To commemorate Memorial Day, volunteers placed flags at every one of the 20,000 gravestones in the Black Hills National Cemetery near Sturgis. The cemetery is a United States National Cemetery open to all members of the armed forces and their spouses. Those who served were also honored with programs sponsored by the South Dakota American Legion and Oglala Sioux Tribe. Photos by John Mitchell.
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Meade County, at 3,471 square miles, is the largest county in South Dakota, and its geographical vastness is matched by the variety of experiences travelers can have within its borders. You can don western chaps in downtown Faith or leather biker chaps in Sturgis. You can spend the night in an old missile command center or a notorious brothel and gambling den. You can enjoy the rowdy camaraderie of half a million motorcyclists during one busy week in August or the serenity atop one of the region’s most sacred places.
Meade County got its start in 1887, when voters in what was then eastern Lawrence County voted 690-26 to separate. It became official two years later and was named in honor of Civil War Union General George Meade, also the namesake of Fort Meade, a military outpost established in the new county in 1878.
The cavalry’s presence in the area began in August 1876, when a temporary camp was set up along Spring Creek near Bear Butte and named for Lieutenant Jack Sturgis, who died at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. A more permanent location was chosen two years later in the eastern foothills of the Black Hills.
The men at Fort Meade were charged with protecting new settlements in the northern Black Hills, especially the area around Deadwood, which had boomed with the discovery of gold. It was home at various points to the Fourth, Seventh and Tenth Cavalries as well as the Buffalo Soldiers. The Fort Meade National Cemetery is the final resting place of several of these soldiers, including men who survived the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
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| Bear Butte, a unique geological formation, is a sacred place for several Indian tribes. |
Fort Meade is also the answer to an interesting historical trivia question. In 1893, post commander Col. Caleb Carlton began the custom of playing”The Star Spangled Banner” at military ceremonies and requested that everyone rise and pay it proper respect. The song became the official national anthem of the United States in 1931.
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| KJ Leather Company in Faith specializes in leather chaps for locals. |
But long before European settlement, Indians made pilgrimages to Bear Butte, a unique geological feature northeast of Sturgis that many tribes consider sacred. Bear Butte is the result of ancient volcanic activity that occurred about 65 million years ago. Molten magma from deep within the earth pushed upward but never broke through the crust. Over millions of years, the magma cooled and hardened and the topsoil eroded, leaving the laccolith that we see today instead of a true volcano.
The butte is sacred to the Cheyenne and Lakota, who believe it is where they can communicate with the Creator through visions and prayers. Religious ceremonies are often held there, and worshippers who make the pilgrimage to the top leave offerings, such as prayer ties and tobacco pouches, in the trees along the path to the summit.
Bear Butte stands 1,253 feet above the surrounding plains and 4,426 feet above sea level. Nearby is a small campground and Bear Butte Lake, created in 1921 when speculators drilling for oil struck an artesian well. Motorized traffic on Bear Butte is prohibited, but anyone is free to hike the 1.85-mile Summit Trail to the top, which also serves as the northern terminus of the 111-mile Centennial Trail.
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| Bob Hansen ran the Howes Corner store for 38 years. |
Several trailblazers made their way through Meade County en route to the Black Hills. A monument along Highway 212 between Maurine and Mud Butte memorializes one such group from Bismarck, North Dakota. Boosters of that young town wanted to promote Bismarck as a jumping off point for the Black Hills and wanted a party to head west and bring back reports of gold. Ben Ash, whose father Henry operated a hotel in Yankton, and four other young men set out in December 1874. The monument along 212, dedicated in 1949, stands in the place where the group caught its first glimpse of the Black Hills, still 100 miles away.
