South Dakota: From the Black Hills National Forest to the Badlands

While South Dakota is officially known as the Mount Rushmore State, its status as the Land of Infinite Variety might prove even more enticing from a photographic point of view. The hodgepodge of scenic wonders contained in this sparsely populated state spans rolling prairie grasslands, rugged Black Hill forests, sparkling underground caves, and otherworldly Badland buttes, much of which is protected through America’s state or federal system of National Parks, Monuments and Forests.

Photographs © Chad Choppess

These protected lands symbolize the beating heart of our nation, inspiring countless visitors to celebrate the beauty they discover there in pictures. We developed this illustrated road map to aid you in exploring some of South Dakota’s most cherished landmarks, and to encourage you to capture lasting memories of your adventures.

Mount Rushmore National Memorial

“If you build it, he will come.” That oft-quoted line from the film Field of Dreams has equal resonance as the motivating force behind the formation of America’s Shrine to Democracy—the Mount Rushmore National Memorial.

Located in the Black Hills of South Dakota, 30 minutes from Rapid City, this colossal monument was the brainchild of state historian Doane Robinson, who conceived of the mountain carving in 1924 as a way to draw people from all over America to his state.

Get there early for the best lighting conditions, or exercise your low-light skills with pictures of the nightly lighting ceremony. Regardless of your timing, make sure to explore the many photo opportunities from different vantage points along the half-mile-long Presidential Trail.

Chad Coppess, staff photographer for Travel South Dakota, recommends a spot right off the trail, which takes you down a little spur between two giant boulders. Look through a big crack between them to frame the Presidential faces from a vantage point often overlooked by the masses.

Photo Tip “The best time to photograph Rushmore is at sunrise; yet, during summer months, Theodore Roosevelt’s face is obscured by Abraham Lincoln’s shadow,” says Coppess. “But in November, the sun has moved farther south on the horizon, so it lights up all four faces equally.”

Gear Tip “A polarizing filter will help to heighten the contrast between the endless blue skies, puffy white clouds, and Rushmore’s carved faces, which are very light gray,” Coppess says.

Iron Mountain Road and Peter Norbeck Scenic Byway

Just outside Mount Rushmore, the Peter Norbeck Scenic Byway offers stunning views of the Presidential faces framed by the local landscape.

Heading southeast from the monument, follow Highway 16A, a twisting route down Iron Mountain Road. You’ll find tunnels that were specifically carved to frame the faces, yet predate the monument itself. “They knew the mountain was going to be carved, so they constructed the tunnels to show off the faces before they were ever there,” Coppess says.

Three pigtail bridges are another photogenic attraction. “You’re most likely going to spot those and stop at each of them,” he adds. One bridge, he says, “spirals around underneath itself and then goes through a tunnel immediately at the bridge.”

Photo Tip Since the road is generally west-facing, Coppess recommends photographing here in late morning to maximize the light on all elements.

Gear Tip As for gear, he notes, “It’s about two or three miles between the tunnels and the monument, so, when shooting with my Nikon D810, I use a mid-range telephoto lens, such as my NIKKOR 80-400mm, f4.5-5.6, to help compress the distance a bit.”

Needles Highway

After following Route 16A westward toward Legion Lake, you can pick up SD Highway 87 and head northward along the 14-mile stretch known as Needles Highway. Named for the area’s tall, thin “needles” of granite, this section of road runs through Custer State Park, and requires a Park entry license. Because of its mountainous nature, Needles Highway is closed during winter months

Midway along this route, a turnout called The Cathedral Spires offers stunning views of the rocky outcroppings juxtaposed with Harney Peak, the highest point between the Rockies and the Alps.

Photo Tip “The vantage point for pictures here is primarily straight north,” Coppess says, “so you get morning light or evening light, but I prefer the evening.”

Wind Cave National Park

Alternatively, take SD Highway 87 12 miles south from Legion Lake to Wind Cave National Park.

