In the Talking Heads' classic "Once In a Lifetime," the narrator cruises the acquisitive fast lane on autopilot, increasingly estranged from his own life, asking: "How do I work this?" or "Where is that large automobile?"
Maybe the answer is in a ditch in downtown Rapid City. Bikers and hikers on the trails of the Hanson-Larsen Memorial Park (HLMP) system may have noticed a couple rusting beaters improbably parked at the bottom of a draw and wondered, "How did it get here?"
There may be people out there with specific answers, but some folks take that kind of secret to the grave.
Here's what we know. In 2006, the foundation set up by Edna "Eddie" Marie Larsen bought the land around Cowboy Hill and began the process of transforming the rocky outcrop into a biking and hiking paradise. Before that, the Cowboy Hill area was owned by the local mineral and building materials company Pete Lien & Sons, with a packing plant on a nearby parcel, and of course the School of Mines has been representing on M Hill since 1912.
In the days before HLMP, the area was a bit of a downtown Wild West. "There would be random cars that would just show up abandoned there," recalls Holly Lien, Executive Director of Pete Lien & Sons. "Most of the time they were stolen vehicles used for joy riding and once they were stuck or inoperable the suspects would walk away and leave them. We used to get calls from law enforcement whenever a stranded vehicle was discovered and we were required to have them removed if they were unable to find the owner."
The Cowboy Hill scofflaw tradition seems to have dated way back. In 1922, the Rapid City Journal reported that a Mrs. O'Malley led police to two tin cans holding $3200 that her husband and some accomplices had robbed from a railroad switchman in Perma, Montana. The first can was discovered, "up on top of Cowboy Hill," and the second, "several rods north of the Mines 'M.'" The workers currently upgrading the "M" might want to discreetly watch out for old tin cans.
If you were high on Bob Seger and left an El Camino on Cowboy Hill back in the day, any old grudges are gone. Confess. People just want to know how they got there.