north east corner
of the Hills.
Sturgis started on it's way to becoming a town
around 125 years ago with the establishment
of a Army fort to protect the north part of the
hills from the indians. The Fort was called Fort Meade.
Sturgis is located on the Interstate 90 highway
and is about 27 miles from Rapid City, 20 miles
from Spearfish, 12 miles from Deadwood, 18
miles from Lead, 10 miles from Whitewood
and 27 miles from Belle Fourche.

Because of it's easy location to these towns
and cities, Sturgis has become somewhat of
a bedroom town. Fort Meade VA Medical
Center is locate about a mile east of Sturgis.
Sturgis has a population of approximately
seven thousand people. Sturgis is the shopping
center for the ranchers and farmers from a
vast area to the east of town. It is also a
tourist town of some note.

Once a year Sturgis hosts a huge five day
motor cycle rally. It goes by two names,
Sturgis Motor Cycle Rally and The Black
Hills Motor Cycle Rally. For the past ten
years the attendance has ranged from a
high or nearly three quarters of a million
bikers to a low of 450,000. Of course,
these bikers are spread out over the entire
Black Hills region during the weeks leading
up to the rally, during the rally and for about
a week affter the rally. The rally takes place
each year approximately the first week in
August. Officially it starts on a Monday and
ends on a Saturday. Unofficially it runs for
at least a week earlier than that and continues
on for nearly a week after the official event.
At any one time there is probably no more
than 100,000 bikers in the town of Sturgis
its self. The rest are spread out thoughout
the Black Hills region.

You might think, with that number of bikers
every year, there would be a great deal of
serious problems in Sturgis during that
period. Such is not the case. Of course
there are some problems but not what you
would expect. In the first place, the vast
majority of the people who show up look
very raunchy, heavily bearded and uncouth.
This is a front, in most cases. These are
mostly your every day, next door neighbor
kind of people. They start letting their
beards grow two or three months before
the rally and put on rough looking
clothing, all so they will look the part
everyone expects a rally biker to look.
The eye awakener is when one of them
hold the bank door open for you. Then
you realize all is not as it seems.

One somewhat unpleasant side affect
of the rally; the noise level can reach
almost unbearable levels. And, of course,
the traffic within the town can be quite
impossible. It is not unusual for a biker,
or a motorist, to take an hour to drive
approximately one mile from either
I-90 exit to downtown Sturgis. Then
comes the serious problem of trying to
find some place to park.

Sturgis is developing a reputation as a
small arms manufacturing town.
There are a number of small arms
and ammunition manufacturers in Sturgis. For eleven months of the year, Sturgis
is a quite, well behaved and might be
considered a religious town.
At last count it had 27 churches but
also has quite a lot of bars. it does not
have much in the way of regular shopping.
That is no big problem for people
living in Sturgis since it is such a short
distance to very good shopping in
Rapid City and Spearfish.

My wife and I have lived in Sturgis for
the past 28 years. We have lived all
over South Dakota and the United
States but we love living in Sturgis
by far the most of any place we've
lived.

Tomorrow I will write about Deadwood.
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