Most Spearfish residents are pretty patient. For a demonstration of this extraordinary patience, head over to Exit 14 (Wal-Mart Exit) and observe the drivers navigating their way through the blinking red lights. One-by-one, these patient souls take turns going over or coming off of the overpass. It’s slow, agonizingly slow, especially during the heavy traffic hours.

Now and then, the traffic lights at the Wal-Mart Exit are turned on. This is when the patience runs thin. Some folks are seen deliberately running the red lights while others are seen taking a quick nap or walking down to the gas station for a refreshment before it’s their turn to finally move forward.

“Massive lines of cars form and twist into knots when the traffic lights are turned on over at the Wal-Mart Exit in Spearfish.”

The South Dakota Department of Transportation designed the intersections and manages the traffic lights at Exit 14. The City of Spearfish is doing what it can to get the SDDOT to fix things properly. The SDDOT claims to be monitoring local traffic patterns in order to optimize for best results, but the question among locals still remains after many long months of patience: “What the **** is up with the traffic lights at the Spearfish Wal-Mart Exit???”

Please voice your opinion in the comments section below.

Hi Kids! Welcome to School!

While the rest of Spearfish has improved in removing snow from public streets, the Spearfish School District gets a failing grade when it comes to removing snow at the elementary schools. 

This morning I watched as kids at West Elementary struggled over 2-foot piles of snow just to get to the main cross walk. Other kids were seen walking down the sides of the street because there was no place to walk on the sidewalks. Parents struggled to find a place to pull over and let their kids out. Most resorted to dropping their kids off in the middle of the road, urging them to walk down the road to the entrance.

If the City of Spearfish can clean out the City Hall area and other such areas, how can they not channel resources to clean out the area where parents pick-up and drop-off their kids for school? It’s ridiculous, to say the least.

This isn’t some beach community struck by an odd snow storm. This is South Dakota. There is absolutely no excuse for not clearing the snow so our kids can make it to school safely and on time.

Construction crews in Spearfish demonstrated their genius recently. First, they stopped right in front of me with their work pickup on Jackson Blvd. Then, as I was manuevering around the pickup parked in the middle of the road, the workers jumped out and walked right in front of my vehicle without warning. I slammed on the brakes, yet they barely paid me notice.

OK, that can happen, I guess. We’re supposed to yield, right? Alrighty. I’ll let that one slide. What is totally outrageous is how the city blocked half the road all the way from St. Joseph Street down to the school crossing area – nearly a half mile! What were they thinking? Of course, they assumed they were going to chop holes around the wells/sewers/whatever and refill them with blacktop all in one day. Well, they should have checked the weather forecast. It snowed that night and left half the road in complete disarray.

Chaos ensued as drivers were unaware and unwarned that the lane they were driving suddenly came to an end. No gradual lane shifts – just plastic cones stuck across half the road. A job that should have taken a day to complete is now stuck because of the snowstorm.

How do these people get these jobs?