Black Hills Off-Season Campgrounds
- Right now
- Closedrecreation.gov lists every site closed this weekend, read 15:40 UTC
- A night
- $15When it reopens, per site
- Sites
- 19In the agency’s record
The place
what’s there
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 19 · 3 tent-only
- Hookups
- None
- Longest rig
- 75 ft
- Accessible sites
- None listed
- Pets
- Allowed
- Campfires
- Allowed, barring fire bans
- Shade
- 8 of 9 sites
Facilities
- Toilets
- Vault Toilets
- VAULT TOILETS on 11 of 19 campsite records
Around the campground
- Night sky · 8th darkest of 52 in SD
- Bortle 3
- Fall color · reported 4 days ago, 34 km away
- Patchy color
Nothing to book until it reopensread 15:40 UTC
recreation.gov lists every site closed this weekend
Every one of the next thirty nights is in recreation.gov’s record and not one site is being offered on any of them. That’s a campground closed or not yet released for booking, not a sold-out one.
Tell me when it reopens
Watch for it to come back
One email when the agency reopens it, plus More Than Just Parks dispatches. Unsubscribe any time.
We check the agency’s own record once an hour, at 40 minutes past, and write the first time it stops saying closed.
Scanners that check every few minutes exist, and most of them charge. This one is free, it reads the same calendar, and it won’t always be first.
Every line of the receipt · 11
What you actually pay
Who keeps the booking fee
The agency’s own policy text says the reservation fee and the cancellation processing fee are “retained by the reservation service contractor”, and that a campground concessionaire will decline to refund them because “they did not receive these fees”. Recreation.gov is run under contract by Booz Allen Hamilton. What share of your booking fee the contractor keeps isn’t published in any federal dataset we can read, so we print no number for it. Our reporting on the contract →
How we know this receipt · 4
Why this page can’t say why
recreation.gov lists every site at Black Hills Off-Season Campgrounds closed this Friday and Saturday night. The U.S. Forest Service has published no closure notice we hold, so this page can’t say why, and it won’t fill the gap with a guess. A closed night isn’t a sold-out one: the reservations its record still carries were taken before the sites were closed.
There’s no notice to quote and no reason to argue with, so this page offers you the watch and the list below, and no letter.
Open within 60 miles · 1
The agency’s own word that these are open, not our reading of a season.
- Elk Mountain CampgroundWind Cave National Park · 49 mi · 67 sites
recreation.gov availability, read 15:40 UTC · rules read Sep 9, 2026 · rates Oct 1, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
19 sites
All 19 sites
The price is derived by CAMPANAC, not published per site: the per-night rate this campground publishes for each site’s own site type. 19 of the 19 sites listed carry one, and a site whose type has no published rate sits out of the price rather than being called free.
| Bearlodge | Bearlodge Campground | standard nonelectric | $15 | |
| Bearlodge | Cook Lake Campground | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | $15 |
| Bearlodge | Reuter Campground | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | $15 |
| Bearlodge | Sundance Horse Camp | standard nonelectric | $15 | |
| Hell Canyon | Bismark Lake Campground | standard nonelectric | 63 ft | $15 |
| Hell Canyon | Comanche Park Campground | standard nonelectric | 60 ft | $15 |
| Hell Canyon | Iron Creek Horse Camp | standard nonelectric | 50 ft | $15 |
| Hell Canyon | Oreville Campground | standard nonelectric | 72 ft | $15 |
| Hell Canyon | Redbank Springs Campground | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | $15 |
| Hell Canyon | Willow Creek Horse Camp | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | $15 |
| Mystic | Dutchman Campground (No services provided for 2025 season.) | standard nonelectric | 50 ft | $15 |
| Mystic | Sheridan Lake South Campground | standard nonelectric | 75 ft | $15 |
| Northern Hills | Boxelder Forks Campground | standard nonelectric | $15 | |
| Northern Hills | Hanna Campground | tent only nonelectric | $15 | |
| Northern Hills | Rod and Gun Campground | standard nonelectric | $15 | |
| Northern Hills | Roubaix Lake Campground | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | $15 |
| Northern Hills | Steamboat Recreation Area | tent only nonelectric | $15 | |
| Northern Hills | Strawberry Recreation Area | tent only nonelectric | $15 | |
| Northern Hills | Timon Campground | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | $15 |
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the phone number
Where it is
Bearlodge Campground0.0 mi
Beaver Creek Campground0.0 miBlack Fox Campground0.0 mi
Castle Peak Campground0.0 mi
Custer Trail Campground0.0 mi
Ditch Creek Campground0.0 miThe agency publishes this point for 13 campgrounds; it’s likely a district office, not the campground. Use the agency’s own page for directions.
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Lead, SD
Typical weather
Typical October night 33°F, day 50°F.
Coldest month of the year: typical February night 15°F, below freezing. Bring a bag rated colder than that, and expect ice in the water bottle.
Daily high and lowDays with 0.10 in or more
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.
The land, and who answers for it
who answers for it
Who answers for this land
Black Hills Off-Season Campgrounds 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 →