Planning commission defers action on shooting range camping area near Humboldt

By Dave Baumeister, County Correspondent

SIOUX FALLS – Using a combination of in-person and video-conferencing, the Minnehaha County Planning and Zoning Commission met for their monthly meeting on Monday, May 17.

While there were only three items on the agenda, the one that drew the most attention was a conditional use permit to allow a small camping area at Hunters Pointe Shooting Club south of Humboldt at 25761 260^th St.

The permit applicant, Isaac Chamnes, was looking to add up to eight camping spots at his facility.

But a neighbor who lives approximately one mile to the east, Charles Lueth at 45833 260^th St., was present through Zoom videoconferencing and spoke against the addition.

He complained that often people going to the shooting range end up in his driveway and sometimes get stuck.

He sees this as becoming more of a problem should people be pulling through with campers.

Traveling east from SD Highway 19 south of Humboldt, 260^th St. goes for a little over a mile, just past 457^th Ave., to the entrance of Hunters Pointe.

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That entrance is set back in some trees, and should people miss it, they continue down 260^th St., that turns into a one-lane minimum maintenance road and eventually becomes Lueth’s driveway, which is very difficult to turn around in.

Lueth and County Commissioner Jeff Barth both described the driveway as being very long and difficult to navigate.

The problem stems from what Lueth said was how Google Maps routes people coming from the east to get off Interstate 90 at the western Hartford exit, go south to 261^st St., traveling west to 459^th Ave., and north to a road not labeled by a street number, but what is Lueth’s driveway, which eventually does turn into 260^th St. and leads to Hunters Pointe.

GPS systems do map Lueth’s driveway to the southeast as 260^th St., but there is no street sign showing this.

There is a turn marked for 260^th St. off of 459^th Ave. about a mile north, but due to the interstate, it does not go through.

At the meeting, Chamness said he had no control over how Google did their maps.

However, the most recent look at Google Maps, as well as other GPS systems, did not show the route as Lueth described it.

All of those systems mark the road to Hunters Pointe and 45761 260^th St. as going south at the Humboldt exit on Highway 19 to 260^th St.

Although, if a driver misses the club’s entrance, they will still end up having to turn around, if possible, at Lueth’s driveway.

On the other hand, if drivers coming from the east or southeast plug in Lueth’s personal address on Google Maps, they will be routed to his southeastern driveway off of 459^th Ave.

Lueth did say he had been trying to get the map changed through Google, so the route they now use could be a recent change.

After hearing about potential problems at the meeting, the planning commissioners voted unanimously to delay any conditional use permit for Hunters Pointe until their next meeting on Monday, June 22 at 7 p.m. on the second floor of the Minnehaha County Administration Building at 6^th and Minnesota in Sioux Falls.

The two other items at the meeting garnered no negative comments and were approved.