As the 80th year of the annual Sturgis motorcycle rally rapidly approaches, my thoughts go back to our very first trip to South Dakota on the 50th anniversary of the event. My son was racing dirt track professionally, and Sturgis was the place to go for a week of racing events, including a Grand National half mile in Rapid City.
Back in those early days on the circuit we had to economize on travel. And, due to the fact that the 50th anniversary of the Sturgis Bike Week was a HUGE event, accommodations were scarce to none. So, a fellow who worked with my husband informed us that he would be employed as security for a rancher who was renting out his property just outside of Sturgis as a campground for the week. Hey, we had a tent! And we had camped a number of times before at the KOA in Bulow when we went to Daytona Bike Week, so – a resounding yes!!! We will camp there. Suffice it to say…we had not given this adventure much forethought.
After driving pretty much forever (South Dakota is a long way from the Midwest), we finally arrived in the Rapid City area and headed north from Rapid City toward Sturgis. Motorcycles everywhere! Everywhere! We got to downtown Sturgis and found it extremely difficult to wend our way through the streets due to the thick crowds of street vendors, bikes, and bikers. The layout was not conducive to navigation in a maxi-van. But we finally made it through the tiny town…after about an hour…and headed for the ranch. Did I mention bikes were everywhere? Everywhere! We, who had failed to correctly assess the situation before we left home, came to realize that the town of Sturgis normally had a population of 5,000. This particular week, however, they were hosting 400,000. Four hundred thousand!
We arrived at the ranch and found — guess what! — motorcycles everywhere. Lots of tents, a few rudimentary camping trailers. No motor homes. And not much available space. Luckily, our friend the security guard ushered us into an enclosed area near the farmhouse where we were to pitch our 8×10 cabin tent. The ranch was at the foot of Bear Butte, a huge mesa, and the ground was covered with shale…which made for some interesting sleeping for folks who brought sleeping bags but no air mattresses. Because I had some personal health issues that required the use of actual bathroom facilities, we were privileged to have access to the farmhouse bathroom for emergencies, although I felt like an intruder entering the home of people to whom we had barely been introduced. (It should be noted that the facilities available to the general camping population consisted of a row of outhouses that we learned were already close to overflowing.)
Bikes everywhere! Bikers everywhere! I can’t remember how many gangs were represented on the ranch that year, but fortunately they were largely…hmmm…not friendly, exactly…but…well, no, not exactly cordial…but…at least tolerant of one another. (Well, there was one gang in particular that tended to behave rudely and audaciously; but security kept them contained for the most part. I could name that gang, but I won’t because I really wouldn’t want to irritate them. And I have to admit that, even though we are normally nice people and rather accepting, we did do a lot of smirking in regard to that particular group.)
Speaking of gangs, while inside the farmhouse bathroom one night, I overheard the conversation from the kitchen table. The security folk were noting that one of the gangs had posted armed sentries at the foot of the hill, just in case their foes should try to descend upon them in the middle of the night. Rather disquieting news for a non-camper Midwest mom who already wasn’t sleeping well on a bed of shale.
Bear Butte, we learned, was a sacred site for Native Americans. According to farmhouse lore, one year during the Sturgis rally, a group of badly behaved bikers had been camping there and had been quite disrespectful and had proceeded to try to climb the butte. They were informed that the great spirit protected Bear Butte, but they scoffed at that. So at night, a nasty little windstorm came down the butte and blew their tents over. They reportedly packed up and left. Good riddance! Oh, and did I mention that Bear Butte is also protected by rattlesnakes who have made it their habitat. Fortunately, we only encountered one of those when it slithered across the road as my son was bump-starting his race bike to check it out. And the snake promptly hid because it apparently was not fond of the noise and chaos of the camper/biker crowd.
Due to the density of the camping population on the ranch, the porta-johns quickly came to overflowing (and no one seemed available to come and empty them). And the line of makeshift shower stalls in a barn yielded only a trickle of water. So in order to get clean, we took advantage of interstate rest areas between Sturgis and Rapid City for the purposes of washing up. Fortunately, we found a road through some sort of national cemetery we could use to bypass downtown Sturgis so we could get to the race tracks on time. Bike traffic on that road was slim to none because the road was thick gravel and dust — not so bike-friendly but quite amenable to vans. For bathing, we also had an offer from a racing friend from our home state to use his hotel room — an 80-mile round trip — to shower. We accepted, and it was great! (Although the evil-looking black spider in the corner of the tub was a bit off-putting.) And we went to the water slides one day! Clean at last!!
To get our clothes clean, we located a laundromat in a little town a bit out of the way from Sturgis proper. It had a little restaurant attached, so we could put in our laundry and then hang out next door to wait. At that point, the owner of the place let us know that the highway patrol had been informing businesses in the area that one particular biker gang had visited the K-Mart in Sioux Falls and bought out all the knives, guns, and baseball bats on their way to Sturgis. We hoped they weren’t camping at our place.
Another laundromat story I want to mention was from a later year. We had (wisely) stayed in Rapid City that year so went to do our laundry and spent a couple of very pleasant hours chatting with Andy Tresser, a rider from California. Tresser, unfortunately, later lost his life at the Rapid City track during a crash. God speed, Andy. A really nice guy.
Returning to thoughts of keeping clean in Sturgis, the Jackpine Gypsies club sponsored a series of short track and half mile races during bike week. Because the short track consisted of red dust, they would oil the track to hold the dust down. Otherwise, there would be zero visibility. At our first race there, I kept teasing my son and husband about the reddish-black dirt they were covered in. Haha! I would boast that I had brought along a container of wipes and thus, using them regularly all evening, stayed fresh and clean. Haha! So…after the race, we went to a restaurant and, seeking facilities other than a porta-pot, I headed for the restroom. Imagine my surprise when I looked in the mirror and realized I had a reddish-black outline of my face, my nose, etc. (I had missed a few spots with my handy-dandy wipes. Oops!)
Over the years we collected more Sturgis stories involving the races, Mount Rushmore (all I can say is “Amazing!”), Crazy Horse (also amazing!), panning for gold in Keystone, pyrite and pink tourmaline, the mammoth excavation site, Wall Drug, the Badlands, buffalo, and the trip there and back. But, alas! Those are stories for another time.