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:

County	Population (est. 2009)	Car/Truck Regis./1000 people
Harding	1123	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:

County	Population (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!