STURGIS, S.D. - As her boys scamper about the state park at Bear Butte, Anne White Hat gazes at the peak that dominates the grasslands off the northern Black Hills.

"I've grown spiritually just by being here," she said.

For White Hat and other Dakota Indians, for the Cheyenne and other Plains Indian tribes, this is sacred ground: guidepost and shrine through centuries, the place where Crazy Horse sought spiritual guidance and where today's warriors come for healing fasts after returning from Iraq.

But if the mountain is sacred to some, the grasslands surrounding it are prime real estate, each August teeming with the great leathered shoal that converges for the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.

Open-air watering holes such as the Drag Pipe and the Full Throttle Saloon already exist - for a week or two a year - a few miles from Bear Butte. Massive outdoor crash pads such as the Buffalo Chip Campground, where thousands gather to cheer strippers and such acts as Lynyrd Skynyrd, also have brought the Sturgis rally closer to the sacred site.

Now, 2 miles from the mountain's base, an Arizona developer has scraped the prairie and poured foundation for a new 22,500-square-foot biker bar, a 150,000-square-foot asphalt parking lot, a sprawling biker campground and an amphitheater with space for more than 30,000 people and a stage "constructed to meet the specifications of the biggest music acts known to mankind," according to his Web site. Just to the south, a Sturgis developer is seeking a full liquor license for another biker bar, campground and concert complex.

In response, Indians have organized the Bear Butte International Alliance to resist what White Hat calls "this boisterous desecration." They seek a 5-mile buffer between the butte and the annual partying near the site in western South Dakota.

Last month, the local county board granted Arizona developer Jay Allen a beer license for his 600-acre development, then refused to accept petitions asking that the decision be put to a countywide vote.

The landowners' right to develop their property trumps the Indians' concerns, said Curtis Nupen, a Meade County commissioner.

"I have granddaughters who are part Native American. I understand the culture pretty well," Nupen said. "Their religious rights are pretty well looked after. But Bear Butte is enjoyed by all people. My sons and I have climbed to the top.

"It's not just for Native Americans."

Nupen said the county requires only that a person be of good character to establish a business in an appropriate location, and there are precedents in the Bear Butte area.

"I don't enjoy the noise and the crowds, but it's something we've learned to live with," he said. "Most people would rather not have more liquor licenses out there, but it's a person's right to start a business. That's always been the philosophy."

Hank Bruch, 75, has cattle on land facing three sides of the butte. "Nobody likes the (rally's) disruption of the tranquility," he said. "But we do believe in property rights. It's how we make our living out here."

Before the butte became a state park, the Bruchs and their neighbors "used to go up there for sunrise Easter services," he said. "It used to be for everybody, and a lot of what the Indians say now is just made up.

"They can make a new Vatican City out of it, but that doesn't change the history."

White Hat operates a nonprofit women's health center from her home at the base of the butte. Her husband, Jay Red Hawk, teaches horseback riding and archery to children from Indian schools and helps area ranchers with branding.

Each day, he sets out food for spirits at the butte, and he and White Hat regularly gather the boys - Flying Hawk, 7, Bear Shield, 3, and Winter Buffalo, 2 - for meditation there.

"When these guys are our age, what's the face of this land going to look like?" White Hat asked as the kids played in the park. "I don't want my babies to have to stand in front of those stone-faced commissioners then and see they still aren't hearing what we're saying."

Red Hawk met with Allen at the sprawling Broken Spoke Saloon in Sturgis. Shuttered now, waiting like other establishments that exist only for rally week, it is one of several "world's biggest biker bar" complexes Allen owns in such places as Daytona, Fla.

"We were very respectful," Red Hawk said. "We told him it wasn't just a native issue, but a community issue. Nobody wants to stop the rally, but we don't want it coming out here."

Allen did not respond to requests through his Sturgis attorney for an interview.

Some white ranchers have joined with the Indians, as they did four years ago to stop construction of a firing range near the butte.

"It takes all of us, people from all walks of life, to defend this land," Red Hawk said.

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.shns.com.)