Sturgis, SD

Sturgis, S.D., (pop. 6,400) is a mecca for motorcyclists worldwide, home of a rally that draws 400,000 bikers who transform Main Street for a week each August into a sea of rumbling metal, shiny chrome fenders, black leather, and faded denim.

Visiting bikers outnumber townspeople 70 to one that week. The rest of the year, downtown Sturgis is a quiet four-block business district of one- and two-story shops, its parking spaces filled with cars and pickups, and no motorcycles in sight.

In Bob’s Family Restaurant, talk has to do with this week’s cattle prices at the Sturgis Livestock Exchange. Across the street at Davis Barber Shop, two customers debate the merits of city council candidates. Up and down Main, posters announce an upcoming amateur rodeo promising cash prizes and belt buckles.

Still, it’s the annual motorcycle rally that puts Sturgis on the map and brings big dollars to town. Last year, 956 temporary vendors set up shop rally week and paid more than $1 million in sales taxes, while local organizations raised cash for everything from church projects to an overseas class trip.

“A lot of people from other places say they’d love for their towns to make the revenue in a single week that the rally brings to Sturgis,” says John Johnson, president of First Western Bank. “But I think it’s a rare community that would accept this year after year. Sturgis is that rare town, comfortable with bikers, happy to accommodate them.”

Perhaps that accommodating nature can be traced to the town’s historical roots. Located on the Black Hills’ eastern slope, the town sprang up in the 1870s to serve the needs of cavalrymen stationed at nearby Fort Meade. The frontier soldiers called Sturgis “Scooptown” because saloonkeepers and other businesses seemingly laid claim to their army paychecks by the shovel load.

In 1938, motorcycle shop owner Pappy Hoel and the Jackpine Gypsies Motorcycle Club launched the rally, featuring races around a dirt track and rides through the Black Hills. Sturgis found hosting bikers not much different from accommodating cavalrymen. The town first counted bikers by the dozens, then by the hundreds and the thousands, and eventually by the hundreds of thousands.

As remarkable as anything about the rally is how the town, so typical of a Great Plains community 51 weeks a year, is transformed for one week in August. Some Main Street merchants occupy their shops just eleven months a year. They empty their stores completely at mid-summer, yielding to biker specialty shops that move in.

Townspeople acknowledge that 400,000 guests can complicate life, making it a challenge to get across town to work or to the store. The constant rumble of engines can grate the nerves after a few days, but the bikers themselves seldom do. The visitors are generally friendly, appreciative of Sturgis’ rare hospitality, and are likely to leave big tips. Their ranks in recent summers have included Jay Leno, Peter Fonda, Dennis Rodman, and John Elway.

Being a latter-day Scooptown means supporting good causes. Churches serve up pancake breakfasts to support their ministries. High school teacher Judy Javersak and members of her Japanese Club raise money by running a secure parking lot, and the dollars take students to Japan. John Johnson’s bank rents vendor space in its drive-through lot and contributes the proceeds, $15,000 or more, to nonprofit organizations countywide, including a community center in the nearby Union Center and an after-school activities program in Sturgis.

Al Colton, a Sturgis businessman since 1962, remembers when roping off 150 feet of street took care of all the bikes. Now during rally week he rents 200 booth spaces inside two Main Street buildings he owns to sellers of T-shirts, leather, and other goods. Other weeks, he doesn’t charge a local youth group that roller-skates there, “because Sturgis has been good to me, and the rally makes enough money I don’t have to.”

Paul Higbee is a freelance writer in Spearfish, S.D., and a regular contributor to American Profile.

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