Custer State Park is so absolutely amazing that it's hard to find words to describe it. At 73,000 acres, it's one of the largest state parks in the country. As I've mentioned several times before on these pages, the South Dakota State Park System is truly progressive and somehow manages to keep offering more and more services all the time. Contrast this with the parks in my home state which are underfunded, are falling into disrepair and are slashing access to the campgrounds. I wish Minnesota cared as much about tourism and encouraging people to enjoy the great outdoors as South Dakota does.

Anyway, you'll find Custer State Park midway between Rapid City and Hot Springs. It's surrounded by the Black Hills National Forest, and bordered on the south by Wind Cave National Park.

The terrain is characterized by huge unbroken tracts of ponderosa pines, weird geology like granite Needles, and a large and varied animal population. And there are numerous trails, eight campgrounds, beautiful fishing streams, interpretive centers, scenic and wildlife driving tours, and more.

Since this is a State Park, you'll need an entrance pass. When we came in 1997, we knew that we'd be spending a good chunk of time here, and simply got an annual sticker for our car. This let us into Palisades State Park on the way home, too.

Learning about the Park

Custer State Park has so much to offer that you'll want to stop at a visitor center early on. We sought out the Peter Norbeck Visitor Center, shown in the photo to the right. (You can click the thumbnail to enlarge it to full size). This is on State Road 16A in the northeastern part of the park. There's another one, the Wildlife Station Visitor Center way down in the southeastern corner, right on the Wildlife Loop.

The Norbeck Center is housed in one of those classy buildings constructed by the CCC back in 1930s. You'll find quite a few of them in the Black Hills, including the Harney Peak Fire Tower described elsewhere. Inside is a great museum, but the architecture alone will keep you gawking for quite a while. And, of course, there's a good book and gift shop there.

While visiting, be sure to pick up some guides and maps to help you find your way around Custer State Park. The Black Hills topo maps that I raved about on another page include the Park, and are perhaps the best ones to pack in on a hike.

By the way, Peter Norbeck was a South Dakota legislator who back in the early 1900s saw the need for preserving this part of the Black Hills as a State Park. He worked tirelessly through the morass of governmental impedimenta to get the ball rolling. The Park today is proof of how effective he must have been as a lawmaker, and perhaps a wheeler-dealer. We owe him a big thank-you for thinking so clearly about the future. (Modern politicians, take note: what would you like to be remembered for?)

Camping under the Pines

There are some hoity-toity lodges and hotel types of things in the Park, but these are pretty easy to avoid by heading to one of the more out-of-the-way campgrounds. We chose the Blue Bell as being pretty far off the beaten path.

As the picture to the left shows, it's easy to relax in the Blue Bell campground. A dense canopy of ponderosa pines provides plenty of protection from the sun. The sites are well spaced, so you can sense a certain amount of privacy. We came fairly early in the season (always a wise move), and so not only got nice cool weather, but the crowds were greatly reduced as well.

Most our time in camp was spent reading, staring into space and resting weary leg muscles from major all day hikes on previous days. We also cooked some great food here. In fact, the scent of our homemade chop suey wafting through the campground prompted at least one comment from a hungry neighbor. And needless to say, we also enjoyed several cool beverages during our own personal social hour.

Within walking distance was a very pleasant showerhouse. And there was some sort of amphitheater thing with nightly programs, although we were usually cooking when they ran. (We always dawdle over supper, perhaps not getting around to actually eating until midnight.)

Speaking of cooking, we usually employed our trusty single-burner propane stove. The firewood available in the park was absolutely incapable of igniting, although it was very good at churning out volumes of choking black smoke as it smoldered.

Anyway, I'm not really very keen on fires when camping. There are thousands and thousands cords of wood burned needlessly every year in campgrounds (white man's fires, usually — meaning way bigger than required to get the job done), wasting a precious resource senselessly and only adding to this planet's air quality crisis. And out west anymore, the risk of wild fires is continuing to be a major cause for alarm. Anyway, during the spring, summer and fall when most people camp, there's really no need for extra heat. If anything, put on a long sleeved shirt and call it at that.

When my companion and I feel the need for ambient illumination, we light one of those citronella candles in a bucket. It's every bit as cheery on a dark night and smells good too. I'm also quite fond of candle lanterns, the type that collapse for backpacking and have a glass chimney for wind protection. You ought to give one a try — they're great for camping and best of all, don't make noise to annoy your neighbors like the gas ones do.

Sleeping Bolt Upright

One night we heard another camper pull in down the line, maybe around midnight or so, but didn't give it any more thought. The next morning I saw that it was a pop-up unit but that it hadn't been erected yet. A little later, a mother and two daughters wearily got out of the car hitched to it, looking a little worse for wear. It turns out they didn't know how to open the pop-up and had to sleep in the front seat of the car that night. We heard them asking around for instructions from other campers. Hmmm...

The camping here at Blue Bell was extremely peaceful. I remember cool nights, listening to the breeze whistle among the pines and the occasional whinny from the nearby stable. Well, there was one morning that things weren't quite so placid. Some doofus showed up way too early in an RV (always a bad omen), containing a wife who never came outside the whole time as near as I could tell, and two yapping Yorkshire terriers that did come outside far too often. I was still in the sleeping bag trying to catch a few more winks. My girlfriend was already out and about. She tells me that she waited with suppressed amusement, sitting on the picnic table, to see what would happen next. The Yorkies proceeded to bleat unabatedly, and then she noticed the twitching of our tent as I put on my shoes, still bleary eyed. Zip came down the tent door, and the ogre (me) appeared in full glory. I pierced the chap with my sternest glare and was able to make my point with an appropriate amount of cursing concerning "was that my wake-up call." The dingbat didn't really establish eye contact, so apparently my demeanor was sufficiently daunting. (I once wanted to be a professional wrestler.)

