There was a time in Mound City when a person could stand in the middle of the street for half an hour before seeing a vehicle, said Campbell County Sheriff's Deputy Chuck Davidson.
These days, you can't do that for more than 10 minutes, he said.
Since the oil boom started in North Dakota, Campbell County residents said, there has been a significant increase in the traffic, especially the number of trucks passing through the town, where a stretch of U.S. Highway 83 runs through.
On a recent afternoon, 31 trucks passed through in one hour.
Daily traffic counts for Highway 83, which were tracked 5.5 miles south of Mound City, were provided by Jeff Brosz, a transportation specialist of the South Dakota Department of Transportation.
In 2011, an average of 381 trucks per day passed through that area.
Although that is down by 33 from 2010, it is up from the 232 that passed through in 2005 and 247 in 2006.
Campbell County Sheriff Lacey Perman said more citations and warnings have been issued, and there have been a few more accidents. However, there's been no increase in crime, he said.
"I think our visibility helps keep the accidents down," Perman said.
Bernie Huber, who has owned and operated Bernie's Bar and Beefstro for more than 30 years in Mound City, chuckled as he talked about the sudden surge of traffic through the city of 83 people.
"If I got a dollar for every vehicle that went through here, I wouldn't need to work. It's unreal," Huber said.
Highway 83 runs from Brownsville, Texas, near the border of Mexico to Westhope, N.D., which sits right on the edge of Canada. Along the way, is a direct route from Pierre to Minot, N.D., a city with more than 40,000 people that is about 50 or more miles away from many of the oil fields.
Bernie Larson, a Campbell County resident, said there's always been some traffic passing through the city because Highway 83 goes straight from Canada to Mexico, but he said a lot more trucks have been driving by over the past couple of years since the oil boom started.
Shirley Moser, another Campbell County resident, said the trucks keep driving throughout the night, but they don't wake anyone up.
Huber said the extra traffic isn't a major nuisance, but it doesn't help his business at all because all the trucks just drive straight on through without stopping. He said he doesn't worry much about it because he can't change it anyway.
"They ain't gonna reroute it whether we like it or not," Huber said.