Category: Headline
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When Words Become Weapons: Accusations, Accountability and the Cost of Getting it Wrong
On May 18, 2026, a federal jury in Nashville ordered YouTube personality Ryan Upchurch to pay $17.5 million to the father and grandfather of Kiely Rodni — a 16-year-old California girl who drowned in Prosser Creek Reservoir in August 2022. Her death was ruled accidental. No foul play. Multiple law enforcement agencies, the FBI, and…
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Rapid City Proactively Moves to Define Its Cement Plant Future
A century ago, South Dakota stepped in where private industry wouldn’t. With vast deposits of the raw materials needed for cement production sitting in the Black Hills and no private developer willing to build, Gov. Peter Norbeck championed a state-owned plant. Voters amended the state constitution to make it possible, and Dacotah Cement was born.…
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South Dakota Got Ahead of This. Here’s What it Means for Data Centers in Rapid City
Editor’s note: This is a developing story. The Rapid City Sentinel will update this report as the Sequitor Edge land transaction closes, city building permits are filed, and additional records become available. Corrections or new information can be sent to the Sentinel directly. Rapid City is about to get its first data center. The facility…
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The Snowball Effect: How a Bowl of Soup Can Help Your Neighbors in Rapid City
The anatomy of a financial crisis rarely starts with a single, massive catastrophe. More often, it’s the quiet pile-up of everyday setbacks. A flat tire, an unexpected repair, a surprise medical bill — suddenly, the monthly utility payment gets pushed off. Shannon Truax, Admin Operations Manager for the Rapid City Public Works Department, sees this…
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When A 9,000 Pound Spinning Boulder gets Tagged, Rapid City Shows Up
There’s a rock in Memorial Park that spins. Not metaphorically. Rockspinner 6 — an 11-foot-tall, 9,000-pound slab of granite from Stone Mountain, Georgia — is mounted on a bearing-filled base and will actually rotate if you push it. It took three people and a crane to place it on the Promenade at Memorial Park. Sculptor…
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South Dakota’s Parole Crisis Didn’t Start Monday
A Sioux Falls officer nearly died. The governor announced emergency reforms. But the system was broken long before this week — and the people who broke it aren’t the ones cleaning it up. On Monday afternoon in Sioux Falls, a police officer followed a woman into what turned out to be an ambush. A man…
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Where was the Box Elder Representation when the MPO Voted to Put a Railyard There?
On April 16, with the majority of its members not in attendance, the Rapid City Area Metropolitan Planning Organization’s Technical and Citizens Committee unanimously approved a 267-page study recommending that the RCP&E railyard be relocated to Box Elder. The mayor of Box Elder was not present. Neither was the City of Box Elder’s planning department.…
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The Tracks to Innovation Run Deeper Than Imagined in Rapid City
If you stand on the sidewalk outside Red Wing Shoes on West Main and look south across the street, you’ll see the historic spine of Rapid City: a maze of old industrial brick, an active freight line, and a whole lot of untouchable dirt. It’s a neighborhood where 19th-century railroad laws still dictate 21st-century reality.…
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Urban Fishing is Easy and Accessible in Rapid City even if you’re not a Goose
This guy wasn’t worried about a fishing license. But you might want one soon. Canada geese have claimed Memorial Pond for now — but with South Dakota’s Free Fishing Weekend coming May 15-17, the anglers won’t be far behind. Rapid City has several solid urban fishing spots that don’t require a long drive or a…