At Custer State Park Resort in Custer, South Dakota, The Senator’s Cabin is a cozy 10-person cabin that perches atop a hill near Sylvan Lake Lodge. Set apart from other units by its private drive with extra room for parking, this log cabin provides plenty of privacy. Your guests are sure to love the newly-remodeled interior of this log cabin located near Highway 87 and Highway 89 near Needles Highway Entrance. Featuring 3 separate bedrooms with queen-sized beds and two double sofa sleepers in the living room, you can accommodate up to 10 people comfortably. This log cabin boasts flat-screen TVs, an easy chair, and HVAC. There’s also a full kitchen with pots, pans, dishes, coffee pots, utensils included as well as a full-sized refrigerator/freezer, stove/oven combo with microwave. Outdoors there is also a wood-burning fireplace, fire pit area with picnic table; plus private parking is provided too.
Custer State Park offers a diverse landscape that can be explored on foot, horseback or by car. Enjoy seeing wild buffalo, begging burros and other nature’s bounty while having an epic mountain canyon cookout at the end of your trek! Custer State Park was first designated a Game Preserve in 1913 to reintroduce wildlife species that had been lost due to early settlement and gold prospectors’ activities. Nowadays, wildlife flourishes within and around this protected area. On the northern edge of the park, 56,000 acres are set aside as the Norbeck Wildlife Preserve. At its center lies 13,000 acres called Black Elk Wilderness in honor of Black Elk – an Oglala Lakota holy man. Since animals in this park are free-roaming, you never know when or where you might spot one!
As for animals to view, there are plenty of them: bighorn sheep, baby buffalo playing on the plains, buffalo, pronghorn and baby fawns. From a Fort Pierre settler’s herd of 6 bulls, 12 cows, and 18 calves in 1914 to an expansive bison herd numbering over 1,300 strong today. Throughout the year they enjoy free-roaming throughout the park; come fall it’s roundup time! At the annual Buffalo Roundup, animals from throughout the valley are counted and checked for general health at an event known as the Buffalo Roundup. Through breakouts, bottle feedings, and smart conservation practices in the park, it has become home to elk, bighorn sheep, mountain goats, pronghorn antelope, white-tail deer, mule deer, as well as many flying birds.
Experience wildlife from a unique angle with a Buffalo Safari Jeep Tour. It’s the only way to go off Wildlife Loop Road and you may end up right among them! Summers are popular but other seasons offer unique viewing experiences; come in spring to witness baby wildlife; wintertime offers easier sightings as animals search for food and lose some of their natural shyness.
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