This South Dakota park has granite spires, house-sized boulders, and bison that stop traffic daily

It’s bigger than you think and wilder too

Custer State Park covers 71,000 acres in South Dakota’s Black Hills, and it has been doing things its own way since 1919.

You’ve got bison wandering across the road, burros trotting up to your car window, and a mountain that sits higher than anything east of the Rockies.

Three scenic drives cut through granite spires and open grassland, and there’s a lake ringed by boulders the size of houses. The park doesn’t try to impress you.

It just does.

Where 1,300 bison still roam the open grasslands

South Dakota’s first and largest state park holds one of the biggest publicly owned bison herds in the world, roughly 1,300 animals moving freely across rolling prairie, granite hills, and pine forest.

Drive the scenic routes and you’ll hit what locals call “wildlife jams,” moments when a bison or a whole herd decides the road belongs to them and traffic just waits.

Beyond bison, the park shelters elk, pronghorn, bighorn sheep, mountain goats, mule deer, white-tailed deer, prairie dogs, and cougars.

A gold rush general and a rancher who saved the herd

Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer led an expedition through this land in 1874, and the park carries his name. By 1912, after a land exchange with the federal government, the area became Custer State Forest.

Governor Peter Norbeck pushed hard to make it a state park, and on July 1, 1919, it became one. But bison nearly didn’t make it that far.

Rancher Scotty Philip had been saving the species from near-extinction, and 36 of his bison came to the park in its early years.

The Civilian Conservation Corps shaped much of what you see today, building the park’s stone-and-timber structures through the 1930s.

Needles Highway squeezes through tunnels cut from solid rock

Fourteen miles of road, some of it barely wide enough for one car, wind through granite spires and pine forest on Needles Highway. Governor Norbeck didn’t draft this route at a desk.

He walked and rode the entire course on horseback before construction wrapped up in 1922. The Needles Eye Tunnel measures about 8 feet wide, and you hold your breath a little going through it.

The highway takes its name from the needle-like granite pinnacles that shoot straight up along the route. Plan your visit for spring through fall, because the first snowfall closes the road until April.

Wildlife Loop Road puts elk, pronghorn and prairie dogs right outside your window

The 18-mile Wildlife Loop Road curves through open grassland and pine-covered hills, connecting the State Game Lodge area to Blue Bell Lodge.

Bison cross here regularly, along with pronghorn, elk, deer, bighorn sheep, prairie dogs, and wild burros. Go early in the morning or close to sunset for the best chances of seeing animals on the move.

Give yourself at least 90 minutes, maybe two hours, because a bison herd in the road doesn’t care about your schedule.

The begging burros will walk right up to your car

About 50 feral burros wander the park, and they have no fear of people or vehicles. Their ancestors carried visitors up to the summit of what is now Black Elk Peak.

When those rides ended, the burros got released into the park and never left.

Their descendants have been working Wildlife Loop Road ever since, pressing their noses against car windows and looking for food. Families tend to love them.

Photographers never seem to put the camera down. They’re bold, they’re friendly, and they show up when you least expect it.

Iron Mountain Road lines up Mount Rushmore in three tunnels

Iron Mountain Road runs 18 miles from Custer State Park to Mount Rushmore National Memorial, and it was built to show off both.

Three narrow tunnels along the route frame Mount Rushmore in the distance, so the monument appears at the end of a stone corridor as you drive through.

The pigtail bridges, wooden structures where the road spirals over itself, let drivers gain or lose elevation fast without blasting the hillside.

Governor Norbeck directed the construction in the 1930s, and the road now sits within the nearly 70-mile Peter Norbeck National Scenic Byway.

Sylvan Lake sits inside a ring of massive granite boulders

At roughly 6,200 feet, at the top of Needles Highway, Sylvan Lake has been turning heads since 1881 when Theodore Reder dammed Sunday Gulch to create it.

Granite boulders crowd the shoreline, some of them big enough to cast real shade. You can walk the gentle one-mile loop around the water, swim, fish, or rent a kayak or paddleboard.

The lake also serves as the starting point for the trail up Black Elk Peak, so it’s a hub for hikers working their way higher into the hills.

Black Elk Peak tops everything east of the Rocky Mountains

At 7,242 feet, Black Elk Peak stands as the highest summit in the United States east of the Rockies.

The trail from Sylvan Lake covers about 7 miles round trip, and the Civilian Conservation Corps stone fire lookout tower at the top, built in 1939, is open when you get there.

On a clear day you can see into four states: South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, and Montana. The peak was renamed from Harney Peak to Black Elk Peak in 2016, honoring the Oglala Lakota holy man Black Elk.

Trails cut through granite spires and Sunday Gulch canyon

The Cathedral Spires Trail runs about 1.6 miles round trip through a canyon of towering granite columns along Needles Highway, and you can link it with the Little Devils Tower trail for more mileage and some rock scrambling at the top.

Near Sylvan Lake, the Sunday Gulch Trail loops 2.8 miles through one of the park’s prettiest stretches of terrain.

The park covers enough ground and enough elevation change that you can find trails suited to a short walk or a full day of climbing.

Two presidents slept here and a poet laureate built a cabin

The State Game Lodge went up in the early 1920s, built from native stone and timber, and it’s on the National Register of Historic Places.

President Calvin Coolidge used it as his Summer White House in 1927, staying three months. President Dwight D. Eisenhower came through in 1953.

Elsewhere in the park, Badger Hole was the home of Charles Badger Clark, South Dakota’s first Poet Laureate, appointed in 1937.

His cabin stays as he left it, and a trail runs from the property into the surrounding woods.

Every September, cowboys drive 1,300 bison into corrals

On the last Friday of September, cowboys and cowgirls on horseback drive the entire bison herd across the park and into corrals for the annual Buffalo Roundup.

More than 20,000 people show up to watch, and the American Bus Association has called it one of the top events in North America. After the herd gets sorted, animals are branded, tested, and treated.

Several hundred bison go to auction each year to keep the herd at a size the grasslands can support.

The three-day Buffalo Roundup Arts Festival runs alongside the event, with more than 140 vendors, food, and live entertainment.

Explore Custer State Park in South Dakota

You can reach Custer State Park in the southern Black Hills about 35 minutes from Rapid City. The visitor center sits at the junction of US Highway 16A and Wildlife Loop Road and stays open year-round.

Wildlife Loop Road runs year-round as well, though Needles Highway and Iron Mountain Road close for winter.

The park’s five lakes, including Sylvan, Legion, Center, Stockade, and Bismarck, allow swimming and fishing with a valid South Dakota license.

The Custer State Park Bison Center, which opened in 2022, drew more than 100,000 visitors in its first season.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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