If Jedediah Smith or Jim Bridger has been passing through, I could have suggested two excellent pelts suitable for making hats from.

In all seriousness, I wish pet owners were a little more thoughtful about their impact on a campground. We all paid our money, and we all want a peaceful experience in the great outdoors. Watching over your pet, or better yet leaving it at home, would be the courteous thing to do.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

One morning, around 6 o'clock, I woke not to a sound, but to a vibration. There was a curious rumbling in the ground, not unlike an earth tremor. As I rubbed my groggy eyes and managed to pry them open completely, there framed in the tent window was the bottom half of a gargantuan face peering in at us. (Our tent is six foot tall, just for comparison sake.) Whoa!

A huge brute of a buffalo had wandered into camp, and circled our tent several times, peeping in (if that's the right word to describe what an eyeball larger than a billiard ball does). I quietly rolled over on my companion and whispered to her not to move an inch. My main concern was that the beast would stumble or trip on a guyline — a 2000 pound faux pas was not on my list of favorite ways to shuffle off this mortal coil.

After what seemed like an eternity (but was probably only two minutes or so), he moved on and plopped down across from a neighbor in a pop-up camper; see the picture to the right. He rested in that spot for most of the morning, and several of his companions wandered in from time to time. This was our first encounter with a buffalo, a truly memorable one.

We have since had more tête-à-têtes with them at Theodore Roosevelt National Park. As amusing as this all seems in hindsight, you need to know that buffalo can be seriously dangerous. They're huge, can outrun a human and have quirky temperaments. One minute they can seem placid, and the next totally deranged. We met a former ranger elsewhere in South Dakota who told us of an incident that happened back when she was on active duty. A chap was sitting on a picnic table, minding his own business and eating a sandwich. A buffalo wondered in, plodding along, and without warning charged the guy, bowling him over. He was killed. I've since heard it said that these creatures don't have the best eyesight, and perhaps something caught its eye and alarmed it...I don't know.

Big Smokey

As I've related above, we did a fair amount of simply lounging about at Blue Bell. But from time to time we'd stoke up for a burst of physical activity. Some of my favorite episodes here were hiking, and driving the National Scenic Byways (like the twisty Needles Highway), spinning around the pigtail bridges like a whirling dervish. Spotting the bighorn sheep on a drive to Mount Coolidge was also a memorable occasion.

But the most fun of all, I think, was the horseback riding. I alluded to stables above, and in fact Blue Bell campground does put on regular trail rides during the summer.

Our camp site, #2 I think it was, was not far from the path that the rides took, and so we saw a number of groups plodding their way along at various times throughout the day. It seemed like there were always about 20 people in them, with a staff rider at the front to lead and another one to bring up the rear and keep the party together.

One day we decided to get in on this. For one reason or another, we signed up for the ride at noon — it must have been a late breakfast or something. Anyway, the timing was perfect! Not a single other person had enrolled, I suppose with it being lunch hour. My girlfriend and I, along with the equestrian who guided us, had the trail to ourselves!

An Idyllic Family Outing

The pop-up camper in the picture above had some interesting inhabitants. They consisted of a father and mother, and two small girls around seven or eight years old. Picnic hampers, bicycles and lawn chairs gave it all a Norman Rockwell appearance. One day, over lunch, we heard them inside their camper, I guess also making a meal. All of a sudden there was a disquieting crash of a dish breaking. This was followed promptly by a child's voice uttering, "God damn you." We never heard a single word of reproach from the parents, and lunch continued more or less on an even keel.

This is the way to see Custer State Park, astride a steady and trustworthy horse, wandering back into areas no one else hikes. We roused up white-tail deer and all manner of interesting birds along the way, hugged the French Creek, a most beautiful and historically important stream, and waded among tall grasses. My horse was Big Smokey who had a bit of an asthma problem. And as usual with the horses I get, he was lazy, preferring to dawdle or to try to eat weeds or to head toward pine boughs with the intention of dislodging his passenger. Despite this intransigence, Big Smoky was a great companion, and I thank him for the ride into the outback of Custer State Park. I hope he thinks fondly of me from time to time when eating weeds or doing anything else he's not supposed to.

One final thing: as we hoofed it (literally) along the French Creek, we made the bend and came across a lone fly-fisherman, his wet line forming a figure-eight bead in the air. It was a lovely sight and made me think of Norman Maclean's A River Runs Through It. As we passed the angler, I noticed it was the guy with the yelping Yorkies...

Yup, it really was a great trip, and I've only told you a fraction of the wonderful experiences we had here. I'll finish the way I began: South Dakota really knows how to roll out the red carpet in a park, and Custer is the premier state park in the nation to my mind.

• Federal
  • Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)
  • National Scenic Byways
  
  
• State
  • Minnesota State Parks
  • South Dakota State Parks Homepage
  
  
• Municipal
  • City of Hot Springs
  • City of Rapid City
  
  
• Other Interesting Sites
  • About Buffalo
  • Candle Lanterns
  • Jim Bridger
  • Peter Norbeck
  • Norman Maclean's A River Runs Through It
  • Jedediah Smith