Wind Cave National Park

Wind Cave National Park protects two very different worlds in the Black Hills of South Dakota. On top is a mixed-grass prairie grazed by bison, and beneath it lie 167 miles of known cave, "as of 2024" in the Park Service's words. The park had 606,258 recreation visits in 2025, and nobody goes underground without a ranger.

Wind Cave was established on 9 January 1903, the first cave in the world to become a national park, according to the park's own time line. We checked the figures below on 28 October 2026 on the park's own pages, alerts and news, Recreation.gov, the state's parks department, the federal time-zone rules and NOAA's normals.

Why does Wind Cave charge for its tours but not for entry?

Wind Cave National Park charges no entrance fee. "An entrance pass is not required," its fees page says, and driving or hiking in the park costs nothing. There is no timed entry, and the park is not one of the eleven parks with a $100 surcharge for non-residents in 2026.

Only cave tours and camping cost money here. Tours, campsites and passes are paid by credit or debit card or by digital payment, and the park takes no cash.

No federal pass covers a tour. "Interagency passes do not waive Expanded Amenity Fees such as cave tours," the park notes. The $250 non-resident America the Beautiful pass therefore buys nothing here. Our guide to national park fees for international visitors explains where that pass pays for itself.

Tour discounts go by age alone. Adults aged 16 to 61 pay the full price, visitors aged 62 and over and children aged 6 to 15 pay half, and children under 6 go free. Two adults and two children aged 6 to 15 on the Fairgrounds Tour pay $48 at the counter.

Recreation.gov adds a $1 fee to an online booking. The park calls it a fee per ticket and Recreation.gov a reservation fee, and neither page settles which it is.

Which Wind Cave tours run after the Natural Entrance closes?

Three Wind Cave tours run through the winter of 2026 to 2027: Garden of Eden, Fairgrounds and the Accessibility Tour. The Natural Entrance Tour closed for the season on 1 October 2026, and the park's alert gives 15 April 2027 as the end of the closure. "All access is by a ranger guided tour," the park says, and there are no self-guided cave tours.

Prices come from the park's fees page and the other details from its tour page. Garden of Eden is "our least strenuous tour", in the park's words, and Fairgrounds "our most strenuous walking tour", with 89 stairs up at once. The Natural Entrance Tour visits "the largest opening to the cave". Recreation.gov asks anyone able to manage another tour not to book the Accessibility Tour, which is meant for visitors who cannot use stairs.

"Tour schedules are subject to change," the park adds. Tour times are Mountain Time, and daylight saving time ends at 2 a.m. on 1 November 2026, the same day the winter schedule starts. The visitor centre is open from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. every day except Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day. No tours run on those three days.

The cave stays at 54°F (12°C) all year, so the park suggests long sleeves or a jacket and shoes with non-slip soles, not sandals. Bags of any kind, food, drink, baby back carriers, walking sticks, selfie sticks, tripods and pets are not allowed. Handheld flash photography is. There are no restrooms underground. Every tour but the Accessibility Tour climbs stairs, with occasional low ceilings.

How do tour tickets split between Recreation.gov and the counter?

Wind Cave sells tour tickets on Recreation.gov from 120 days to two days before the tour. The park holds "roughly half of all tour tickets" for same-day sale at the visitor centre, and warns that same-day tickets often sell out soon after it opens. Arrive 30 minutes before the tour, and collect reserved tickets at the front desk.

Recreation.gov showed 22 tour-days sold out online in October 2026, all between 1 and 18 October. As of 28 October, the only sold-out tour-day ahead was the Fairgrounds Tour on Friday 6 November, with 20 of 20 seats gone. Friday 27 November was nearly full. Most days in December and January showed no seats reserved at all.

Recreation.gov had loaded seats only up to 14 February 2027 on that date, so you could not yet book later winter dates. A full refund, less the $1 fee, is given up to two days before a tour, and late arrivals and no-shows get nothing.

You book the summer-only Candlelight and Wild Cave tours by phone on 605-745-4600, up to one month ahead. You book the Accessibility Tour on the same number, on the day or up to three days ahead.

Are the cave elevators running in late 2026?

The Wind Cave elevators carry every tour in or out. Garden of Eden, Fairgrounds and the Accessibility Tour go down and come up by elevator, and the Natural Entrance Tour comes out by one. On 28 October 2026 none of the park's three alerts mentioned the elevators, and no news release since May 2025 had either.

No outage was reported on that date, but no park page said in so many words that the elevators were working. Recreation.gov was selling tours, and 22 Garden of Eden and 18 Fairgrounds seats had been reserved for 28 October.

The elevators have stopped tours twice in recent years. A project to replace and modernise the system halted tours from May 2024 until Tuesday 28 January 2025, when they resumed with both cabs replaced. A transformer failure on Sunday 27 April 2025 stopped them again until Wednesday 7 May 2025, and rangers offered lidar virtual tours in between.

Visits fell to 489,399 in 2024 and rose to 606,258 in 2025. No park page links the drop to the elevator project. The park's number for questions is 605-745-4600.

What is boxwork, and which Wind Cave tours show it?

