Since 1987, when an estimated 63,000 people attended the rally, the number has nearly quadrupled, to about 200,000 visitors annually. To put that number in perspective, consider that Sturgis' normal population of about 5,500 grows to around 215,000 during the week of the rally. About eighty-five licenses are issued for tattoo vendors each year, and each vendor can have up to fifteen tattoo artists working for him or her. Each artist will do from ten to fifteen tattoos per day. This brings the estimated number of tatoos produced and sold during the Sturgis rally to 10,200.
Events featured include races, tours, shopping, cookouts and campouts.
But there's also plenty of hanging out, making new friends, and rekindling of old friendships. For comprehensive information, visit the rally's official Web site, found in this week's Links, Books, and More section. For one, Calamity Jane and Poker Alice roamed the town and, more famously, Wild Bill Hickok played his last game of poker there before being killed in Saloon No. 10. Visitors can watch a re-enactment of the capture of Wild Bill's assassin, Jack McCall, and his trial in the Old Towne Hall. The Badlands Native Americans traveling through the area long ago gave this name to these masses of colorful rock and earth formations, caused in part by thirty-five million years of wind and water erosion.