Early homesteaders in Meade County tried to farm like they did in Iowa and Minnesota, but departed when they realized the land was best suited for cattle. Today sprawling ranches cover most of Meade County’s prairie. Faith is a cow town in the far northeast corner of the county. It sprang up when the Milwaukee Railroad bridged the Missouri River, crossed the Cheyenne River Reservation and laid track into the county. You’ll find a school, places to eat, a golf course and even a lake, but cattle keep the town alive. KJ Leather Company specializes in western chaps and there are three cattle feed stores (as opposed to one grocery store). The Faith Livestock Commission Company sells up to 5,000 head of calves at the regular Monday sales during the fall calf run. In late October, so many calves are coming off grass that there’s a special three-day sale to accommodate buyers and sellers.
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| The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally brings 500,000 bikers to the Meade County town every August. |
Another interesting chapter in Meade County history is the presence of Minuteman Missiles. Nearly 50 missile sites dotted the landscape, ready for launch during the decades long Cold War. They are long gone except for one, which operates as a museum, but Walter and Diane Fees turned a command center into Juliet Bed and Breakfast near Opal. The federal government bought seven acres from the Fees family in the 1960s to build the Juliet 1 base, one of 15 bases that once dotted West River. When it closed in 1993, the family bought the land back and opened the B&B in 2006.
The tall fence, gate and antenna cone outdoors are the only reminders of the deadly serious business once conducted there. Inside the Feeses turned the telecommunications room into a TV room and put a hot tub in the water treatment area. Juliet also features six decorated bedrooms, a restaurant and lounge. Interested travelers can head west of Faith on Highway 212, turn south at Fox Ridge Road and follow the signs.
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| Poker Alice’s house stands on Junction Avenue in Sturgis. |
Several tiny towns and villages lie within Meade County: Howes (with its general store) Elm Springs, Maurine, Mud Butte, White Owl, Union Center. But the county’s other major urban center is Sturgis, founded in 1878 founded in 1878 and originally called Scooptown because many of its residents”scooped up” their pay from nearby Fort Meade, according to longtime Black Hills historian Watson Parker. The name was later changed to honor Samuel Sturgis, another Civil War Union general.
Sturgis’ claim to fame is the annual motorcycle rally, which draws 500,000 people to the town of 6,600 every summer. The rally traces its existence to Clarence and Pearl Hoel, who ran an ice businesses until electrical refrigeration put a dent in their livelihood in 1936.
That’s when Clarence decided to open a shop in their garage, specializing in Indian motorcycles. To enhance the new business, Clarence organized a riding club similar to a larger club in Rapid City supported by the Harley Davidson dealer. One Sunday the club was picnicking in the Black Hills when an automobile tourist said they looked like a bunch of gypsies, and the Jack Pine Gypsies was born.
They decided to host a rally in 1937 to introduce motorcyclists to the Black Hills. The 76th such rally takes place during the first full week of August, and includes concerts, races and rides through the Hills.
Hotels and campgrounds are often booked months in advance. Some Sturgis residents rent out their homes. But visitors also have the opportunity to stay in the home of Poker Alice, a legendary figure of Black Hills history. Originally from England, Alice landed in the Black Hills and took an interest in gambling. She played professionally and worked as a dealer. Her house in Sturgis was built in 1895 and once featured a poker room, gambling and dance halls and a brothel in addition to Poker Alice’s living quarters.
Editor’s Note: This is the 26th installment in an ongoing series featuring South Dakota’s 66 counties. Click here for previous articles.
Jeanne Apelseth shared these photos of Bear Butte State Park and Bear Butte Lake, just a few miles north and east of Sturgis. The area is sacred to many Native American tribes. According to Cheyenne custom, Bear Butte is where holy man Sweet Medicine met the Creator and the Four Sacred Persons who guard the universe. Traditional religious ceremonies are still held there.
Rapid City photographer Bonny Fleming shared these photos of Bear Butte. See or purchase more of her work at bonzeye.asiostudio.com.
