Grassland Information

Buffalo Gap National Grassland (NG) is located in southwestern South Dakota, surrounds the Badlands National Park and is comprised of 597,178 acres. It is administered by the Nebraska National Forest supervisor's office, Rocky Mountain Region. The grassland has no developed campgrounds.

The grassland is named for the only break in a ring of foothills around the neighboring Black Hills mountain range. Bison traveled through this gap in their migrations between the Hills and prairies and thus the name. A patchwork of federal, state, and private land, Buffalo Gap NG is composed of rolling prairie, woodland draws, and dramatic rugged badlands. It offers a range of recreational opportunities from hiking to birdwatching, dispersed camping to scenic drives, hunting to photography, and more.

The Buffalo Gap NG was settled in the 1800s under a variety of "Homestead Acts," which opened the land to people, generally farmers, and helped to settle the west. A prolonged period of drought in the late 1920s into the 1930s caused some homesteads on sub-marginal (a location receiving 15 or fewer inches of annual moisture) farmland to literally dry up. During this time, Congress established the Land Utilization Program (LUP) which bought homesteads from bankrupt private owners and returned them to public land status. In the 1950s, the LUP holdings were assigned to the USDA Forest Service that was tasked with management of these sub-marginal lands. Over the years the Forest Service has established some twenty National Grasslands, including Buffalo Gap, from sub-marginal lands. "The designation of the area as National Grassland is not a description of the area as much as a statement of policy and effort to restore the area to a multiple of uses and benefits."

One indicator of the Buffalo Gap NG success in helping the land's recovery is the reintroduction of the Black-footed ferret. The Buffalo Gap NG is said to be the site of the most successful Black-footed ferret reintroduction program undertaken by the federal government. Now, there are small but sustainable populations established in several Prairie dog colonies or dog towns on the grassland.

Visitors can spend hours watching a Prairie dog colony and the interaction of associated animals such as badgers, coyotes, swift fox, pronghorn, burrowing owls, golden eagles and numerous species of hawks. These colonies, while not welcomed by ranchers, are a natural part of the grassland and provide hours of viewing for visitors. A word of caution, although Prairie dogs are cute and fun to watch, they can carry various illnesses dangerous to both humans and our pets. Maintain a safe distance from these cute critters and NEVER touch one whether alive or dead. It is suggested, if you walk through a Prairie dog colony, spray a quality DEET product on your clothes and shoes as a repellent to ticks and fleas; fleas are the primary vector for plague bacteria.

One place that draws people to Buffalo Gap NG is the Indian Creek area. Isolation and solitude are prime features of this area, attracting backcountry visitors. The peace and quiet of this place are interrupted only by the scream of a hunting hawk and bawling of a wayward calf. Rock hounds, looking for Fairburn agates, and searchers of invertebrate fossils are discovering the possibilities of this location. Indian Creek offers many possible dispersed camping sites (see table, below) but the access road into the valley usually requires a sturdy, high- clearance vehicle.

The French Creek Picnic Area is the nearest thing the grassland has to a developed campground and it has plenty of space for all types of campers. A large adjacent flat field is great for horse campers with their trailers as well as RV campers with their big motorhomes. Basically, the difference between camping at French Creek Picnic Area and a dispersed campsite is the picnic area has a vault toilet, a few picnic tables, and some shade.

The whole Buffalo Gap NG has lots of wide-open spaces that lends itself not only to dispersed camping but to exploring on horseback as well as foot. However, the grassland has few developed and designated trails. One developed trail is the Prairie Bike Trail. This mountain bike trail has two loops totaling 14 miles across a rough native soil surface. Its trail head is near the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site at exit 116 on Interstate 90.

Over 100 species of animals are found on the Buffalo Gap NG. Nature has adapted these animals to life on the grassland. Each animal has the right coloration and behavior patterns to survive in one or more of the habitats found on the grassland. Some of the "watchable" wildlife include Prairie dogs, mule and whitetail deer, pronghorn, prairie vole, snakes, coyotes, badgers, jackrabbits, gophers, lizards, porcupines, Red fox and scores of birds. Simply put, wildlife and bird-watching are great and a photographer will have fun capturing Buffalo Gap's many personalities.

The Buffalo Gap NG doesn't have a lot of developed recreational opportunities and there are no developed campgrounds. A few suggested dispersed campsites can be found in the table below. However, most areas of the grassland are open to camping. The grassland's Motor Vehicle Use Map (MVUM) identifies routes where dispersed camping with a vehicle is permitted and there are many. What this grassland does have is lots of space, few crowds, endless horizons, and recreation possibilities limited only by your imagination.

ADDRESSES

SUPERVISOR ADDRESS
125 North Main Street
Chadron, Nebraska 69337
308-432-0300

RANGER DISTRICT ADDRESS
Wall
708 Main St.
POB 425
Wall, SD 57790
605-279-2125

Click on a site name for picture.

*The following are suggested dispersed campsites.  
However, subject to Forest Service rules, one can 
camp most anywhere on the grassland. 

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