Custer State park, SD 2019
One of the nation’s largest state parks, just 15 miles from the city of Custer, South Dakota’s premier State Park comprises 71,000 acres. Custer State Park has been home to diverse cultural heritages for thousands of years and has provided an array of scenic beauty and outdoor recreation for visitors since the early 1900s. The park is home to nearly 1,500 head of North American bison. Commonly known as buffalo, these massive mammals can grow to 6 feet tall and weigh more than 2,000 pounds. Other watchable wildlife includes whitetail and mule deer, antelope, mountain goats, elk, coyotes, burros, bighorn sheep, birds, wild turkeys and prairie dogs. Mountain lions and bobcats are also found in the park, but they are nocturnal and reclusive toward humans.
Custer State Park Map
The speed limit is 35 mph and cell phone service is spotty throughout the park. Bison are the park’s biggest attraction but remember these animals are dangerous, so please give them plenty of space. While hiking, biking or horseback riding in Custer State Park visitors should be aware of prairie rattlesnakes, ticks and poison ivy.
Granite Rock Formation #3
The granite rocks towering up out of the ground contribute to the highway's namesake. Igneous rocks are formed (crystallized) from molten magma. Cooling time and pressure determine what type of rocks are formed. Most, if not all, Igneous rocks in the Black Hills were formed (crystallized) at depth and as such are coarsely granular.
Granite Rock Formation #4
The Needles highway winds its way through spires also referred to as needles of granite that crystallized underground as it punched holes through the overlying sedimentary rock. The softer sedimentary rock eroded away leaving just this hard mass of once molten rock.
Needles Eye Tunnel
It gets its name from the peculiarly shaped rocks just outside of it. Prior to entering the tunnel stop to see the towering rock whose head looks like the end of a giant sewing needle. This impressively thin formation looks fragile yet it has been there for hundreds of years. This tunnel was blasted through sheer granite walls traversed by South Dakota Highway 87 also known as the Needles Highway. It stretches through 14 miles of granite structures and pine covered mountains.
Iron Creek Tunnel
Iron Creek Tunnel is located on the same highway as the Needles Tunnel. It is Nine feet wide and 11 feet 4 inches high. The roadway was carefully planned by former South Dakota Governor Peter Norbeck, who marked the entire course on foot and by horseback. Construction was completed in 1922.
Bison
Buffalo have had a place in Custer State Park since the first herd of 36 animals were brought to the park in 1914. Thriving in their native habitat, the herd quickly outgrew the amount of forage available on the park’s pastures and rangelands. Park managers faced the prospect of losing both the rangeland and the buffalo, but they knew that by occasionally gathering together almost all of the buffalo and culling a select few from the herd, the forage would be conserved and the buffalo and other grazing animals in the park would likely have enough to eat year after year.
The roundup continued through the 1940s and 1950s, but not annually. As a result, by the late 1950s, the herd was once again too big for the amount of available forage. For that reason, and because new regulations required herd managers to test the buffalo for brucellosis and other diseases, the roundup was made an annual event beginning in 1965. It’s now held every September.
The goals of the roundup have remained essentially the same over the years but in the modern era – since 1965 – the buffalo are sold at auction. The modern roundup has also become a major Black Hills tourist attraction, annually drawing ten thousand people or more.
Park staff and wildlife management professionals manage and lead the roundup but volunteer riders still play an important role in the event, just as they did in the 1930s. This video from 1991 shows volunteer and guest riders – including then-governor George S. Mickelson.
Praire Land #1
Accessed from the 18-mile Wildlife Loop. Winding through pine-covered hills, rolling prairies, and red-walled canyons, the Wildlife Loop is one of the highlights of a park. Here you can spot Bison, Big Horn Sheep, Praire Dogs, Pronghorn, Wild Burros, and Cayote just to name a few.
Roughlock Falls #1.
Roughlock Falls, located in a side canyon to Spearfish Canyon are one of the Black Hills' most beautiful areas and one of the most photographed spots. It is created by the Little Spearfish Creek which flows down a spectacular chasm, then tumbles off a 50-foot limestone ledge in a series of lacy cascades. This is an easy hike 2-mile round trip hike.
Just one hour and 35 minutes to Custer State Park on Highway 385.
Roughlock Falls #2
Pioneers traveling down the canyon used to lower their wagons down the drop by roughlocking the wheels to prevent them from rolling freely - hence the name of the falls.
Spearfish Creek
Surrounded by the Black Hills National Forest, Spearfish Creek is a fly fishing paradise and holds one of the finest populations of wild rainbow trout in the Black Hills. Classified as a permanent cold water fishery, Spearfish Creek averages 29 feet wide, and anglers can easily find a stretch of the creek all to themselves.
The creek is unusual because it freezes from the bottom up instead of icing over due to the very fast rate at which the creek flows. This speed prevents ice from forming except along the bottom of the creek bed and makes year-round fishing possible.
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