Earlier this spring I rode with retired Bureau of Land Management Biologist Chuck Berdan to view and photograph Greater Sage Grouse mating displays. Along the way we started talking about interesting places in South Dakota for a photographer to visit. He told me that I needed to visit the Hogback and Racetrack surrounding the Black Hills in the springtime. This bio-diverse area, located where the plains meet the mountains, is full of wildflowers and wildlife — just what the doctor ordered for an outdoor photographer like me. The problem was that I had not heard about these landforms before. After further explanation by Chuck and some research in a few books about geology, I learned that I have indeed spent a lot of time on the Racetrack and crossed the Hogback numerous times without even realizing it.
When I was a kid, my family lived in Ziebach County. Whenever we drove down to Sturgis to visit my aunt and uncle, I distinctly remember coming into town on Highway 34 and going through steep cliffs just after passing Fort Meade. The hills and ridges that formed those first cliffs is the Hogback. I also remember that the rest of Sturgis was nestled in a somewhat wide valley with red dirt before the hills of the Black Hills really got going. This red valley is the Racetrack.
Chuck told me the Fort Meade Recreation Area was a great place to explore the Hogback. There are basically two areas to explore: the ridge portion south of Sturgis that borders Alkali Creek and the prairie portion to the north of town that goes right up to Bear Butte State Park. This area is steeped in history as well as culture. As you hike the trails, it is easy to picture yourself in the days of the Old West. There are stagecoach tracks visible and cavalry jumps still in place. There is even the grave of Curly Grimes, an outlaw buried where he was shot — on the shoulders of the Hogback just west of the campground.
If you take a larger step back into history and culture of the Native Americans, the place has an even more interesting story to tell. According to Lakota legend, the red valley Racetrack surrounding the Black Hills was created with the blood of animals in a great race. The buffalo won the race and was determined the supreme animal on the plains and sacred to the Lakota.
As for me and my camera, Chuck was absolutely right. The place is full of wildflowers and colorful birds and butterflies. I was surprised that a recreation area so close to a well-known South Dakota town was so unknown. The campsite on Alkali Creek was not even half full on the Saturday that I was there. I did, however, get to meet Sandy, the campground hosts’ three-legged dog. She had lost her 4th leg to a copperhead snakebite in Texas, but this injury didn’t faze her at all as she hiked happily with her owners. My guess is after an ordeal with a copperhead, an occasional encounter with the prairie rattlers that inhabit the Hogback and Racetrack probably wouldn’t scare her a bit … which is more than I can say for myself. Regardless, I plan on going back to the area in the fall to see what it looks like when the leaves of the trees turn. The time between seasons is always beautiful. Fittingly, I’m sure it will be even more so in this place between the prairies and the mountains.
Christian Begeman grew up in Isabel and now lives in Sioux Falls. When he’s not working at Midcontinent Communications he is often on the road photographing our prettiest spots around the state. Follow Begeman on his blog. To view Christian’s columns featuring other unique spots in South Dakota’s landscape, visit his landmarks page.
Amateur photographer Kim Taylor recently moved to Newell from Astoria, Oregon. She enjoys traveling the back roads of West River South Dakota with her point-and-shoot camera. View more of her work on her photography Facebook page titled “Visually Hugging Life.”
Jan Nickelson shared these photos of Bear Butte, a favorite of hikers for its spiritual significance.
Black Hills people should make time this Veterans Day weekend to visit the Herbert Littleton monument in Spearfish.
No place tops the Black Hills when it comes to memorializing heroes in granite or bronze: Crazy Horse, Washington, Lincoln and the rest on mountains, and every U. S. president on Rapid City street corners. We even have beautiful monuments for sort-of heroes. A couple for Wild Bill Hickock come to mind.
The Littleton monument honors a true hero, and a local one, at that. One of eight South Dakota Congressional Medal of Honor recipients, Herbert Littleton lived in Spearfish and then Sturgis as a kid. As a young man — still a teenager, in fact — he worked for a Rapid City electrical appliance firm. Littleton joined the Marines just after his 18th birthday and found himself two years later at Chungchan, Korea, in the middle of a hot war. In the dark, early morning hours of April 22, 1951, he threw himself on top a grenade tossed into his company’s shallow foxhole. That fast action cost Littleton his life, and saved the lives of many other Marines.
