By Bill Harlan Journal Staff Writer ~ Rapid City Journal Rally Daily

"Pappy" Hoel, who died in 1989 at the age of 84, didn't live to see the mega-rallies of the 1990s but Pearl Hoel, who has seen them all, insists her husband would have been as surprised as anyone at how the rally grew.
"It just mushroomed." she says. "No one planned it."
If you insist on finding a cause, Pearl Hoel says, you can blame the refrigerator.
"Pappy" Hoel, was in the family ice business in Sturgis in the 1930s. Electric refrigerators were becoming all the rage, and Hel, then 32, knew the end of the ice age was coming. As a younger man, he had enjoyed riding motorcycles, so in 1936, he bought a franchise from the Indian Motorcycle Co.
Hoel founded the Jackpine Gypsies motorcycle club in 1937. The club got its name because the seven members loved to ride amont the "jackpines" or Ponderosa pines, that cover the Black Hills, and as pearl Hoel reports, someone once told them, "You look like a bunch of gypsies."
In 1938, Hoel and his motorcycling friend Al Nelson approached downtown Sturgis business owners with an idea. They proposed a motorcycle race to compete with the Days of "76 rodeo in Deadwood.
The first rally was a success, and in 1939, rally attendance quadrupled to 800 participants, in part because of "Pappy" Hoel's personality. He was a charismatic man and a motorcycle evangelisst. His nickname "Pappy" came from the dozens of young men he recruited to the Sport, among them Neil Hultman.
Hultman, now 71, moved to Sturgis in 1947. He was n 18-year-old kid without a plan, but he was facinated with motorcycles. Hoel persuaded Hultman to buy an Indian motorcycle then he convinced him he needed a job to pay for it. Hultman went to work at the Veterans Administration hospital at Fort Meade.
Hoel persuaded a number of young men to buy motorcycles that year. In fact, in 1947, he sold more Indian bikes per capita than anyone in the nation. Hoel was passionate about bikes and a mentor to a generation. "He was like a second dad to me," Hultman said.
The rally grew slowly in the 1950s, always with an emphasis on racing. The Jackpine Gypsies ran the races at the half-mile track for the Sturgis Chamber of Commerce. The Gypsies also raised money running their own hill climb and motocross, and the club builds a short track.
Hoes's son, Jack who still lives in Sturgis, was a hot young racer. Hultman also raced Indian motorcycles.
By the end of the 1950's, rally attendance was about 1,000, but other, bigger forces also were at work in America.

Outlaws Invade

In 1953, Marlon Brando starred in the "Wild One," a movie about outlow bikers that became a self-fulfilling prophecy. More biker's movies followed, mostly bad ones. the "outlow biker" culture thrived in the turbulent 1960's, when the drug culture, rock 'n' roll and war protests made opposition to authroity seem romantic and exciting. the outlaw biker mystique culminated in 1969 with the movie "Easy Rider", which merged hippie and biker cultures.
Soon after, the outlaw bikers found Sturgis.
Early rally participants had been indistinguishable from the Jackpine Gypsies. The Gypsies wore the short-billed crusier motorcycle caps made infamous by Marlon Brando, but they also wore less menacing jodhpurs and Western-style satin shirts. The Gypsies even sported hand-painted Black Hills Motor Classic neckties.
In contrast, the "rat bikers" of the early 1970's were sruffy, longhaired guys with beards and tatoos. They wore jeans and leather jackets and black T-shirts with sayings you couldn't repeat in polite company. They rode oil-spewing Harley-Davidson motorcycles with loud pipes and bad paint.
Some of the rat-bikers were members of gangs: the Hells Angels, the Bandidos, the Sons of Silence and others.
Through the 1970's the rally grew by orders of magnitude - from 2,000 early in the decade to 10,000 bikers, then 15,000 and 30,000. The aura of danger grew, too Janeen Norstegaard of Sturgis was a teen-ager in the 1970s. "We were like chained to our beds during the rally," she says. "We were told, 'You're not going downtown without your father'".
Some of the menace was hype. Hultman said there were rumors for several years that the Hells Angels would take over the town - just like in a biker movie. Pearl Hoel remembers a sheriff suggesting to her husband that law enforcement stop the Hells Angels and turn them around. "larence said, 'No, that's not right. They haven't done anything wrong. Let's just talk to them'".
Eventually, however, the outlaws did do something wrong. Several things, in fact.
The picnics at the Hoels' back yard had noved to Sturgis City Park, where motorcyclists also could camp for free. That was an attractive price for the rat bikers, and City Park got wilder and wilder through the 1970's. Norstegaard remembers driving her pickup truck through the park with a girlfriend early one morning. Bikers surrounded the truck, beating on the doors and windoes and demanding the tow girls flash their breasts. "I just gunned it," she said.
In 1982, bikers took over the park. Police could not enter. There were bonfires, nude dancing and activities that cannot be described in a family newspaper.l
Sturgis banker Bruce Walker, Janeen Norstegaard's father and longtime treasurer of the Jackpine Gypsies, argued that the event was worth saving. Hultman said Walker sensed the economic potential of the rally.
The next year, Sturgis hired more police. Federal agencies such as the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms also increased their presence.
More important, city Park was closed, which led to campgrounds opening outside of town. Some of them were giants. Gary Lippold started Glencoe Campground east of town, and Rod Woodruff opened the Bullalo Chip, which attracted some of the rowdier bikers.
Other local enterpreneurs found ways to make money downtown. Sturgis gallery owner Dean McNenny started selling belt buckles on the street - the first of the street vendors. Tom Monahan sold T-shirts out of boxes and silk-screened them on the spot. His street-stand T-shirt business turned into a major employer in Sturgis. The official rally logo Monahan donated to Sturgis eventually would be worth - well, it's hard to say what its worth.
Further west on Main Street, Gene and Nancy Flagler opened the Pyramid bar. They had six tables in 1986. Today, they have five bars and more than 50 tables. They are the rally headquarters for Galler magazine and Lucky Strike cigaretts. They Pyramid also turned into a year round business.

