South Dakota — Credit Cards & Satellite Archive & Dark Matter in South Dakota

South Dakota runs on more than tourism. Sioux Falls is the country's real credit-card capital -- Citibank moved its entire credit-card operation there in 1981 after South Dakota abolished interest-rate caps, and Wells Fargo followed with a major site of its own; the sector still anchors the metro's finance economy. Just outside the city, the USGS EROS Center houses the country's entire archive of Landsat satellite imagery -- effectively every publicly available satellite photo of the US traces back through it. West of there, the Sanford Underground Research Facility, a mile beneath a former gold mine in Lead, runs one of the most sensitive dark-matter experiments on Earth and hosts the excavation for DUNE, the largest neutrino experiment ever built on US soil. Add the Black Hills and Mount Rushmore's real tourism economy on top, and South Dakota is three separate, real identities most coverage compresses into one.

Region Stats

Total firms 5

VC / investors 0

Companies 3

Schools 2

People 0

By Who For

Undetermined 3

Known For

Credit Cards

Satellite Archive

Dark Matter