His heroism is described on a plaque that’s part of the Spearfish monument. When the monument was unveiled, then-governor Bill Janklow said,”People will read it and they’ll say they can’t believe he did that.”
True. Yet what intrigues us about heroism, after we mull it over, is the realization that there’s something in human makeup that makes the ultimate sacrifice possible. It’s been proven again and again on battlefields, and during natural disasters. Lots of people, some among the last anyone would expect, are capable of true heroism.
Strangely, when we use the term”hero” loosely, we’re often talking about actions beyond the capabilities of 99 percent of the population. Like slam-dunking a basketball against defenders who stand seven feet tall, or muscling a football through a wall of 300-pound monster men.
Sort-of heroes typically hit the public consciousness in a blaze of hyped expectation. By contrast, true heroes usually emerge without fanfare. I heard lots of folks sharing stories and observations about Herbert Littleton at the monument unveiling ceremony, but no one claimed to have expected heroism from him, or to have heard anyone predict it. Here was an average-sized kid who played a little high school football at Sturgis, dropped out of school before graduation, joined the Marines in hopes of getting his education back on track, and planned to marry his sweetheart from Idaho. He served as a radio operator in Korea, and minutes before his death was sternly scolded by a lieutenant for gabbing needlessly over the airwaves.
In short, Herbert Littleton was not substantially different from most 20 year olds in 1951, or from the 20 year olds who now cruise the streets he knew in Spearfish, Sturgis and Rapid City.
Knowing Littleton was a normal guy until the last moments of his life somehow enhances his heroism. It might even make us think about our own capabilities differently — and those of contemporary young men and women we know.
The Herbert Littleton monument stands in the Indian Springs section of Spearfish City Park, at the intersection of Canyon and Dakota, under the three flags of the United States, the Marine Corps, and the state of South Dakota.
Paul Higbee has written regularly for South Dakota Magazine since 1991, serving as our Black Hills correspondent. Paul and his wife Janet live in Spearfish. This column originally appeared in the November/December 2000 issue. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.
The rumble of motorcyclists attracted by the Sturgis Rally fades with the pages of the calendar. But listen carefully and you may hear another motorcycling sound across South Dakota: the year-around hum of manufacturing, engineering research, and bike adaptations.
No one says the motorcycle industry is recession proof. A motorcycle is a luxury purchase for most buyers, but good bikes generally hold their value over time and are smart investments. Also there are high-end bike collectors, both in the United States and abroad, for whom the current recession is mostly rumor, and whose latest two-wheel purchase exceeded what most of us spent for our homes. Some South Dakota manufacturers have grown about as fast as companies could ever hope in recent years, and if sales slowed during the economic downturn of 2008 and 2009, it felt like a mere bump in the track.
Company leaders say there’s an advantage in basing a motorcycle company in South Dakota. It’s a place bikers warmly associate with spectacular rides, freedom, annual reunions, and residents who are anything but buttoned-down. Plenty of industry leaders are transplants that seem to understand South Dakota’s mystique better than its natives do. Something else — base your company in South Dakota and lots of customers will stop every August for face-to-face hellos and consultations.
So get your motor running, head out on the highway, and meet some people who make biking a 12-month enterprise in South Dakota.
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| Brian Klock spent 15 years building a Mitchell bike business called Klock Werks. His bikes began to set records at Bonneville after he designed a new windshield during a Discovery Channel Build-Off contest. |
How do you set a world’s speed record on Utah’s Bonneville salt flats? You need the right engine, the right rider, and as Brian Klock learned to his great benefit, you need the right windshield.
Over the past 17 years, Klock built up Klock Werks, a company that earned a great reputation producing parts for customizing bikes. Fenders, handlebars, gauges, exhaust systems — about 350 parts in all — are shipped everywhere, mostly with pre-drilled holes so buyers can build or rebuild their bikes themselves. Klock Werks won a loyal customer base, especially among Harley-Davidson owners who ride baggers. Baggers are long distance bikes with compartments, or bags, for stowing travel gear. Klock Werks products told the biker world that baggers could be stylish.
