Overview
About Badger Hole Historic Site
Why stop
- The furnished cabin makes Clark’s home life tangible.
- A moderate, under-one-mile loop adds poetry interpretation among the pines.
Heads up
- Interior access is seasonal.
Badger Hole Historic Site is the preserved cabin of South Dakota poet Charles Badger Clark, tucked among pines near Legion Lake. If local history is your thing, step inside when it’s open: the furnishings and books give the visit a personal feel. It’s a compact stop, with a separate short trail beside it if you want to stay longer.
Parkwolf’s verdictA cabin worth a quiet stopMap
Where it is
The highest, rockiest slopes around here are a summer buffet for grizzly bears.
Custer Tour Guide
Your drive to Badger Hole Historic Site, narrated.
Parkwolf is a GPS audio tour guide for Custer State Park. As you drive, it chimes in with what’s ahead: hidden gems, upcoming stops, history, geology, and wildlife, right through your car’s speakers.
See the Custer audio tourRecorded for this place
Badger Hole: The Poet’s Cabin“You're approaching Badger Hole, the cabin of South Dakota's first poet laureate, Charles Badger Clark.”
Plays as you drive up to Badger Hole Historic Site in the Parkwolf Custer Tour Guide.
More stories near here in the app
- Legion Lake: A Short Walk and Lakeside Lunch
- Why Turtles Share a Sunny Log
- The Dragonfly's Underwater Life
- The Vulture's Wobbly Glide
- 82 audio storiesacross Custer’s roads, triggered by GPS as you drive
- Wildlife heatmapsfor Bison, Wapiti, Bighorn Sheep, and 13 more
- Works offlinemaps, 40 trails, 49 places, and audio download before you lose signal
- CarPlay readysimple controls built for the drive
“We recently toured Badlands, Custer State Park, Mount Rushmore and more! We learned so much from this app as we toured each of these sites. The audio tours are worth the money.”
Guide
More about Badger Hole Historic Site
Finding itThe cabin is about half a mile south of US 16A on Badger Clark Road; the trail starts beside it…
The cabin is about half a mile south of US 16A on Badger Clark Road; the trail starts beside it at the Badger Hole parking lot. Cabin access is seasonal, while the adjacent loop is a separate outdoor stop. There’s no food service listed here.
Take the short loopBadger Clark Historic Trail is a moderate loop under one mile.
Badger Clark Historic Trail is a moderate loop under one mile. It starts to the right of the cabin and winds through mixed pine and hardwood forest over rocky hillsides. Interpretive signs share Clark’s writing and life, so the walk adds a bit of literary context as well as time in the woods.
Meet Badger Clark at homeClark was South Dakota’s first poet laureate.
Clark was South Dakota’s first poet laureate. He lived in Custer State Park for the last 30 years of his life and died in this cabin in 1957, aged 74. He wrote poems, read from his large library and corresponded with fans here. The cabin is kept much as it was in his lifetime; visitors often point out its books, wind-up phonograph and gas lamps. A knowledgeable volunteer can add context when one is on hand.
Two places called Badger HoleClark first lived in a separate one-room cabin of the same name from 1924 to 1937 while he…
Clark first lived in a separate one-room cabin of the same name from 1924 to 1937 while he built this permanent four-room home nearby. The earlier cabin later left the park, so older accounts of the first Badger Hole may describe a different building.
Get the cabin in its settingThe stone porch and dark wood walls sit among tall pines.
The stone porch and dark wood walls sit among tall pines. Keep some of the trees in frame with the porch to show the cabin in its wooded setting.
Wildlife
Wildlife in Custer
993 sightingsBisonMost seen around 7 AMSighting map
91 sightingsWapitiMost seen around 6 AMSighting map
260 sightingsBighorn SheepMost seen around 7 AMSighting map
85 sightingsMountain GoatMost seen around 7 AMSighting map
259 sightingsBurroMost seen around 6 PMSighting map
711 sightingsPronghornMost seen around 6 AMSighting mapSighting maps show where each species has been reported across Custer. Wildlife moves, so no sighting is guaranteed.
