Overview
About Ellerton Picnic Area
Why stop
- Sheltered tables and a grassy, shaded setting.
Map
Where it is
The highest, rockiest slopes around here are a summer buffet for grizzly bears.
Custer Tour Guide
Your drive to Ellerton Picnic Area, 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.
Recorded for this place
Custer Visitor Center: A Useful Pause“Custer State Park Visitor Center is coming up near the Wildlife Loop junction.”
Plays as you drive up to Ellerton Picnic Area in the Parkwolf Custer Tour Guide.
More stories near here in the app
- State Game Lodge: The Summer White House
- Peter Norbeck Center: Play and Explore
- The Kingfisher’s Tunnel
- Coolidge General Store: Pizza and a Ship-Hull Ceiling
- 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 Ellerton Picnic Area
A handy pause on the park driveEllerton Picnic Area is a small day-use picnic site near the junction of US 16A and Wildlife…
Ellerton Picnic Area is a small day-use picnic site near the junction of US 16A and Wildlife Loop Road, beside but separate from Custer State Park's visitor center. It suits a lunch or short rest while driving through the park; there is no hike or viewpoint to make it a separate outing. The park map marks a shelter here, and visitors have mentioned covered picnic tables and a grassy, shaded setting.
What to expectA nearby point is mapped as a pit toilet, and a visitor also mentioned restrooms, though the…
A nearby point is mapped as a pit toilet, and a visitor also mentioned restrooms, though the map does not explicitly tie that toilet to the picnic area's listing. No drinking-water or food service information was found, so bring what you need. The area is inside Custer State Park, where an entrance license is required. Shelter reservation or use rules were not established.
Nearby park historyThe visitor-center site just up the road held the park's zoo from the early 1920s until 1970.
The visitor-center site just up the road held the park's zoo from the early 1920s until 1970. Its collection included bighorn sheep, bears and wolves. That is history of the neighboring visitor-center grounds, not a claim that the picnic area itself was the zoo site.
Wildlife
Wildlife in Custer
993 sightingsBisonMost seen around 7 AMSighting map
91 sightingsWapitiMost seen around 6 AMSighting map
258 sightingsBighorn SheepMost seen around 7 AMSighting map
85 sightingsMountain GoatMost seen around 7 AMSighting map
256 sightingsBurroMost seen around 6 PMSighting map
707 sightingsPronghornMost seen around 6 AMSighting mapSighting maps show where each species has been reported across Custer. Wildlife moves, so no sighting is guaranteed.
