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U.S. Forest Service · Black Hills National Forest · SD

Black Fox Campground

First come, first servedNo reservation, and none to be had: the sites go to whoever pulls in first.

This is how it should work.

Get directions
Right now
OpenInside the published season, our reading; a database flag says not open
Season
January 1Opens January 1. No closing date published.
Drawn from the record · 5,890 ft · 17% tree cover · Rhoads Fork within reach · Bortle 3 sky
5,890 ftElevation
211 ftWater · Rhoads Fork
14 miSW of Lead, SD
17%Tree cover
Bortle 3Night sky · 27th darkest of 52 in SD
Opens January 1. No closing date published.Today

The place

the agency’s own description · what’s there

In the agency’s own words

The Black Fox Campground has nine camp sites. Restroom facilities are available. The campground is in a remote location within a spruce forest on South Fork Rapid Creek. The Black Fox Botanical Area is adjacent to the campground. A snowmobile trail with a warming hut is available. The campground is popular on weekends.

Source: Recreation.gov data (RIDB), full extract · Aug 23, 2026

Facilities

Toilets
Yes, the record doesn't say what kind
“Restroom facilities are available.”
Source: read from the agency description, shown above · Sep 12, 2026

Around the campground

On the water
Creek
Fall color · reported 4 days ago, 33 km away
Patchy color
Source: Stated in the agency description · Aug 23, 2026
Fall color: More Than Just Parks foliage tracker, joined to this campground by distance (33 km) · Oct 13, 2026
Official page: Black Fox Campground →

Nothing to book, just show up

One of 1,623 federal campgrounds where the site still goes to whoever pulls in first. Get there before noon on a summer weekend.

recreation.gov publishes no availability for a campground you can’t reserve, so there’s no thirty-night reading to draw here. The season bar above is what the agency does publish.

BookingNo reservationsNothing to book, and no release date to wait forthe agency’s record
Runs itU.S. Forest Servicethe agency’s record
Directions
Every line of the receipt · 3

What you actually pay

The sign priceU.S. Forest Service
The U.S. Forest Service publishes no per-night rate for this campground that we can read, so there’s no sign price to print. That’s a gap in the record, not a free campground.
The booking feerecreation.gov
Nothing. This campground takes no bookings, so there’s no reservation fee to pay.
What a stay costs
The agency publishes no nightly rate for this campground, so there’s no total to show.
How we know this receipt · 4
Booking fee, change fee, cancellation fee, no-show: Rules and Reservation Policies, Recreation.gov, the published fee schedule, curated by hand into lib/reservation-fee-schedule.json (9 rows, each carrying its own verbatim sentence). The publisher states these policies were last updated September 2019. · Sep 9, 2026
The two totals: Derived by CAMPANAC by adding the agency’s own published nightly rate to recreation.gov’s own published reservation fee. Both components are cited above; the addition is ours and is shown only where every component is known. · Sep 9, 2026
Who keeps the booking fee: Recreation.gov facility policy text, Dead Swede Campground (facility 234221) · Not on the national policy page. This is agency policy text recreation.gov publishes on individual campground pages; this site holds it verbatim on 45 active campgrounds (campground_rules.cancellation_description, scripts/load-facility-rules.mjs). · Sep 9, 2026
The contract: Reservation Gods: Who Stole Our Campsites and Sold Them Back to Us, More Than Just Parks, April 2025 · Apr 1, 2025
Source: Recreation.gov data (RIDB), full extract · Aug 23, 2026

rules read Sep 7, 2026 · record Aug 23, 2026 · How we know all this

Seen something wrong here? Tell us.

Getting there

the map and the coordinate
Coordinate44.14480, -103.84560
The agency’s pageOfficial page ↗

Where it is

Source: Recreation.gov data (RIDB), full extract · Aug 23, 2026

The weather

the next four days · the thirty-year normal

Next four days, and the thirty-year normal

Forecast

Overnight39°Clear
Saturday68°Sunny
Saturday Night42°Partly Cloudy
Sunday57°Sunny

NWS forecast for Lead, SD

Source: National Weather Service, UNR forecast office · Oct 17, 2026

Typical weather

Typical January night 18°F, day 38°F.

Coldest night of the open season: typical January night 18°F, below freezing. Bring a bag rated colder than that, and expect ice in the water bottle.

90°32°10°

Daily high and lowDays with 0.10 in or moreOutside the published season

A normal is the 1991-2020 average for the month, not a forecast: about half of all Julys are colder than the July line. The seven-day forecast above answers the other question.

Measured at: LEAD, SD (USC00394834), 15 miles away and 778 ft lower
Source: NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, U.S. Climate Normals 1991-2020, monthly normals · Sep 8, 2026

The land, and who answers for it

what threatens it · who answers for it

What threatens this place

developing

You’re camping on ground somebody wants. We track the threats and the comment deadlines.

Source: MTJP Threatened Lands map · Oct 16, 2026

Who answers for this land

Dusty Johnson, official portrait

Black Fox Campground is in South Dakota’s at-large congressional district. Its representative, Dusty Johnson (R), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. See every public-lands vote →

Seen something wrong here? Tell us.

Source: U.S. Census district boundaries and the MTJP Congressional Public Lands Score

How we know

every fact on this page, and where it came from
Right now: Today falls inside the season the agency publishes, and it has posted nothing else. That reading is ours. The U.S. Forest Service’s own database, though, flags it not open with no reason or date; the flag is named under How we know all this.
Listed not open: USFS EDW Recreation Opportunities, openstatus field: a not-open flag in a database, with no reason and no date published; read there since Sep 9, 2026. A flag, not a notice, so this page doesn’t call it a closure. · Oct 17, 2026
Season: Recreation.gov data (RIDB), full extract · Aug 23, 2026
Elevation: USGS 3DEP elevation point query at this campground’s coordinate · Sep 7, 2026
Night sky: VIIRS Day/Night Band annual cloud-free composite, VNL V2 2024 (Earth Observation Group, Colorado School of Mines), read at the published coordinate: 0.15 mcd/m² of artificial all-sky glow, ranked against the 52 rated federal campgrounds in South Dakota · Sep 8, 2026
Sky-glow model: Duriscoe, Anderson, Luginbuhl and Baugh (2018), a simplified model of all-sky artificial sky glow derived from VIIRS Day/Night band data, the National Park Service sky-glow model
Fall color: More Than Just Parks foliage tracker, joined to this campground by distance (33 km) · Oct 13, 2026
Reported by: USA National Phenology Network (Nature's Notebook), reported patchy color · Oct 13, 2026
Cell signal: the Forest Service’s own campground description, read as text by CAMPANAC. None of this is a measurement. It’s what the land manager published about the place, and phones, carriers and weather all disagree with each other; treat it as a warning, not a promise.
Nearest town: U.S. Census Bureau TIGER/Line 2024 places, measured by CAMPANAC to the town boundary; population is the ACS 2020-2024 5-year estimate · Sep 9, 2026