Money Arrives

By 1985, the rally had grown to 40,000 or 50,000 praticipantes, and the all volunteer board of t he Black Hills Motor Classic realized it could no longer run the event. Hultman recently had retired for the VA and the Sturgis chamber persuaded hom to help run the rally nearly full time.
In the 1970's, the rally had metamorphosed into an outlaw event. Now it was changing again, andonce again, national economic and cial forces were behind the change.
Harley-Davidsion, for example, was rising from its own ashes, under new management, to build a better quality motorcycle. The company's rebirth was just in time. The baby boom generation, cptivated in 1969 by "Easy Rider" now was making enough money to act out that fantasy, if only for a week or two in August.
The resurgence of Harley fueled growth in the rally, which in turn helped fuel Harley's growth. Harley began renting Rushmore Plaza Civic Center in Rapid City, and it gegan hosting its own rally events. Harley-Davidson even named a motorcycle after Sturgis, which is ironic, considering that "Pappy" Hoel was never a Harley man. After Indian Motorcycles went out of business, Hoel switched to Yamaha.
By 1989, the rally had grown to nearly 100,000 participants, and locals predicted the 50th rally the next year would be even bigger.

The 50th balloons

Even the wildest predictions for the 1990 rally fell short. Sturgis and the rest of the Black Hills were overwhelned. Hotel rooms were booked for a radius of 120 miles. the two miles on Junction Avenue, for Interstate 90 to Main Street in Sturgis became a daily 45-minute crawl in a motorcycle gridlock. the crows made news nationwide.
The make-up of the crowd was different too. The outlaws were still there, Knives were pulled and hosts were fied in dispte between gangs at a main Street bar. But yuppie bikers with money to spend and vendors with products to sell dominated the 50th rally. They have dominated every rally since.
Even the bad-boy bikers mellowed in the 1990s. The Hells Angels bought land, opened a campground and promoted concerts. They hired the Jaycees to sell beer, and they donated $15,000 to help build the citys bicycle path. At the 2000 rally, the Hells Angels sold memorabilia and souvenirs from a downtown booth.
Peter Fonda, the counterculture hero of "Easy Rider." also has become a regular at Sturgis. Last year he was inducted into the Nat6ion Motorcycle Museum Hall of Fame at Sturgis.
If the Jackpine Gypsies and the Hells Angels had one thing in common, however, it was this: Neither group was likely to serve anyone a triple vanilla latte. That would take another demographic group, but Sturgis had grown to accomodate almost anyone.

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The weather was generally about 110 degrees almost every day. In the peak hours of the day it actually got almost unbearable. This was not normal weather for South Dakota, it just happened to be an extreme dry hot spell.

This was truely a wonderful experience. To learn so much about the state in general makes the trip well worth it.

From where I currently live in Northern Indiana it was a bit over 1200 miles one direction to the far west side of the State of South Dakota and took approximately 18 hours driving time. However since we trailered our Harley out it took a bit longer.

I can truely say that I am glad that I took the time to make the trip, and experience the things that I did, but it is also one of those trips that "Well I have been there, done that, and most likely will not return any time soon in the near future. Especially if it is that hot !!!

There were three fatalities that we know for sure of while we were there, and my sympathy goes to those family members. One gentleman on his Harley crossed a center line while rounding a curve and hit another biker head on. Both were killed instantly. Another rounded a curve and hit a wild "cow" and was killed. And yet another in fact from the town that I live in, lost control of his bike on the way back from Sturgis to Rapid City, and he passed away on or about August 12, 2001. He never regained conciousness nor make it out of the Rapid City South Dakota Hospital but to come to rest in peace. Bless his family.

The statistics on numbers are almost impossible to find out for certain. Rumor had it by the last numbers that I had been told of that this past year, there were approximately 700,000 participants at Sturgis and surrounding area this year. Now that is alot of motorcycles !!!

Enjoy our stay here, and enjoy the photos. Give some thought to making that trip because it is something everyone should experience at least once!!!