Vintage Sturgis Motorcycle Rally South Dakota T-Shirt 90s

The front says 58th Annual, 1998. The rally started in 1938, which makes sixty years — the count comes up short because there was no rally in 1942 or 1943. Gas rationing.

What began in 1938 was nine men racing motorcycles on a half-mile dirt track in front of about 175 onlookers. Clarence “Pappy” Hoel had bought the Indian franchise in Sturgis two years earlier and started a club called the Jackpine Gypsies; riders camped in his backyard and his wife Pearl fed them beans and weenies. Pappy’s contribution to the entertainment was riding his own bike through a wall of burning pine boards.

The rally sold its first printed T-shirts in 1940, all of them maroon. By the time Pappy died in 1989, attendance had reached 400,000.

This one carries the full dates — August 3rd through 9th — with an eagle, feathers, and a buffalo herd, printed by Tom’s T’s of Wyoming and dated ’98 in the fine print.

Nine racers and a burning wall, sixty years on.