Welcome to Sturgis
Posted by: 
YoSam.
N 44° 24.879 W 103° 29.940
13T E 619500 N 4919024
The Eastern welcome sign, very different from the western one.
Waymark Code: WMPK8R
Location: South Dakota, United States
Date Posted: 09/12/2015
Views: 7
County of sign: Meade County
Location of Marker: Blanche St. & Lazelle St., E. city limits, Sturgis
Plaque Erected by: The City of Sturgis and The Sturgis Area Arts Council.
Date Plaque & Statue Erected: June 2002
Text Historian: Bob Lee.
Sturgis Statue Sculptor: Edward E. Hlavka
Statue Commissioned by: The City of Sturgis and The Sturgis Area Arts Council
The Welcome sign is a brick landscape wall to evelvate the statue of General Sturgis, and to the face of his statue are two young children saluting in military style and the General rides by.
Historic Plaque in front of statue reads:
Colonel Samuel D. Sturgis, for whom the town of Sturgis is named, came from a military family that included officers who had served in the American Revolution and the War of 1812. He graduated from West Point in 1846 and was promoted to the rank of Major General during the Civil War. He commanded the famed Seventh U. S. Cavalry from May 6, 1869, until his retirement in 1886. One of his sons was killed in the historic Battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876.
Another son, Samuel D. Sturgis II, was a general in World War I and a grandson, Samuel D. Sturgis III, became a general during World War II. Colonel Sturgis was one of the earliest post commanders at nearby Fort Meade when it was established in 1878 with his Seventh Cavalry as the principal garrison. He was a member of the Townsite Company that founded the town named for him. He was also a vigorous booster of the Black Hills and an active participant in the early development of the region. His retirement at Fort Meade on June 11, 1886, at age sixty-five, marked the end of forty years of outstanding service to his country. He died at St. Paul, MN, on September 29, 1889, and was buried with honors at the Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.