Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota is surrounded by other units of the National Park System, with interesting stops in between those park units to make worthwhile side trips you should consider.
Area map around Wind Cave National Park / NPS file
Travel SD 87 from the Wind Cave visitor center all the way to the end of the park past Rankin Ridge trailhead and Sanctuary trailhead and you’ll drive right into this state park. Custer State Park offers amazing views of Black Hills scenery and plenty of opportunities for bison photos (no selfies, please) from a herd of nearly 1,400 behemoths. There’s biking, boating, birdwatching, hiking, history, swimming, and picnicking to fill your day, with 9 campground choices in which to pitch your tent or park your RV for the night.
Mount Rushmore National Memorial
A view of the Presidents from Avenue of the Flags, Mount Rushmore National Memorial / NPS file
Depending upon which route you travel (38 mi/61.2 km via US 385 N or 29.4 mi/47.3 km via SD 87 N), you’ll arrive at this unit of the National Park System that tells the story of the birth, growth, development, and preservation of this country through the enormous faces of four presidents carved into the side of 5,725-feet-tall (1,745-meter) Mount Rushmore, known as Tunkasila Sakpe Paha, or Six Grandfathers Mountain by the Lakota Sioux. Not only will you learn the history of the presidents, but you’ll marvel at both the vision of the man responsible for selecting those four presidents, and the monumental work sculpting those faces into the mountain.
Exploring the Target Room of Jewel Cave during the Discovery Tour, Jewel Cave National Monument / Rebecca Latson
At a little under 30 miles (48.3 km) further from Wind Cave National Park, Jewel Cave is an excellent venue for more guided cave explorations of one of the longest caves (currently 220 mi/354 km) within the U.S. You can reserve a cave tour online through recreation.gov, or check on available tickets in person (first-come, first-served). You’ll understand why this caved is called Jewel Cave.
Although a bit of a drive from Wind Cave, a visit to Wall Drug may be combined with a trip to Badlands National Park and Minuteman Missile National Historic Site / Rebecca Latson
Although a bit of a drive from Jewel Cave, a visit to Wall Drug may be combined with a trip to Badlands National Park and Minuteman Missile National Historic Site / Rebecca Latson
If you don’t mind a slightly longer drive (94 miles / 151.3 km), you should check out Wall, South Dakota. How could you not stop at a place you see advertised on billboards spaced maybe a mile apart (1.6 km), spanning 650 miles (1,046 km) from Minnesota to Wyoming? And that doesn’t even count the signs people have seen advertising this place in other countries such as Morocco, Amsterdam, and London.
Wall Drug is sort of an oasis in the middle of the South Dakota prairie. There’s a restaurant, art gallery, and small museum. You can purchase groceries, souvenirs, pharmacy items, cowboy boots, and Black Hills Gold jewelry, along with ice cream and ice water. As a matter of fact, free ice and ice water is what started this town on the path to national and international fame.
Badlands National Park – 101 miles (162.5 km)
Early morning at Burns Basin Overlook, Badlands National Park / Rebecca Latson
The Lakota Sioux may have called this “mako sica,” (literally “bad lands”) but this national park is home to some colorful geology and amazing landscapes, not to mention a wealth of wildlife from bison, to pronghorn, to prairie dogs, to bighorn sheep, to black-footed ferrets, to 206 bird species including the musical meadowlark you’ll hear while viewing the vast, mixed-grass prairie surrounding those badland formations. There’s history to this national park (DYK a portion of Badlands was once an aerial gunnery range?) and this land is the repository to one of the world’s richest fossil beds. You can drive the loop road (Highway 240) in a little over an hour but you really should stop at as many of the overlooks as you can to really get a flavor for the sights this national park offers.
Minuteman Missile Site National Historic Site
The visitor center at Minuteman Missile National Historic Site / Rebecca Latson
Yes, these side trips are starting to lengthen, with this national historic site a good 115 miles (185 km) away from Wind Cave. Of course, if you are visiting Wall, South Dakota, then this place is only 21.5 miles (34.6 km) east of the town on Interstate 90, or a little under 4 miles (6.4 km).
It would still be easy to drive on past the tall brick and glass building sitting by itself out in the middle of South Dakota mixed-grass prairie, just off the interstate highway. It’s a place essentially “hidden in plain sight,” just like the arsenal of Minuteman nuclear missiles once dotting the prairie and farmlands during the Cold War. But you really should consider this a side trip you can combine with a visit to Wall Drug and a drive through Badlands National Park for a full day before heading back to your evening lodging. Just make sure you start your road tour early in the morning.
Take Exit 131 off the highway to tour the visitor center, watch the 30-minute video, and walk through the small museum. The visitor center is just one of three sites comprising this repository of nuclear Cold War history. From there, take the exit back toward Wall to visit the Delta-09 silo and view a decommissioned missile on its launch pad. Also try reserving one of 6 highly-popular spots on the Delta-01 Launch Facility tour, where you can go underground to visit the actual launch control room.
Click here to read the Traveler article about a visit made to Minuteman Missile National Historic Site.
