Custer State Park Wildlife Loop Road

Custer State Park maintains one of the largest bison herds in the country, numbering well over a thousand animals that roam freely across the park's grasslands. The Wildlife Loop Road is laid out to pass through their range, and the encounter is genuine, these are wild animals living on open land, not penned for display, and the herd goes where the grass and the season lead it.

Each autumn the park stages a famous roundup, when riders on horseback drive the whole herd across the prairie so the animals can be checked and the herd kept healthy, a thundering spectacle that draws crowds. Bison once numbered in the tens of millions across these plains and were central to the life of the Lakota and other Northern Plains nations before being nearly wiped out. The herds at Custer are part of the long, slow work of bringing them back.

The most beloved characters on the loop are the burros, descendants of donkeys once used to carry visitors up to a nearby peak and later turned loose to roam the park. Over generations they have grown bold and friendly, and a band of them regularly walks right up to stopped cars, poking their heads toward open windows in hope of a snack.

The rest of the loop is thick with wildlife. Pronghorn, the fastest land animal in North America, drift across the grass; mule deer and white-tailed deer browse the edges; elk move through in the cooler hours; and prairie dogs stand sentry over their busy towns. Bighorn sheep and even the occasional mountain lion range through the wider park, though those are rarer sights.

The Wildlife Loop crosses one of the most striking transitions in the Black Hills, where the dark ponderosa pine of the higher country gives way to open, rolling grassland. That mix is exactly what draws the wildlife, since the grazers favor the prairie while the forest offers cover, and it makes for a drive whose scenery never settles into one thing for long.

Custer State Park sits within He Sapa, the Black Hills, sacred to the Oceti Sakowin and guaranteed to the Lakota by treaty before being taken after the discovery of gold. The grasslands the bison graze today are part of that homeland, and the drive is richer for holding that history in mind alongside the beauty of the land.

Wildlife is most active in the cool of early morning and evening, and that is also when the low light is loveliest across the golden hills, so those hours are the best time to drive the loop. Middays in summer are hotter and busier, and animals often bed down in the shade, though the bison can appear at any hour.

The pace is unhurried by necessity, because traffic slows or stops whenever animals are near or crossing, and the whole point is to let the wildlife come to you. Summer is the peak season, fall brings the roundup and turning color, and winter leaves the herds on a snow-dusted prairie under wide skies. Whenever you go, patience and a willingness to wait are what make the drive.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.