The 55mph speed limits on the highway contributed to motorists driving past the town without stopping, sending the economy into a nosedive from which it never recovered.

This severe local economic damage today is sometimes referred to in South Dakota as "Rockerville Syndrome" and has had a significant bearing in the construction of new bypasses and highway improvements as recently as 1998 and 2001, in and around such small towns as Hill City and Corson.

Today, several subdivisions and rural residential areas have been built around Rockerville, which also has a sawmill and other commercial activities, leaving the small town rather like a doughnut.

Also, the west is Beretta Gulch, US Forest Service land well known to locals as a popular shooting range, and the Keystone Wye, where US 16 and US 16A divide, and famous for what was once the world's largest timber arch bridge.

[2] A geological depression located in the narrow middle valley of Spring Creek, made famous in the 1930s serving as a discharge site for the Explorer II being two US Army and Smithsonian Institution balloon launches sending men to the Stratosphere.