Says Coppess, “Wind Cave is one of those parks that has two totally separate environments to photograph, and they are both spectacular.” To make the most of both, take a cave tour during the harsh midday light and use the late afternoon and early evening hours to explore the Park’s topside environment.

Photo Tip Wind Cave is famous for its boxwork mineral formations on the ceiling, and Coppess notes that the existing artificial light is optimized to show this feature at its best. “I’ve gone in there and added flash and it really doesn’t help, so just go with what they’ve got,” he says.

Gear Tip Tripods or other stabilizing devices are not permitted on cave tours, so consider boosting your camera’s ISO to 1500 or 2000.

Above ground, you’ll find a wildlife sanctuary of nearly 29,000 acres, with mixed-grass prairie, Ponderosa pine forest and native wildlife such as bison, elk, pronghorn, mule deer, coyotes, and prairie dogs.

Photo Tip “The real secret to Wind Cave is the gravel roads on the Park’s eastern side,” says Coppess. “Quite often you’ll find large herds of bison along Red Valley Road, and that’s also where you’ll see elk and hear them bugling, especially in the fall.”

Jewel Cave National Monument

Northwest of Wind Cave, the even larger Jewel Cave National Monument ranks as the second longest cave in the United States and the third longest in the world, with 173 miles of explored passageways. From Wind Cave, take SD Highway 385/89 into the town of Custer and head west of SD Highway 16.

Jewel Cave is distinctive for its sparkling crystals, and particularly for a long ribbon of crystal called cave bacon that hangs from the ceiling. During the summer, two types of guided cave tours accommodate a full range of visitors—from the merely curious to the more intrepid. The more strenuous Scenic Tour involves climbing and descending 723 stairs along a ½-mile loop, (equivalent to 40 flights). All visitors are encouraged to wear rubber-soled shoes or hiking boots, and a light jacket or sweater, since the temperature inside is 49 degrees Fahrenheit (9 degrees Celsius).

Black Hills National Forest and Spearfish Canyon

All these sites fall within the Black Hills National Forest, which covers 1.2 million acres of forested hills and mountains, in western South Dakota and northeast Wyoming.

Extending westward from Rapid City, this area is bordered on the north by Interstate 90, culminating in the limestone gorge and refreshing waterfalls of Spearfish Canyon, and in the south by the city of Hot Springs, just south of Wind Cave.

Spearfish Canyon is known in the area for its autumn colors, primarily Aspen. To get there, head south on South Dakota Highway 14A from the town of Spearfish. Otherwise known as the Spearfish Canyon Scenic Byway, this route twists through a 19-mile gorge dotted by three scenic waterfalls. “Bridalveil Falls is our tallest waterfall in the state,” says Coppess. “Roughlock Falls is a bit shorter, but it’s situated in a very narrow crevice and you can walk down into the bottom side or stand right on the upper brink of it and watch it go over.”

Photo Tip Coppess recommends photographing Roughlock Falls in early morning and Bridalveil Falls in late afternoon, noting that Bridalveil is oriented such that it only gets direct sunlight for a few hours a day, which changes depending on the time of the year.

Badlands National Park Region

South Dakotas other National Treasure, Badlands National Park, comprises 244,000 acres of otherworldly landscape. Roughly an hour east of Rapid City, Badlands National Park is accessible by Interstate 90 or South Dakota Highway 44, for travelers who prefer two-lane travel.

SD Highway 44 cuts through Buffalo Gap National Grassland, which covers a huge chunk of South Dakota’s southwestern corner. Coppess points out, “You’ll see prairie grass whether you’re officially within the National Grassland area or not.”

Photo Tip “Grasslands are great with those late afternoon thunderheads building above them,” says Coppess.

In these conditions, it is essential to be attentive about extreme weather. “Traveling in spring and summer, especially in western South Dakota, you should always keep an eye on the weather. Just know what’s happening,” he cautions. “A lot of times this will mean you’ll just get some great photos of super dramatic clouds, but you don’t want to get caught out in a lighting storm or a tornado, and we do have both.”

