It is the ultimate South Dakota debate that will never truly be settled. East River and West River residents share a state line, a capitol building in Pierre, and a sense of local pride, but that’s about where the similarities end. Sioux Falls and Rapid City sit on opposite ends of the map, holding the entire state in a never-ending tug-of-war. One has the larger population and corporate boom; the other has the iconic Black Hills, Badlands, and Mountain West grit. But behind the polite nods, how deep does the rivalry between South Dakota’s two largest cities actually go? Let’s take a look inside the great divide.
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Being Pulled in Two Different Directions
To say that Sioux Falls and Rapid City are part of the same state is technically true on a map, but for anyone who’s lived in South Dakota (East or West River), it feels like living in two completely different countries. They’re separated by hundreds of miles of prairie, America’s longest river dividing the state in the middle, and two totally different ways of life.
Crossing the Missouri River means something in South Dakota. On the western side, residents area all about cattle ranching, rugged individualism, and the Black Hills tourism economy. On the eastern side, the focus shifts to corn and soybean farming (Eastern SD gets much more rain), major healthcare and banking operations, and the state’s two leading universities, USD & SDSU.
To further the divide, eastern South Dakota has much more in common with cities like Fargo (to its north in North Dakota), and Minneapolis/St. Paul (to its east in Minnesota). In fact, most locals in Sioux Falls, Yankton, Brookings, Vermillion, and Mitchell all pull for the Minnesota teams in professionals sports…