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Historic place

Sturgis Commercial Block

1000 Main St, Sturgis, SD

Nine cut-stone storefronts raised in 1888-1900 are the last standing witnesses to Sturgis's origins as a lawless boomtown known to locals as "Scoop Town."

📅 1888–present🏛️ Historic DistrictStill hereBuilt 1888
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The story

Sturgis began in 1878, right after Fort Meade was built to guard the Black Hills gold rush. A camp of saloons and brothels sprang up to serve soldiers and prospectors, doing business so briskly that locals nicknamed it "Scoop Town" for how easily vendors scooped up miners' and cavalrymen's money. Business leaders relocated the settlement about a mile and a half west and founded Sturgis City, named for Col. Samuel D. Sturgis. The Commercial Block — nine contributing stone and brick buildings on the south side of Main between roughly 1000 and 1028 — is the surviving core of that boomtown street, added to the National Register in 1975.

Everything that was here

Did you know?

Early Sturgis was nicknamed "Scoop Town" for how fast saloon and brothel operators scooped up soldiers' and miners' money.
Six of the nine buildings have cut-stone facades — unusually formal for a frontier boomtown.
It joined the National Register in 1975, decades before the rally became the town's identity.

Connected places

Mollie Johnson's Brothel

Deadwood, SD
Black Hills Gold Rush

The 1880 Train (Black Hills Central Railroad)

Hill City, SD
Black Hills Gold Rush

Explore the full web of connections on the map.

Nearby history

Sturgis Motorcycle Museum & Hall of Fame

999 Main St · 49 m away
The rally's official museum is housed in Sturgis's former U.S. Post Office, which served the town's mail for more than 6

Hoel's Indian Motorcycle Shop

Junction Avenue · 147 m away
Nine riders raced for a $500 purse behind a small-town Indian Motorcycle shop in 1938 — and accidentally founded the lar

The Knuckle Saloon & Brewing Co.

931 1st St · 217 m away
The Knuckle Saloon occupies an entire downtown block that its own history says once belonged to Col. Samuel D. Sturgis —

Hotel Sturgis (Benevolent Hall)

1144 Main St · 217 m away
Built in 1892 as a fraternal lodge hall, gutted by fire in 1906 and rebuilt the same year, this Main Street building has

Broken Spoke Saloon

905 Lazelle St · 242 m away
Dave Iversen built the Broken Spoke on the site of an old lumberyard in 1988, deliberately just off Main Street with a c

One-Eyed Jack's Saloon

1304 Main St · 408 m away
Billed as the largest bar on Main Street, One-Eyed Jack's became such valuable rally real estate that it reportedly sold

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Sourceshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgis_Commercial_Block