But could a bagger go fast?
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| Brian and Laura Klock |
When the Discovery Channel invited Klock to participate in a biker build-off a few years ago, he decided to create the WFB (Way Fast Bagger). Part of his design was a new windshield. The standard issue windshield on this Harley bike, he discovered, moved air so that the bike’s front end actually rose a bit at high speeds. The lift slowed the bike and resulted in less stability and even a wobble. Klock’s new windshield, now sold as the Flare, directed the wind downward — a plus for rider comfort, safety, and speed. Klock won the build-off and took the bike to Bonneville in 2006.
He recruited a highly trusted rider, Laura Ellifson, for the salt flats time trials. A year later she and Klock were married.
Laura hit 147 miles per hour, a record for her type of machine, in land speed racing at Bonneville in 2006. The WFB name stuck, only now the initials stood for World’s Fastest Bagger. Laura broke her own record at Bonneville in 2007 and again in 2008 when she was clocked at 153.593 mph. She believes that unofficially she has reached 160 mph.
What’s it like to fly like that across the salt on two wheels?
“You learn to challenge yourself and your machine, and you learn to handle your fears,” Laura says.”You look straight ahead, pick a spot and keep focused on it, and you don’t look down at the track because that can be intimidating. In this kind of racing you hold your speed over the course of a measured mile, so it’s different than drag racing where you hit your speed and then back off.”
She attracted lots of admirers, some of whom have her posters tacked to their garage walls, and she’s in demand as a speaker. But Laura is not the hard-driven competitor some of her fans might guess. What she loves about salt flats racing is the comradery and the chance to showcase Klock Werks innovations (however, Laura does take great pride in the fact that she and her bike racing teenage daughters, Erika and Karlee, were the first mother and daughters trio to simultaneously hold records at Bonneville).
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| Brian and Laura Klock first met at Bonneville, where Laura’s daughters Erika and Karlee also hold records. |
Showcasing the Flare windshield’s attributes at Bonneville was a big step for Klock Werks. The windshield was perfected at the A2 Wind Tunnel in North Carolina and is now the company’s best selling product. It deserves much of the credit for the way Klock Werks grew in recent years from five employees to 20.
“It costs under $200, takes just a few minutes to install, and it really improves a ride,” says Makel Juarez on the sales floor in Mitchell.
If you own a pre-1930 Harley Davidson, there are two things you should know. First your source for parts is Competition Distributing of Sturgis, because no one else in the world builds such an extensive line of Harley components for 1905 through 1929 models. There are 1,620 parts available, most for Harleys, and some for other vintage bikes as well.
Second you should know there are more people like you than you might guess. Competition Distributing has a customer base of 14,000. Seventy-five percent of those buyers are European. Some days 150 parts shipments leave the shop on Lazelle Street in Sturgis. That’s where”seven workers do the work of 14,” says Lonnie Isam, company owner.
Isam notes a key difference between motorcycle collectors and people who collect cars.”Motorcyclists love their engines, just the opposite of lots of car collectors who tend to love the car’s body,” he says.”So with these bikes we start out with lots of motors and not so many chassis.”
If there’s a look that distinguishes pioneer bikes, it’s the box-shaped flat gas tanks. The very first, not surprisingly, resembled bicycles with motors attached, because that’s exactly what they were. But the machines soon acquired identities completely separate from bicycles.
“The engineering is so obvious on these early bikes, and I’ve learned to respect the way the engineering evolved quickly, especially from 1905 to 1920,” Isam says.”We rebuild complete bikes here a few times each year, and we go through the exact process that the first bike builders did.”
He never forgets the historical significance of his work.”These motorcycles,” he says,”are our thoroughbreds, our roots.”
