Rapid City, South Dakota
Rapid City is the second most populous city in South Dakota and the county seat of Pennington County. Named after Rapid Creek, where the settlement developed, it is on the Black Hills’ eastern slope. In the neighboring Black Hills are the tourist attractions of Mount Rushmore, the Crazy Horse Memorial, Custer State Park, Wind Cave National Park, Jewel Cave National Monument, and Badlands National Park.
About Rapid City, South Dakota in brief
Rapid City is the second most populous city in South Dakota and the county seat of Pennington County. Named after Rapid Creek, where the settlement developed, it is in western South Dakota, on the Black Hills’ eastern slope. In the neighboring Black Hills are the tourist attractions of Mount Rushmore, the Crazy Horse Memorial, Custer State Park, Wind Cave National Park, Jewel Cave National Monument, and Badlands National Park. Rapid City is home to such attractions as Art Alley, Dinosaur Park, the City of Presidents walking tour, Chapel in the Hills, Storybook Island, and Main Street Square. The city is split by a low mountain ridge that divides the city’s western and eastern parts. The population was 67,956 as of the 2010 Census, and the city has a population of nearly 67,000. In the 1940s Rapid City benefited greatly from the opening of Rapid City Army Air Base, later Ellsworth Air Force Base, an Army Air Corps training base. During the Cold War, the area constructed a series of Nike missile installations in the early 1960s. In November 1963, three Titan I missile launch sites were constructed; these sites contained a total of nine Titan I missiles in Rapid City’s general vicinity. They were all deactivated in early 1990s, and a new civic center focused on a civic center, more parking, paved streets, and paved streets was built in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The city’s population nearly doubled between 1940 and 1948, from almost 14,000 to nearly 27,000; the local population of Deadwood, the historic West town, is nearby.
Rapid City had survived a boom and bust and was developing as an important regional trade center for the Upper Midwest in the 20th century. In 1930, the Rapid City Chamber of Commerce sent a letter inviting Al Capone to live in theBlack Hills. The Black Hills had become popular in theLate 1890s, but Rapid City became a more important destination in the 1920s and 1930s. President Calvin Coolidge and the First Lady in summer 1927 announced that he would not seek reelection in 1928 from his summer office in Rapid city. In 1940, Gutzon Borglum, already a noted sculptor, began work on MountRushmore in 1927. The work was halted due to the US need to invest in buildup for its entry into World War II; the sculpture was declared complete in 1941. It was eventually named for the spring-fed Rapid Creek that flows through it. In February 1876 John Richard Brennan and Samuel Scott, with a small group of men, laid out Rapid City. The land speculators measured off a square mile and designated the six blocks in the center as a business section. Such merchants soon began selling supplies to miners and families to locate in the settlement. By 1900, Rapid City was a natural hub for the railroads that were constructed from the late 1880s from both the south and east. It is located on the edge of the Plains and Hills and its large river valley.
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This page is based on the article Rapid City, South Dakota published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 30, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
