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I have a colleague who informs me my school kids should have included Rapid Valley in the list of top 20 cities by population. On the map they were using, Rapid Valley is not listed as a city.
Help us out. Is Rapid Valley a separate community? Is it incorporated or is it included with Rapid City?
What is the poplulation there?
I know it has been 20 years since we lived in western SD. Two years ago we were out there to visit friends and relatives and I could not believe how the Rapid Valley area has grown.
Rapid Valley is not an incorporated city like Sturgis or Spearfish but is an area used for census purposes. It can be found in the World Almanac when it lists cities over 5000 people.
The 2007 population of Rapid Valley is listed at 8,034 on a demographic website that I like. I looked up the 20 towns you listed and found that 11 had gained population and 9 had less than in 2000. Adding Rapid Valley to the list would eliminate Winner whose current population was listed as 2,919.
Rapid Valley has a little bit under 10,000 people. Like said above, it is not an incorporated community but it is a census-designated place. It is not included with Rapid City's census.
Plans to incorporate Rapid Valley have failed multiple times in the past as have previous plans to annex it to Rapid City. However, there are pieces of it annexed to Rapid City every year.
A better example of a census-designated area would be Highlands Ranch, Colorado. It has a population of over 80,000 people but is not considered a city. If it was it would be the fifth largest city in Colorado.
It seems odd to me. I am used to the concept of having town and country. Rapid Valley in eastern South Dakota, Iowa, North Dakota, Minnesota, or Nebraska would be incorporated or annexed into a city. Having an urbanized area that is unincorporated does not make much sense to me, but it is based on what I am used to.
Rapid Valley is mostly just homes. It's a bedroom community for Rapid City. Just picture Brandon without a post office or a bar and that's Rapid Valley.
Better put up a post office, fire department, police department, and city hall buildings with a few schools and a business district. Then you have a town.
Most people out there do not want to establish city services. That means that they would have to pay a local tax and they would have to set up a local gov't which costs a lot. They rely on Rapid City for those types of things.
Rapid Valley has several large neighborhood committees too. Their snow removal is way better than Rapid City's too.
I've lived in Rapid City all my life, and I also, couldn't believe how much it'd grown. If it's not a separate community on paper, it sure could be. I was amazed on all the new places, it felt like a totally new town sprung up. Oh, and I made the mistake of taking a "shortcut" that I used to take a while back, yea, I ended up somewhere on Hwy 79 heading out to Hermosa.
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