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Isam grew up riding motorcycles in and around Seattle, then owned a Harley-Davidson dealership in Houston. In the 1970s, he says,”Harley-Davidson wasn’t cool, was having some labor problems, and you could pick up a dealership for just about nothing.” Isam and his wife, Marianne, ran the Houston shop for 34 years and at the same time were buying up struggling tool and dye companies there.”So I had equipment to make bike parts,” Isam recalls. If he made one part, he discovered, it made sense to make additional pieces as well. Sooner or later someone would need them.
Like so many others in the bike industry, Isam came to know the Black Hills through the rally and eventually bought property there. After the Isams sold their Houston dealership in 1999, they began thinking of a life in South Dakota. It was the right move.”In Sturgis,” Isam says,”I’ve forgotten what stress is.” He’s a new South Dakotan loyal to his adopted state–when he subcontracts work, he looks to Black Hills manufacturers and estimates that 80 percent of his company’s revenue remains in South Dakota.
It’s somehow appropriate that Carl Herman Lang’s 1905 Harley Davidson sits in this shop that’s dedicated to the integrity of vintage Harleys. Lang was an early Harley-Davidson investor, patent holder, and the very first dealer. It’s believed the company turned out five bikes in 1905–this one and only four others. If there’s a Rosetta Stone in the Harley world, this is it.
Ken Hines relocated from South Carolina to Spearfish to become president and CEO of Lehman Trikes, which bills itself as”leader of the three world.” A former Blue Angels pilot, Hines now enjoys more leisurely motorcycle rides.
“I only rode 900 miles this past weekend,” he laughs.”If you’re in the motorcycle industry and you find yourself in the northern Black Hills, what could be better?”
His company originated in Canada in 1985 and named Spearfish its United States assembly and distribution center in 2004. Initially there were four Spearfish employees, but seven years later more than 130 workers are spread throughout four buildings.
“We take a partially assembled two-wheel motorcycle, add a wider differential that will accept two rear wheels, and then we add those wheels,” explains Paul Pankonin, operations manager.”And the framework gets a new body and paint.”
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| Ken Hines moved to Spearfish to become President and CEO of Lehman Trikes, but soon fell in love with the Northern Hills and the great biking routes. Lehman Trikes were designed for safety in the 1980s. |
The Lehman story began in the early 1980s. Linda Lehman told her husband, John, that she wasn’t comfortable with their child riding on the back of a two-wheel bike. So for safety John created a three-wheel motorcycle. The customized machine won Linda’s appreciation and lots of attention wherever the family traveled. The Lehmans had struck gold and decided to mass-produce trikes, originally at Westlock, Alberta.
Today in Spearfish there are two assembly lines in a thoroughly modern, beautifully lit, and well-ventilated plant. Product demand keeps day and night shifts busy. One line culminates in a trike built for Harley-Davidson as a Harley product, and the other line turns out Lehman’s own products. About 130 dealers handle Lehman Trikes, across North America and Europe, and in Japan. Dealers who want Lehman kits for assembly in their own shops are invited to Spearfish for a four-day training session. Dealers are also invited to Spearfish for the rally each year, and can use the Lehman parking lot adjacent to Interstate 90 for demo rides and sales.”We open the factory for tours during rally week, too, but we never sell directly to the public,” Hines says.”Only through our dealers.”
It’s not only rally traffic and great Black Hills rides that have Hines singing South Dakota’s praises.”We love our workforce here,” he says,”and this is a state where the governor will come and visit for half an hour, and he knows your name and all about your business.”
Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the November/December 2009 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.
Editor’s Note: Carl Edeburn, a retired SDSU professor, is the author of Sturgis: The Story of the Rally, published in 2003. While researching the book, he spent time with Pearl Hoel, the woman many consider the matriarch of the rally. He wrote this story about Hoel for our March/April 2004 issue. Hoel died in February 2005 at age 99, but she is on the minds of many of the nearly 500,000 bikers descending upon the Meade County town for the annual rally, which runs Aug. 4-10.
