‘Rush Hour’ Comes to Land of the Sioux

Almost 125 years after Chief Red Cloud refused to sign a treaty with the federal government to allow a road to pass through Oglala Sioux territory, the Pine Ridge Reservation will get its first traffic signal.

“The Pine Ridge reservation will remain the land of Chief Red Cloud, but it will have a stoplight,” Mayor G. Wayne Tapio said Wednesday.

The light will be placed in the center of Pine Ridge at Highways 407 and 18. The village, in the southwestern part of the state, has a population of 5,000. Tapio said that traffic passing through from outlying communities “makes rush hour risky.”