Overview
About Wildlife Station Visitor Center
Why stop
- Historic CCC-built house with informative prairie exhibits.
- Staff are often praised for their wildlife knowledge.
Heads up
- Indoor access is seasonal; published fall schedules conflict.
Map
Where it is
The highest, rockiest slopes around here are a summer buffet for grizzly bears.
Custer Tour Guide
Your drive to Wildlife Station Visitor Center, 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
Wildlife Station: The Herdsman's House“You're nearing Wildlife Station Visitor Center on Wildlife Loop Road.”
Plays as you drive up to Wildlife Station Visitor Center in the Parkwolf Custer Tour Guide.
More stories near here in the app
- The Coyote's Mouse Pounce
- Bison Center: The Herd’s Story
- How Gold Ends Up in a Creek
- The Woodpecker Hunting Ants
- 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 Wildlife Station Visitor Center
Take a short prairie breakWildlife Station Visitor Center is a small interpretive center in a former buffalo herdsman's…
Wildlife Station Visitor Center is a small interpretive center in a former buffalo herdsman's house on Wildlife Loop Road, eight miles south of Highway 16A. Its exhibits introduce Custer's mixed-grass prairie and the work that goes into caring for it. I'd make a brief stop if you want a little context for the landscape; visitors also value the staff's wildlife knowledge.
The house has a second lifeThe Civilian Conservation Corps built this stone-and-log house in the 1930s as a buffalo…
The Civilian Conservation Corps built this stone-and-log house in the 1930s as a buffalo herdsman's home. The park converted it to a visitor center in 1987 and renovated it in 2017 to better showcase the rolling prairie. Its rustic stonework and timber are part of the old park-building style, designed to sit naturally in the landscape.
What you'll find insideExpect a compact set of displays about prairie grasslands and park stewardship, with staff…
Expect a compact set of displays about prairie grasslands and park stewardship, with staff available to answer questions when the center is open. Visitors also mention picnic tables and a small indoor picnic area; outdoor pit toilets are available at the stop.
Fit it into your loopFollow Wildlife Loop Road about eight miles south of Highway 16A.
Follow Wildlife Loop Road about eight miles south of Highway 16A. The indoor center is seasonal, and published schedules conflict about the fall closing date, so check current opening before making a special detour.
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.
