What to Do in the Black Hills of South Dakota: 15 Picks Beyond Rushmore

What to Do in the Black Hills of South Dakota: 15 Picks Beyond Rushmore

Custer State Park

Custer State Park is 71,000 acres just southwest of Mount Rushmore, and it is the single best reason to spend an extra day in the Black Hills.

• 1. Wildlife Loop Road, an 18 mile drive through prairie and pine hills where you are likely to see part of the park's free-roaming bison herd, about 1,300 animals, along with pronghorn, elk and the begging burros near the road. Early morning or evening gives the best odds.
• 2. Needles Highway, a 14 mile drive through granite spires and two tight tunnels (Needles Eye and Iron Creek), built in 1922 and closed to vehicles from the first snow through about April 1 each year.
• 3. Sylvan Lake, a small granite-ringed lake at the west end of Needles Highway, good for an easy walk around the shore or a swim in summer.
• 4. Black Elk Peak, the highest point in South Dakota at 7,242 feet, reached by a moderate trail from the Sylvan Lake area.

A Custer State Park vehicle license runs $25 for seven days as of 2026, separate from any national park pass, since it is a state park. Confirm the current fee on the South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks site before you go.

Wind Cave National Park

• 5. A cave tour, underground on ranger-led routes through one of the longest cave systems in the world, known for its boxwork calcite formations found almost nowhere else.
• 6. The surface trails, over 30 miles of them through mixed grass prairie and ponderosa pine, open to off-trail hiking if you want to get away from the road entirely.
• 7. The 20 mile driving tour, a gravel loop from the visitor center along the park's western and northern edge, good for wildlife without leaving the car.

Spearfish Canyon

8. Spearfish Canyon Scenic Byway is a 22 mile drive through the northern Black Hills, between thousand-foot limestone walls, in the opposite corner of the region from Custer State Park. Three named waterfalls sit along it: driving north from the Cheyenne Crossing junction, you pass Roughlock Falls and Spearfish Falls near the town of Savoy, then Bridal Veil Falls closer to the city of Spearfish, visible right from the road. Roughlock Falls needs a short walk from a parking area; the other two are quick stops.

Deadwood and Nearby Towns

• 9. Deadwood's historic downtown, the gold rush town where Wild Bill Hickok was killed in 1876, now a National Historic Landmark with casinos in the old storefronts.
• 10. Mount Moriah Cemetery, above Deadwood, where Hickok and Calamity Jane are both buried.
• 11. Sturgis, known for its August motorcycle rally, worth a stop the rest of the year for its small downtown and the Sturgis Motorcycle Museum.

Caves and Underground Sights

12. Jewel Cave National Monument, the third longest cave in the world by mapped passage, west of Custer. As of this writing, cave tours are suspended for an elevator replacement project, though the visitor center stays open; check nps.gov/jeca for the current status before planning around it.

A Few More Picks

• 13. Crazy Horse Memorial, the mountain carving in progress since 1948, with a visitor center and museum that stay open even as the sculpture continues.
• 14. Iron Mountain Road, the drive into Mount Rushmore from the south, known for its pigtail bridges and tunnels framing the monument.
• 15. Badlands National Park, about an hour east of Rapid City, a different landscape entirely of striped rock formations, and an easy add-on to a Black Hills trip. See our Black Hills hikes guide for trail options across the region.

Where to Base Yourself

Rapid City is the practical choice for most trips: an airport, the widest range of hotels, and drive times of under an hour to everything on this list. Custer, inside the loop formed by Custer State Park, Wind Cave and Jewel Cave, puts you closer to that southern cluster and cuts your daily driving if those are your priority. Deadwood works if the historic downtown and its casinos are the draw, or if you are pairing this trip with Sturgis and the northern Black Hills. None of these towns sits more than about an hour from any other stop on this list, so the choice comes down to which sights you want to wake up closest to rather than which town is more central.

Drive Times From Rapid City

When to Go

Late September brings one highlight worth timing a trip around if you can: the Custer State Park Buffalo Roundup, when riders move the bison herd into corrals for the annual health count, usually the last Friday in September. Outside that week, June through August is the busiest and warmest stretch, and Needles Highway and most Black Hills roads are clear from May into October, though check conditions if you are visiting at the edges of that window.

Have Us Plan Your Black Hills Trip

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