Join the Stampede to Custer, South Dakota

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Hi dear artists and beauty admirers! A charming place, situated in South Dakota and whom you cannot miss this summer, is Custer. The article is meant to let you know that the best choice to spend your 2005 summer is namely Custer! Enjoy the reading!

From the beginning, the community of Custer was designed to accommodate visitors. Originally, those visitors were prospectors, muleskinners and madams. Later merchants, bankers and other professionals replaced them. A Century later, the streets of Custer are lined with some of the best motels, restaurants, galleries and gift shops in the Black Hills.

Located in the heart of the Southern Black Hills, just 44 miles south of the fast growing metropolitan center, Rapid City, Custer City exhibits small town charm, western hospitality and easy access to the million-acre Black Hills National Forest and the area’s major attractions of Mt. Rushmore, Crazy Horse, Custer State Park, Wind Cave, Jewel Cave, and the Mickelson Trail.

Custer City is the ideal spot to make your lodging headquarters when visiting the Black Hills. Modern day shops, boutiques, restaurants and galleries housed in historical buildings along main street are examples of a progressive small town melding its past with its present while planning its future. Living history characters, such as General George Armstrong Custer can be found around town and are eager to tell the Custer City story to visitors. Visit the 1881 Courthouse Museum and the Gordon Stockade, the first white settlement in the Hills, and discover our past.

The first people living in the area were the Goshen people – 11,000 years ago. In canyons outside of Custer you can still find signs of their presence in petroglyhs and pictographs on the canyon walls. Try your hand at fly fishing in the summer and ice-fishing in the winter. Two of the Nations best-known caves are right outside of Custer – daily tours are available year round at both Jewel Cave and Wind Cave. Want to be physically challenged? Climb to the top of Harney Peak in the Norbeck Wilderness Area or hop on the Mickelson Trail at the trailhead in downtown Custer. Bicyclists, hikers, and horseback riders frequent this groomed trail year round; snowshoe enthusiasts and cross-country skiers can be found on the trail in the winter months.

You won’t want to miss visiting the herd of live buffalo in Custer State Park but Custer City has a small herd of its own this year and you will want to find them. The Custer Stampede is a visual arts event featuring unique life-sized buffalo sculpture. Twenty polyurethane reproductions have been given to prominent artists to be transformed by them into one-of-a-kind works of art and will be on display throughout the area from May 2005 to October for visitors to enjoy. In October they will be auctioned in downtown Custer during the Buffalo-Round-up weekend and Fall Arts Festival in Custer State Park.

Come visit – and you will agree, Custer City is one of the region’s best-kept secrets. We have been greeting guests here for more than 125 years, and we’ve gotten so good at it, many of them decide to stay!

The article was contributed by Ron and Diane -- French Creek Ranch B&B.
frenchck@gwtc.net