The South Dakota Department of Transportation will host a meeting at Spearfish City Hall next week Wednesday, April 5, to take public input on its plan to update the state’s westernmost rest area and welcome center on I-90. The current rest area is just a mile east of the South Dakota/Wyoming border, accessible from the eastbound lane only. (Folks heading west can stop at Beulah just across the border or the Wyoming welcome center eight miles further west.) The Department of Transportation is considering three alternatives: upgrading the existing facility or building a new rest area and welcome center at Exit 10, the jump-off point at the north edge of Spearfish up to Belle Fourche, or at Exit 17, the turn at the east edge of Spearfish down to Deadwood.
The DOT’s traffic analysis indicates that a two-way-access welcome center at either of the Spearfish crossroads would draw more traffic than the current isolated one-way-access site. However, in almost every other regard, upgrading the existing site appears to be superior to building a whole new rest area:
The current site is safer and more easily accessible, especially for trucks. Upgrading will cost significantly less than building new, since the Exit 10 and Exit 17 sites would require buying new rights-of-way, laying new water and sewer lines, putting in new landscaping, and building a new welcome center. Plus, for the new sites, we’d have to dismantle, move, and re-erect the existing welcome tipi sculpture.
The new sites would take up prime real estate and are more likely to get in the way of residential or commercial development. Spearfish doesn’t really need a rest area to draw visitors; the access it provides to the Hills and the stirring beauty of Lookout Mountain already do that in spades. The rest area is more useful and restful where it is, away from town, right at the border.
Next Wednesday’s meeting is the second and final public input meeting on this project. The first meeting, last September, drew maybe 20 people; an online survey in September and October drew around 60 more respondents. 88% of the survey respondents said the main reason they’ve stopped at rest areas is to use the restroom… which I would suggest supports the safety and accessibility argument for upgrading the existing site: people with anxious bladders want the quickest, easiest route to the toilet; the less they have to navigate and wait for traffic signals, the better!
DOT’s project materials are available online for review. After next Wednesday’s meeting (April 5, Spearfish City Hall, 5:30–7:30 p.m.), the study team will make recommendations in May and issue its final report in July.
Any consideration of installing three or four (or whatever) charging stations for EVs ??
The high-flyers should have considered this before they tore down the perfectly sound Tillford Rd. rest stops on I 90 before Sturgis due to no funding to upkeep. We had two beautiful brick rest areas with actual tree shade and they provided the only cover from inclement weather and running water for locals during a disaster until the WY border. Now they want to build a new one? They must be mentally slow. Or love to bot their lipstick with taxpayers’ earnings.
All Mammal’s spot on. In addition to the mis-placement of the Tilford Center, the SD DOT / Tourism had a wasteful dance of welcome centers for over a generation. Another mis-placed example, what in the name of horsefeathers was the purpose of the welcome center near Salem?
It’s appearing that the construction and demolition of too many welcome centers is based on contract favoritism, not on sound transportation or tourism principles. The highways have not changed. The general ports of entry have not changed. The general public uses of the highways and ports of entry have not changed. One is left considering whether the SD DOT / Tourism is submitting to supporting contractors . . . or are incompetent at placing welcome centers.
It’s still easier for a Wyoming person to leave a deposit in South Dakota than vice versa.