Pennington County

The county in brief

A traveler's read on Pennington County

Nine feet eight inches of clearance through the Iron Creek Tunnel and nine feet nine inches through the Needles Eye Tunnel on the Needles Highway (SD-87) inside Custer State Park — those two hand-drilled granite tunnels are the strictest height-restricted scenic-drive obstacles in any US state park, and they physically lock out essentially every Class A motorhome on the road, most fifth-wheels, and any Class C rig with a roof-mounted air conditioner taller than a low-profile shroud per the South Dakota Game, Fish & Parks vehicle-clearance posting. The width restriction (eight feet four inches at the narrowest point) catches even compact RVs and is the reason the corridor sees almost exclusively passenger sedans, motorcycles, and short trucks. Drivers attempting to push a too-tall rig through Iron Creek discover the constraint the hard way — the SDGFP maintenance crew has documented a half-dozen multi-thousand-dollar roof-AC-shearing incidents per peak summer season.

Pennington County's 2,776 sq mi wrap Rapid City (population 74,703, the largest city in western South Dakota and the canonical Black Hills RV-supply hub with full grocery, propane, diesel, and the Mount Rushmore Region tourism board headquartered downtown), the entire eastern half of the Black Hills National Forest, Mount Rushmore National Memorial (Gutzon Borglum's 60-ft granite presidential portraits, carved 1927-1941, drawing 2.4 million annual visitors per NPS counts), and the western Badlands National Park entrance via the 32-mile Badlands Loop Road from Wall through Pinnacles Overlook. Sage Creek Campground inside Badlands NP accepts rigs to 30 ft on 22 first-come no-hookup sites — the largest free NPS-administered RV-friendly campground in the contiguous US, with no reservation system and no fee. Cedar Pass Campground (the developed alternative inside Badlands NP) accepts rigs to 30 ft with electric hookups on 96 sites May-October on reservation through recreation.gov. The Black Hills National Forest's Mystic Ranger District permits 14-day dispersed camping along most forest roads with rigs to 35 ft accommodated. Custer State Park's State Game Lodge and Sylvan Lake campgrounds are the alternative Black Hills RV-friendly bases.