Many of the thousands of bikers who make the annual pilgrimage to Sturgis would be surprised to learn that the much-heralded event now dominated by Harley Davidson was hatched at the workbench of an Indian motorcycle shop in Sturgis. They might be even more surprised that a steadying hand behind the rally for nearly six decades was a 98-year-old woman in a spiffy white pantsuit.
Pearl Hoel is a South Dakota living treasure. Closing in on a century, she is chipper, gracious and excited by life, an interesting person to visit, if you can catch her at home on Baldwin Street.”Any day but Wednesday is good,” she said.”On Wednesday I play bridge with my friends.” Of nine women in her bridge group, four are over 90, including Lillian Lushbough, who is 100.
Pearl and her husband, Clarence”Pappy” Hoel (pronounced”Hoyle”), were instrumental in initiating the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in 1937. She and Clarence were married 61 years before he passed away in 1989. Before they met, Pearl taught school in Mystic and Piedmont. She and Clarence met at a dance in Piedmont, and married in 1928. Their only child, Jack, was born seven years later.
When electrical refrigeration arrived in Sturgis and Ft. Meade in 1936, the Hoel’s ice business began to wane. That’s when Clarence decided to open a shop in their garage, specializing in Indian motorcycles. To enhance the new business, Clarence organized a riding club similar to a larger club in Rapid City supported by the Harley Davidson dealer. One Sunday the club was picnicking in the Black Hills when an automobile tourist said they looked like a bunch of Gypsies, and the Jack Pine Gypsies was born.
During the Depression of the 1930s, Pearl assisted needy rural families with the WPA. She drove the countryside in an old car, delivering clothing and food. One night she was driving a lonely country road with the backseat and trunk filled with fresh beef when she had a flat tire. By the time she had dragged a couple of hind quarters out of the trunk to get at the spare tire and jack, a pack of coyotes had surrounded the car and begun to howl. That was more exciting than riding two-up with Pappy, Pearl said.
After the WPA era, Pearl went to work as deputy to the Meade County clerk of courts, and when the boss retired, she was appointed to the job. Later she was elected register of deeds, and still later, county auditor. In the lean years of the motorcycle business, during World War II and in the 1950s when the Indian motorcycle was fading, the Hoel family stayed well fed through Pearl’s jobs at the courthouse.
Pearl still lives in the Hoel home on Baldwin Street. Her son Jack checks in with her every morning after he stops at the post office.”Last year she asked me to get her a bigger snow shovel,” he chuckled as he introduced himself to me on my first visit.
I was writing a book about the Sturgis Rally, and knew Pearl could provide a wealth of information about its history. When she discovered that I was staying in a motel, she insisted that I stay with her”to save money.” Great hospitality and hot breakfasts.
After my book, Sturgis: The Story of the Rally, was published last summer, my wife Cleo and I stopped by Pearl’s house to deliver a copy. Pearl was excited about the book, but more excited about the pending 63rd Rally.”I’m going to have 24 people here this year,” she said.”Last year it was down — only 18 showed up.”
For years, people have arrived on Pearl’s doorstep on the Thursday and Friday before the motorcycle rally. Eight to 10 people roll sleeping bags out on the beds and on the floors of her two spare rooms. Another group sleep in the garage, two couples park motor homes in the yard, and others sleep in tents on the front lawn. Needless to say, Pearl’s one bathroom is well used that week. Another dozen bikers stay next door at Pearl’s neighbor’s house, and mingle with her two dozen guests.
For Pearl Hoel, Rally Week retains its excitement. Monday evening she attends the short track races, and on Tuesday the half-mile races at the Meade County Fairgrounds. Last summer she took an honorary lap around the track in Neil Hultman’s sidecar. Everyone stood and clapped, while Pearl smiled and waved to the crowd.
