STURGIS, SD – – The white steeple that once stood on top of the America’s Founding Fathers tourist attraction on Highway 16, has a new home …. and a new purpose for Sturgis Rally goers.
Now the steeple sits at the Full Throttle Campground and Saloon, just outside of Sturgis. The campground, which already offers multiple events throughout the Rally, looked to the steeple for its next source of venue enhancement.
Campground employee Kimm Lischefska says the location is already a testament to recycling. While many of the pieces featured at the iconic spot are vintage decorations, she says that much of it would have ended up in a scrapyard – a probable fate of the steeple that graced the top of a building constructed as a replica of Independence Hall in Philadelphia. It housed the America’s Founding Fathers at Independence Hall, a tourist attraction that offered tours and narrative stories of how the United States of America began. It opened in 2014 and closed in 2020.
According to Lischefska, the steeple will live on at its present location and will be put to good use. She says the plan is to transform the white steeple as part of a wedding chapel.
Lischefska works at the Full Throttle Campground and Saloon as a mixologist, tour guide, administrative assistant, and now wedding coordinator and hopes to be ordained before the chapel is open for the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally August 6-15.
