Custer

city in and county seat of Custer County, South Dakota, United States

Custer is a city in the Southern Black Hills Badlands and Black Hills. The city lines were laid out by the notorious Al Swearengen who was portrayed in the popular HBO series, Deadwood. Custer was the first city in the Black Hills.

The town is named for General Custer but is not near the battlefield where he was defeated and killed, sometimes called "Custer's Last Stand". That is at Little Bighorn in Montana.

Get in

Located in the Southern Black Hills - Hwy 385.

Get around

See

  • Four Mile Old West Town, 11921 West Highway 16 (Located 4 miles west of Custer on US Hwy 16). Four Mile is situated in the heart of the Black Hills and was named Four Mile by the earliest stagecoach line that came through this area. 
  • 🌍 1881 Courthouse Museum, 411 Mount Rushmore Rd., ☏ +1 605 673-2443. (updated Dec 2017)

Do

Take a wander through all of the unique stores and businesses.

Buy

Eat

  • Purple Pie Place, 19 Mount Rushmore Rd, ☏ +1 605 673-4070. It would be worth stopping in Custer even if Mount Rushmore were elsewhere, if only for its rhubarb pie. Also, soups, sandwiches, and ice cream. $8-15. 

Drink

  • Gold Pan Saloon. 
  • Frontier Bar & Grill. 
  • VFW. 

Sleep

Go next

  • Mount Rushmore - Just 20 miles away from Custer. Go north on US-16 and east on SR-244 to get to the famous monument.
  • Jewel Cave National Monument - The main Visitor Center and cave entrance is thirteen miles west of Custer on RT 16. This 136 mile long cave is one of the longest caves in the world. It is filled with calcite crystals and other wonders that make up the "jewels" of Jewel Cave National Monument.
  • Wind Cave National Park - Wind Cave National Park is located 6 miles north of Hot Springs, SD. One of the world's longest and most complex caves and 28,295 acres of mixed-grass prairie, ponderosa pine forest, and associated wildlife are the main features of the park. The cave has an outstanding display of boxwork, an unusual cave formation composed of thin calcite fins resembling honeycombs. The park's mixed-grass prairie is one of the few remaining and is home to native wildlife such as bison, elk, pronghorn, mule deer, coyotes, and prairie dogs.
  • 🌍 Crazy Horse Memorial, 12151 Avenue of the Chiefs, ☏ +1 605 673-4681. Sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski and Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear officially started Crazy Horse Memorial June 3, 1948. The incomplete, and controversial, memorial's mission is to honor the culture, tradition and living heritage of North American Indians. 
Routes through Custer
Gillette ← Jewel Cave N.M. ←  W  E  → Keystone → Rapid City
END ← Deadwood ←  N  S  → Hot Springs → Chadron


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