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Sunday, April 11, 2010

Harding County South Dakota's Car Capital

South Dakota's Motor Vehicle Division has some diverting statistics on motor vehicle registrations in our fair state. Naturally, our most populous counties have the most cars and trucks. But if you calculate vehicle registrations per 1000 people, you find that Harding County has the highest number of licensed vehicles proportionate to population. Harding County has 1952 licensed cars, trucks, SUVs, and vans for every 1000 people (and they don't have many more than 1000 people). Add in trailers, snowmobiles, and other road machines, and you get almost three registered sets of wheels for each Harding County resident.

The top ten counties for registered passenger vehicles per 1000 population:

CountyPopulation (est. 2009)
Car/Truck Regis./1000 people
Harding1123
1952
Potter
2053
1887
Campbell
1344
1789
Sully
1348
1690
Jones
1037
1661
Haakon
1777
1638
Perkins
2869
1563
Gregory
4003
1551
Hand
3238
1541
Hanson
3553
1537


Those high-vehicle counties are all relatively small counties. The ten counties with the lowest vehicles per population are an interesting mix:

CountyPopulation (est. 2009)
Car/Truck Regis./1000 people
Mellette
2042
926
Bennett
3348
898
Clay
13490
897
Ziebach
2552
853
Brookings
30,056
840
Minnehaha
183,048
824
Dewey
5969
740
Buffalo
2067
597
Todd
10,095
530
Shannon
13,727
448

Our largest county, Minnehaha, has the fifth-lowest number of registered vehicles proportional to population. (Keep bringing that ratio down, Minus Car and friends!) Of course, the concentration by geographical area still makes Sioux Falls a zoo. Beyond Minnehaha, the low registration numbers split between some of South Dakota's poorest counties and our two big campus counties, Clay and Brookings.

A few more interesting numbers from SDMVD:
  • Harding County also has the highest hauling capacity by population, with 672 trailers registered per 1000 people.
  • Custer County has the most motorcycle, moped, and ATV registrations: 162 per 1000 people.
  • Kingsbury County is South Dakota's snowmobile champ, with one snowmobile registered for every 20 people. (Todd and Buffalo counties report zero snowmobiles licensed.)
  • Hanson County has the most RVs registered per population, with more than one RV for every five people (218 per thousand). Lake County comes in second on that count, with about 1 for every 25 people (43 per thousand). Of course, a lot of those RVs and their drivers aren't actually here: Hanson and Lake both have businesses specializing in providing registration and mailboxes for tax dodgers. (But can we call them for jury duty?)
  • You'll find the most boats per people in Stanley, Day, and Marshall counties.
Check out the spreadsheet yourself!

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