Wednesday is long and busy for Pearl. It begins with the Sturgis Hall of Fame breakfast, held in Spearfish last summer because Homeland Security closed Fort Meade’s Assembly Hall for the week. The breakfast honors motorcycle journalists, engineers, politicians, and racers who have made significant contributions to the sport. For this event, Pearl generally buys a new outfit and gets her hair done. This year was no exception; she dazzled the crowd in an exquisite white pantsuit.”I want to look good for this party,” she chuckled. First-time attendees who know little of the history and legacy of dirt track racing at Sturgis are suitably impressed when nationally-significant motorcyclists stand to honor the grand dame of the motorcycling world.
On Thursday, with help from local ladies and visitors, Pearl hosts her backyard breakfast for The Retreads, a national organization of motorcyclists over the age of 40. In 2002, former Sturgis racing champions from Ohio, New Mexico and California showed up, a delight to Pearl, who hadn’t seen them for years. Then the party was crashed by a television crew from the Travel Channel, who were taping a show on Sturgis.
In 2003 the surprise visitors were authors Jean Davidson and Marian Hersrud. Davidson, the granddaughter of motorcycle manufacturer Walter Davidson, was signing her book, Growing Up Harley Davidson, and Hersrud her novel, Sweet Thunder. Ms. Davidson’s book was in such demand that she ran out of copies. I even got to sign my book.
Friday begins with the White Plate Flat Trackers Association Breakfast in the Gypsy Club room at the J. C. Hoel Short Track. The WPFTA, conceived and organized by Pappy Hoel and Al Burke in 1979, is dedicated to the memory of early racers. Fearing that these legends would be forgotten by contemporary riders, Burke and Hoel organized an annual reunion for White Plate (Expert) Riders at the 1980 Rally. Pioneer dirt track racers who are able, ride a lap at the half-mile race. Pearl helps plan and cook for the event.
By Saturday, the downtown rally crowd is pulling up stakes and roaring out of Sturgis. But Lady Pearl and other true dirt track fans are attending the last short races at the Jackpine Gypsy Club grounds.
On Sunday, Sturgis feels like a ghost town. The crowd is gone, and Pearl and other club members and locals start talking about next year’s rally.
In the early rally days, Pearl and Clarence Hoel pitched a circus tent in their back yard to provide a place for visiting riders to meet, visit and sleep. The Hoels and the Jackpine Gypsies provided coffee and donuts in the evening, after riders returned from daytime tours.
The Gypsy Tours were initiated by the motorcycle club in 1938 to add an extra day to what was then a weekend rally, and to introduce visiting riders to the exquisite scenery of the Hills. On Friday, bikers rode to Sylvan Lake, Mount Rushmore and the State Game Lodge. Later, a northern tour to Wyoming and Devil’s Tower was introduced. At the end of the day, bikers returned to Sturgis for the Friday Night Feed. The Gypsy Tours were so popular that by the early 1970s the train of motorcycles reached eight miles long. It became necessary to break riders into six, and then 12 separate tours.
When the touring groups were smaller, Pearl and a couple of other Gypsy wives provided a midday picnic for the riders. To plan for the event, they went downtown Thursday evening and counted bikes, guessing that two-thirds of the riders would take the tour. They bought the makings for baked beans, potato salad, wieners, coffee, iced tea and watermelon. They packed the food in an old pickup truck, and Friday morning led the bikers south toward the designated picnic site. Lunch was 65 cents, Pearl said,”all you could eat.” The truck followed the riders back to Sturgis and picked up motorcycles that broke down along the way.
Once Pearl helped an automobile tourist whose old Ford was stopped in the middle of the Needles Highway, its radiator”steaming like Old Faithful.” Pearl offered the man her remaining iced tea, assuring him that it contained no sugar.
By the late 1950s, crowds had grown so large that Pearl had to give up providing lunch. But at 98, she still hosts breakfast for the Retreads and the Flat Trackers. When somebody asked what her favorite downtown rally food was, Pearl replied that she had been so busy cooking and providing for her company that she hadn’t had time to visit the Main Street vendors.
Pearl Hoel is the unsung hero in the birth, growth and long-term success of the Black Hills Motor Classic. It’s hard to imagine Sturgis without her.
Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the March/April 2004 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.
