Custer State Park
A state park in the Black Hills with roughly 1,300 free-roaming bison, a wildlife loop road built for finding them, and granite spires you drive straight through.
Wildlife species
Works offline
Languages
Offline maps
Inside the Custer State Park app
A dedicated app for just this park — a complete offline wildlife guide, maps and ranger tips, built to work deep in the park where there is no signal. Download it before you go and use it the whole trip.
178 animals
A full illustrated wildlife guide with photos, calls and field facts for the species you will actually see here.
Works with no signal
The guide, maps and your sightings all work completely offline — download once before you set off.
Offline GPS maps
See exactly where you are and navigate the park confidently, even where there is no mobile network at all.
Self-drive routes
The best drives and loops for this park, plus gate times and camp information to plan each day.
Track your safari
Log every sighting and build your own species list — see how many animals you have spotted over the years.
8 languages
Available in English, Dutch, German, French, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese and more.
Custer wildlife
The Black Hills herd
Plus every bird and reptile in the park — 178 species in all — each with photos and field notes, so you know exactly what you are looking at.
1,300 strong
American bison
One of the largest publicly owned herds on earth. The Wildlife Loop Road runs straight through their range.
On the granite
Mountain goat
Descendants of animals that escaped a nearby park in the 1920s. Look on the rock above Sylvan Lake.
Famous beggars
Wild burros
Descendants of a retired trail herd. They will put their heads through your car window; feeding them is discouraged.
On the spires
Bighorn sheep
Reintroduced and now solid in the Needles area, often on the rock beside the highway.
Whole colonies
Black-tailed prairie dog
Towns along the loop road, with burrowing owls and coyotes working the edges.
Plan your visit
Know before you go
Best time
May–Jun, Sep
Late spring for bison calves — the orange “red dogs” — and September for the annual roundup and cooler light. Winter closes the Needles Highway.
Getting there
Fly or drive
Reachable by a scenic self-drive or a short regional flight from the nearest hub.
Health
A state park, not federal
Custer is run by South Dakota, so a national park pass does not work here; you buy a separate state park entrance licence. Bison have right of way and will not move for a horn.
Self-drive
Gates & times
Gates open at sunrise and close at sunset sharp; plan your loop around them.
“I have driven these parks for years and still open the app at every junction — knowing which road leads to which waterhole, and logging every sighting, completely changed how we travel.”
A Safari Guy regular
In short — Custer State Park map
- 152 km of road across 20 named routes, 11 of them tarred.
- 3 entrances: Game Lodge Entrance, Wildlife Loop Entrance and Sylvan Lake Entrance.
- 5 camps and lodges inside the park, 4 with a shop.
- Best route for wildlife: Wildlife Loop — bison, wild burro and pronghorn.
Custer State Park map: the roads, gates and camps
Twenty named routes make up the 152 km of game-viewing road inside Custer State Park. Eleven are tarred and nine are gravel or dirt, so most of the park is reachable in an ordinary car.
Three entrances let you in: Game Lodge Entrance, Wildlife Loop Entrance and Sylvan Lake Entrance. Which one you use decides your first hour, because the distance from each gate to the best early roads is not the same.
Inside there are five camps and lodges: Sylvan Lake Campground, Game Lodge Campground, Blue Bell Campground, Legion Lake Campground and Stockade Lake Campground. Of those, every one takes campers and four have a shop. There are also four picnic sites where you may legally leave the vehicle.
The animals our road data flags most often here are mule deer, bison, pronghorn, black-tailed prairie dog and coyote. Wildlife Loop carries the highest wildlife rating of any route in the park over its 29.3 km, for bison, wild burro, pronghorn and mule deer.
What the paper map at the gate will not tell you is which of those twenty routes is worth your morning. Our offline map rates every road separately for mammals, birds and landscape, and names the species recorded along it, alongside six marked sights. It works without signal, and without using your data abroad.
Custer is a state park rather than a national one, and it is one of the best wildlife drives in the United States regardless. Around 1,300 bison roam the southern grassland, and a loop road was built to take you through them.
The northern half is different country entirely — granite spires, pine forest and mountain lakes. The Needles Highway threads through it with tunnels so narrow that most motorhomes cannot follow.
The offline app
Inside the Custer State Park app
Your offline companion for Custer State Park — everything below keeps working with no phone signal, once you have downloaded the park.
- Offline maps & live GPS — your position, campgrounds, entrance stations, picnic areas and points of interest.
- 20 road sections with distances and driving times.
- 5 campgrounds — Sylvan Lake Campground, Game Lodge Campground, Blue Bell Campground, Legion Lake Campground, Stockade Lake Campground.
- Wildlife encyclopedia — 178 species of mammal, bird and reptile, with photos, ID tips and where to look.
- 4 picnic areas and 4 entrance stations, plus 6 viewpoints and landmarks.
- Safari logger — record every sighting with species, location and time.
- Available in 8 languages.
Subscriptions
Made for how you travel
One subscription unlocks the offline map, the full road and camp guide, the wildlife encyclopedia and the sighting logger.
North America subscription — monthly or yearly, and it unlocks every park we cover in the US and Canada, from Yellowstone to the Great Smoky Mountains.
Your sightings are yours to keep — everything you log stays on your device, even if your subscription ends.
Custer State Park is on Android first. The iPhone version is on its way — Yellowstone is already on the App Store.
Camps and lodges
Sylvan Lake Campground · Game Lodge Campground · Blue Bell Campground · Legion Lake Campground · Stockade Lake Campground
Plan your trip
Frequently asked questions
Is Custer State Park included in the America the Beautiful pass?
No. Custer is a South Dakota state park, not a national park, so the federal pass does not apply. You buy a state park entrance licence, valid per vehicle for several days.
Where do you see the bison herd?
The Wildlife Loop Road, an 29 km circuit through open grassland in the south of the park. Early morning and late afternoon are best, and the herd of about 1,300 moves, so it is genuinely different every day.
Can you drive the Needles Highway in a large vehicle?
Not easily. The tunnels are as narrow as 2.4 m wide and 3.6 m high, which rules out most motorhomes and large caravans. The road also closes in winter.
What is the Custer buffalo roundup?
An annual event in late September where riders drive the whole herd in for health checks. It draws thousands of spectators and is one of the few places you can watch a working bison herd on that scale.