Photo Tip Coppess recommends two distinctive vantage points, both a short drive south of Wall on SD Highway 240, otherwise known as Badlands Loop Road. The first, Pinnacles Overlook, is a big, broad expanse of Badlands formations stretching southward. “It almost feels like the Grand Canyon,” he says. “You see a lot of people there in the evening, photographing the distant sunset over the Black Hills.”

Another appealing element here is a herd of Bighorn sheep that frequents the area. “It’s a good-sized herd, and in springtime they have babies running around,” Coppess says.

Southeast of Pinnacles Overlook, Yellow Mounds Overlook offers a distinctive view of colorful rounded earth formations in bands of bright yellow and bright red, along with the natural tan.

Gear Tip “You get this kind of rainbow effect with the mounds, and there’s a bit more vegetation, so the green mixes in with the red and yellow,” Coppess says. “All that with a blue sky and is pretty colorful, making it another good opportunity for a standard polarizing filter.”

Photo Tip Yellow Mounds Overlook is a great spot to photograph the spring bloom. “There are a lot of low flowers that pop out—flowering cactus and wild primroses and others—which gives some interesting texture and color to the landscape,” Coppess says.

The Badlands is a great environment for macro photography. In addition to macro shots of flowers in the spring, the dry soil of Badland formations and the surface of the “Wall” along the main loop road offer many creative possibilities. “It looks like rock, but it’s not, it’s dried up dirt, and it cracks to form all sorts of interesting patterns,” says Coppess.

Avid hikers will want to head to the eastern end of Highway 240, near Cedar Pass, to a turnout called Doors and Windows, and a hiking trail that takes you out in among the Badlands formations. A large ridge of spires running almost straight north and south offers a prime vantage point for great light when photographing sunrise and sunset.

Gear Tip: As the name implies, conditions in the Badlands are very dry, so carrying sufficient water is essential. “It can be hard to carry a bottle when hiking with camera gear, so a Hydration Pack is really useful,” says Chris Nicholson, author of the book, Photographing National Parks.

He notes that while you can get good pictures from the loop road, “like most parks, if you get out and hike a little bit, you can find your own private spots to photograph.”

In such instances, other gear essentials he recommends include an analog compass, and Emergency Gear. “Most wilderness survival incidents don’t happen to people on a week-long backcountry trip,” he explains. “They happen to people going out for 2 or 3 hours who think, ‘I’m only going for a 2-mile hike, I don’t need supplies.’ I have a wilderness survival kit,” Nicholson adds, “and if I’m going to hike more than a ¼ mile, that goes on me, too. While I do carry a phone with GPS, and a separate handheld GPS, if the batteries go or you can’t pick up a signal, you should have a map and compass, and you should know how to use them. ”

Do you have any adventures to share from visiting a National Park or Monument? If so, please add your voice to the Comments section, below.

About the photographers:

Chad Coppess is the senior photographer for the South Dakota Department of Tourism and State Development. He has traveled the entire state for this agency since 1993, to make South Dakota pictures of fairs, festivals, rodeos, visitor attractions, historic sites, landscapes, wildlife, and nature. Coppess publishes tips and ideas for exploring South Dakota at dakotagraph.com, which has become a valuable resource for other photographers visiting the state. His photographs have appeared in many publications including National Geographic Traveler, and have been exhibited at the National Museum of Wildlife Art. Additionally, Coppess is co-founder of the annual photography festival Black Hills Photo Shootout.

Chris Nicholson is an East-coast-based photographer and writer, and author of the book Photographing National Parks. He is also a partner and workshop leader with National Parks at Night LLC. A magazine editor for ten years, Nicholson has worked independently since 2004. He has studied and worked in America’s National Parks throughout his career, regularly traveling to various parks for photography and related projects

This story is part of a multi-part series on America’s National Parks, Forests, and Monuments. Read the other stories in our series here: Maine Driving Guide: From Mount Katahdin to Acadia National Park and North Dakota Driving Guide: Theodore Roosevelt National Park.