CAMPANAC.Powered by public lands intelligenceMore Than Just Parks
The map
U.S. Forest Service · Black Hills National Forest · SD

Ditch Creek Campground

The agency doesn’t say how you get a siteIts record carries no access type, so treat it as a place to phone before you drive.
Get directionsWhat it costs, and the rules
Right now
Nobody has saidNo season, no closure, no bookings to read
A night
$22From, per site
Drawn from the record · 6,240 ft · 0% tree cover · Ditch Creek within reach · Bortle 3 sky
6,240 ftElevation
251 ftWater · Ditch Creek
16.7 miNW of Custer, SD
0%Tree cover
Bortle 3Night sky · 21st darkest of 52 in SD

The place

the agency’s own description · what’s there

In the agency’s own words

Peaceful & Relaxing The Ditch Creek Campground is a quiet campground adjacent to Ditch Creek. It is situated in an open area with some spruce along the creek. The campground is located approximately 5 miles south of Deerfield Reservoir. In the off-season, several sites remain open. Stay limit at all campgrounds is 14 days. In conjunction with Forest Recreation Management, Inc. (campground concessionaire) and the Black Hills National Forest, the camping sites were reconstructed in June 2022. Keep reading

The purpose of this effort was to accommodate modern-sized RVs, provide accessibility, reduce resource damage, improve fire safety, and reduce maintenance costs. A portion of the camping fees collected were used to fund this project. (Photo by Steve Keegan/USDA FS) Ditch Creek Campground Layout Reservations are not available for Ditch Creek Campground. Sites are available first come, first served. See the layout of the campground to find your perfect camping site. Download

Source: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026

Facilities

Store
Nearby
Source: Stated in the agency description

Around the campground

On the water
Reservoir, Creek
Source: Stated in the agency description

Phone before you drive

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.

Booking window6 months outBooking opens 6 months ahead; today unlocks arrivals through April 17, 2027. The agency publishes no reservable season in the record we hold, so the window may close earlier than that.recreation.gov
A night$22Per site, fromthe agency’s fee record
A weekend$44DerivedFriday and Saturday, everything includedours, from the lines above
Runs itU.S. Forest Servicethe agency’s record
Directions
Every line of the receipt · 5

What you actually pay

The sign priceU.S. Forest Service
A night, from$22
Regular Season: $22/night --- Off-Season$0/night
The booking feerecreation.gov
We hold no recreation.gov booking record for this campground, so we can’t say whether a booking fee applies.
What a stay costs
One night, fromDerived$22
A weekend, Friday and Saturday, fromDerived$44

Derived by CAMPANAC: the lowest per-night amount the agency’s fee record states ($22), and no booking fee, because this campground takes no reservations. A weekend here means Friday and Saturday night. Optional charges (an extra vehicle, a second tent, a dump-station fee) are listed separately and aren’t in this total.

How we know this receipt · 5
Sign price: Derived by CAMPANAC from the U.S. Forest Service fee record: a stated per-night amount only · Sep 7, 2026
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: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026

record Aug 24, 2026 · How we know all this

Seen something wrong here? Tell us.

Getting there

the map and the coordinate
Coordinate43.96068, -103.84135

Where it is

Source: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026

The weather

the next four days · the thirty-year normal

Next four days, and the thirty-year normal

Forecast

This Afternoon65°Sunny
Tonight44°Mostly Clear
Sunday58°Sunny
Sunday Night36°Mostly Clear

NWS forecast for Hill City, SD

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

Typical weather

Typical October night 34°F, day 56°F.

Coldest month of the year: typical February night 16°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 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.

Measured at: CUSTER, SD (USC00392087), 17 miles away and 760 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

Ditch Creek 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: U.S. Forest Service publishes no season and no closure for this campground, and it takes no bookings we can read. That’s a gap in the record and not a locked gate.
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: 0.12 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
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 place of any size: Hill City, SD, 13 mi W. Straight line.
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