South Dakota

Black Hills National Forest

From the 50 State Visitor Guide:

S.D.C.L. 2021 §§ 22-24B-1 through 22-24B-36

AWA Compliant 

Registration Triggers and Deadlines:

3 business days for initial registration and updates, §22-24B-2; however, state law includes Saturday as a business day. §37-24-1(2).

Per the S. Dak. SOR office, there is “wiggle room” in the 3 business day registration requirement for short term visitors, especially if you are passing thru on a road trip and not staying in one location for more than a few days. If your stay in any one place will exceed the 3 day requirement, visitors should “check in” at local police or sheriff dept. and provide info about intended length of stay.  Supposedly, if not more than 5-6 days you will not be required to register. “Check out” upon departure.

Residency/Presence and Other Restrictions:

Residency restriction: “No person who is required to register … may establish a residence within” 500 ft. from school, park, public playground, or public pool. 

§22-24B-23. “Residence” defined as the address a person lists for purposes of the sex offender registry.

Presence restriction: “No person who is required to register” may “loiter” within 500 ft. form school, park, public playground, public pool, or library unless registrant committed offense as a minor and was not convicted as an adult. §22-24B-24.  Petitions for exemption possible. 

Supposedly, short term visitors who check in & check out according to the procedure described above (Registration Triggers & Deadlines) would not be “required to register” & thus not subject to these restrictions during their visit.

Duration & updates:

10 years to life; Petition to remove – 5 years.

Updates every 6 mo. §22-24B-7.

1880 Train, Hill City

Most recent visit: September 2022

The litany of South Dakota’s residence and presence restrictions described above is long, but upon closer inspection you’ll notice that they only apply to a “person who is required to register.”  If you’re a short term visitor and avoid triggering an obligation to register, you’re off the hook. 

South Dakota is one of a handful of states that, by policy, treats a statutory very short (in South Dakota’s case three business days) visitor registration requirement as a “duty to check in” but holds SO visitor information separately pending a commitment to depart within a specified time (5-6 business days); your info becomes part of a “visitors registry” that is not made public. Other states that do this are Nevada, Alaska and Rhode Island.

You may be wondering why the South Dakota state SOR office would go out of their way to create a separate visitors registry when it’s not spelled out in state law. As a person who worked as a government bureaucrat his entire career (until I ruined my life), I’m confident I know the answer: work avoidance.

You see, although South Dakota has very short visitor registration requirement, it also has a standardized procedure available to remove you from its registry after departure.  What this means for a SOR office (or sheriff’s department) bureaucrat is that any time a visitor is forced to register, they have to do all the work of adding that person to their registry and posting it on their website. Then as soon as that person leaves the state they have to do all the work of removing that person from their registry and their website.  That’s double the work for somebody they really couldn’t care less about. Thus is born the separate, low effort “visitors registry.”

While I was updating all my state by state research in August 2022, the nice lady at the South Dakota SOR office came right out and confirmed this when she said, “We have hundreds of sex offenders coming to the Sturgis Bike Rally every year.  They typically stay more than three days but less than a week.  Why would we want to register all these people and then have to remove them a few days later?”

[As an aside, I was amused by how the SOR lady’s description of the Sturgis Bike Rally made it sound like an annual sex offenders’ reunion.  Hey, maybe NARSOL should hold next year’s national conference in Sturgis during the rally and make it official?]

The SOR lady stressed that all they are asking is that visiting registrants staying more than three days come in from the summer heat and check in at the local sheriff’s department, then check out when you leave.  No harm, no foul.

However, when I decided to go on a Dakotas Road Trip just a few days after completing my state by state research, I elected not to test this system. Instead, I entered the state (from Iowa) one fine Thursday in early September and crossed the state line into North Dakota less than three full business days later on Saturday.  As noted above, South Dakota is unique among the 50 states in that it counts Saturday as a business day.  Then after spending a few days in North Dakota I re-entered South Dakota on my way back to Iowa, which re-started the three business day clock because this state has no limit on return visits per month or year.

On my first pass through South Dakota I visited national parks and forests.  Badlands National Park.  Custer State Park (largest bison heard in North America – bigger than Yellowstone).  Wind Cave National Park (one of the best cave tours anywhere, and that’s saying something).  Black Hills National Forest.  All spectacular must-sees.  Also rode the 1880 Train in Hill City.  Although it’s a little hokey, it’s one of the best historic train rides I’ve been on owing to the length of the ride (3 hours), spectacular Black Hills scenery and well maintained track and equipment.

However, be advised that Mount Rushmore, while located within Black Hills National Forest, is actually a commercial concession which charges admission and a parking fee and hawks T-shirts and souvenirs the whole time you’re there.  Since you can see Mt. Rushmore from the surrounding roads you don’t have to endure all this unless you really want to get up close.

One place you’ll definitely want to see is Crazy Horse – the monument is truly great even though it’s still under construction, the museum and cultural center are the biggest, best and most authentic I’ve seen anywhere, and although you’ll pay dearly to see it all, at least you can know your contribution will go to support Native Americans completing the Crazy Horse project.

After all this purple mountains majesty above the fruited plains, I headed up U.S. 85 to see what North Dakota had to offer.  On my return trip through South Dakota I focused on Native America reservation tourism, which I will describe in a separate blog post that treats the Sioux Nations as something separate from either South or North Dakota – because they deserve special treatment.