Lintz Bros. Pizza: A place of good pizza and history

In Hermosa, South Dakota sits Lintz Bros. Pizza, a locally owned restaurant with delicious food and an interesting backstory. Owner Brian Lintz recalls how the restaurant came to be.

“Back during the 50th anniversary of the Sturgis Rally, my parents actually had a little campground that they had just south of here that we called the South 60 Campground,” said Brian. “And a mutual friend of my dad’s, Charlie Decker, had actually started up the place down in Oglala Dam called Lakeside Pizza. And so he had us come down and try it one time and said, ‘Hey, if you ever would like to put that into your little campground, why don’t we look at doing something like that?’ And so we had done that and ran that well into the highway expansion when the four-lane came through.”

Part of their clientele, Brian says, was Mt. Rushmore Telephone Company. And their owner, Wes Hansen, would bring his summer crews out every weekend.

“And so we would come out there and talk with him and say, ‘Gosh, if you ever built anything closer to Hermosa, we’d like to go into it with you,'” Brian recalled.

Brian Lintz

In February 2005, Brian’s family had quit doing the pizza place because the four-lane highway took it out. But Wes’s son, Bruce, gave Brian a call that changed everything.

“And he’s like, ‘Dad passed away. But before he did, he made his promise that we were going to build closer to Hermosa to give you a call, would you like to still do it?'”

So Brian took a gamble and the family went with it. Lintz Bros. Pizza then opened in September 2005.

On Dec. 7, 2015, a fire broke out in the building, and Brian says it was “pretty much a total loss.” But that didn’t mean the business was a total loss, and Lintz Bros. Pizza made some changes as they rebuilt.

“Before it was a lot smaller. Now it’s the same a square footage on the bottom, but we put a loft up top and made the kitchen bigger and more storage room and stuff,” said Brian. “So it’s been fortunate that everything that we’ve needed to grow, we’ve been able to.”

Not only does Lintz Bros. Pizza have an interesting history, they make some good pizza. When the restaurant first opened up, everything was made to order.

Eventually, Brian started experimenting with the pizza.

“I started working on different combinations, and as the menu has grown, we’ve done the Oriental Texas Tornado, we’ve done a number of the pizzas, the Lean Greek, the Big Fat Greek Pizza, The Pie-Mac.”

Brian says they don’t skimp on the toppings, and a large pizza contains one pound of cheese!

“So the value is a lot better here than in most places, just because, you know, you can feed a family of four for under 30 bucks, and especially now, with inflation, cost of groceries and everything, you know, we’re feeling that, too,” Brian said. “But we still are working our hardest to try to put on a quality, affordable meal for a family.”

Besides pizza, Lintz Bros. Pizza also offers chicken wings, cinnamon sugar bread bites, garlic parmesan bites, cheese steaks, jalapeño popper cheese sticks and a nice selection of beer.

“I always wanted to have a place where, you know, not quite the Cheers thing, but, you know, my family grew up in sports and it just, sports brings together so much emotion and family and togetherness and stuff. And it was a nice thing for us to be able to have,” said Brian.

Check out their website for more information.