The rally was a smaller competitor to the Four Corners Motorcycle Rally, formerly Ignacio Bike Week, held the same weekend in downtown Ignacio.<\/p>\n
Sugar Pine co-chairman Alan \u201cGrizz\u201d Seaton broke the news last week in a message posted on the rally\u2019s Facebook page.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Sugar Pine Ranch Rally will be going away for good,\u201d Seaton wrote. \u201cThe economy was and is still not good, and I guess the timing was just wrong, but the board of directors and the investors have voted to dissolve Montezuma Rally Inc., aka Sugar Pine Ranch Rally. Thank you all for your support and belief in us for the past seven years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Co-chairwoman Joyce Humiston confirmed the rally had been dissolved and would not be held in 2014.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t have enough support,\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019t really want to talk about it. I would have liked to talk about the rally and how advertisers could have helped us out.\u201d<\/p>\n
She declined to comment further.<\/p>\n
The rally was held Aug. 29 to Sept. 2 this year, with all of the usual biker rally staples: live music, beer, vendors and bikini and wet T-shirt contests.<\/p>\n
Sugar Pine Ranch, 40334 Colorado Highway 184, had space for 840 tent and 70 RV sites, according to the event\u2019s website.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s unclear how the rally\u2019s end could affect Mancos businesses. The town is about 3 miles from Sugar Pine Ranch and gets heavy tourist traffic during Labor Day weekend.<\/p>\n
Tina Maki, part of the family that owns Mesa Verde Motel, said a group of bikers fills the motel every year during Labor Day weekend.<\/p>\n
She wasn\u2019t sure if the group would come without the rally.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey may still come,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The rally\u2019s dissolution does not appear to be part of any wider trend.<\/p>\n
The area\u2019s competing rally, the Four Corners Motorcycle Rally, is going strong, said Mel Silva, a member of the rally\u2019s board and president of the Ignacio Chamber of Commerce, which owns the event.<\/p>\n
Four Corners\u2019 paid attendance grew 37 percent in 2013 from the previous year.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was just a real success,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Nationally, Harley-Davidson announced Oct. 22 that its third-quarter U.S. sales surged 20 percent compared with a year earlier, suggesting motorcycles are hardly waning in popularity.<\/p>\n
Silva said the Four Corners rally seems to be recovering after some down years.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe think we\u2019re on the path to building the rally back to where it was in its glory days,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
At its height in 2001, the Ignacio rally attracted 55,000 ticket-buyers on Saturday alone, Silva said.<\/p>\n
Silva said Four Corners reached out to Sugar Pine before this year\u2019s rally to discuss marketing the events together.<\/p>\n
Four Corners put up $8,000 for the effort, and Sugar Pine was asked to contribute $1,000.<\/p>\n