Boxwork is a honeycomb of "thin blades of calcite that project from cave walls and ceilings", in the Park Service's description. Wind Cave holds "more boxwork than is found in all other caves on Earth put together", according to the park's geology page. An older park page, from 2020, is more cautious: boxwork occurs in small amounts in other caves, but perhaps nowhere so well formed.

Boxwork's origin is "one of the biggest mysteries of Wind Cave", that older page says. The geology page explains the fins as calcite that once filled cracks and was left standing when slow-moving water dissolved the limestone around it. Parts of the cave are over 300 million years old.

The Garden of Eden Tour shows small amounts of boxwork, frostwork, flowstone and cave popcorn, and the Accessibility Tour shows boxwork too. Popcorn, frostwork, dogtooth spar crystals and flowstone are all found in the cave. Stalactites and stalagmites, by contrast, are "relatively rare at Wind Cave".

Wind Cave's 167 miles of known passage lie under just 1.25 square miles of land. A Park Service release of January 2025 called it the world's seventh-longest cave. The rank moves as the survey grows: the park's time line had it sixth in 2013, and a 2019 release put the surveyed length at 150 miles.

Where do bison and prairie dogs graze along US 385?

Wind Cave's bison roam the prairie along US 385, SD 87 and the gravel park roads NPS 5 and 6. The park's home page counted "several hundred" in October 2026. A 2021 park FAQ put the herd at 400 to 450. The herd crosses US 385 at Bison Flats, where a "bison jam" can form, and cows and calves gather near NPS 6 towards Custer State Park. Wildlife is most active at dawn and dusk.

The Wind Cave herd goes back to a game preserve set up in 1912. Fourteen bison came from the New York Zoological Society in 1913 and six from Yellowstone in 1916. Wind Cave, also called Oniya Oshoka or Maka Oniye, is a significant place in Lakota tradition. In Lakota oral tradition the first humans and the first bison came out of the cave.

Visitors must stay at least 25 yards (23 m) from all wildlife here, and the park strongly advises more room around bison. Bison can run at up to 35 miles per hour. They are more aggressive in the calving and mating season, from May to August. In winter they crowd along the highways and are extremely hard to see at night, and driving or cycling off the road is prohibited.

Prairie dog towns line the park roads, especially US 385. The nearest to the visitor centre is on Bison Flats, about half a mile (0.8 km) south. An exhibit stands at the junction of US 385 and SD 87, 1.4 miles north. The animals hibernate incompletely and come out on milder winter days.

The park asks visitors not to feed prairie dogs or other wildlife, and warns that burrows can host plague fleas and rattlesnakes. The park's evening elk-bugling programmes ran from 14 September to 10 October 2026 and are over for the year.

Can you camp at Elk Mountain Campground in winter?

Elk Mountain Campground, 1 mile north of the visitor centre, is open all year, but from 1 October only sites 15 to 35 can be booked. Water is off in that season, a vault toilet replaces the flush toilets, and the fee halves. Recreation.gov counts 63 sites plus two group sites; the park's home page says 62.

Every site must be reserved and paid for on Recreation.gov before you occupy it, and booking on the day is allowed. On 28 October 2026, 16 of the 20 open sites were free and four were reserved. Annual passes give no discount, except the Senior and Access passes at half price, and payment is by card only. Sites take vehicles up to 36 feet long.

The park allows backcountry camping in its northern part with a free permit. Recreation.gov counts 30 miles of trails, and cross-country hiking is allowed. Pets may use the campground, roads and parking areas, and of the trails only the Elk Mountain Campground Trail and the Prairie Vista Trail. They are never allowed in the backcountry or the cave.

What changes when you drive on into Custer State Park?

Custer State Park, north of Wind Cave on SD 87, is run by South Dakota and charges its own entry. The licence costs $25 per vehicle, valid for seven days and expiring at 6 p.m. on the seventh. The state sells that licence only inside the park. Its $15 daily licence for non-residents is not sold there, and neither state page we read mentions the America the Beautiful pass.

Custer State Park asks visitors to stay at least 100 yards from bison, elk and other animals, four times the national park's 25 yards. From the US 385 and SD 87 junction, SD 87 runs 16 miles north to US 16A inside the state park. The Park Service puts the scenic loop through Wind Cave, Custer State Park and the Iron Mountain Road at almost 50 miles, or 1½ to 2 hours.

Custer State Park covers 71,000 acres and is open all year. From 1 October to Memorial Day the Custer State Park Visitor Center opens from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily, while the Wildlife Station Visitor Center is closed. The Bison Center lists its hours only up to 6 November.

What is there to do in Hot Springs, South Dakota, south of the park?

Hot Springs, South Dakota, 11 miles south of the Wind Cave visitor centre, is one of the two nearest places for groceries and restaurants. Custer, 20 miles north, is the other, the park says. The visitor centre itself has only limited food and drink vending. A picnic area lies a quarter of a mile north of the visitor centre.

The Mammoth Site in Hot Springs has unearthed over 60 mammoths, 58 Columbian and 3 woolly, and visitors tour an indoor active dig site. On 28 October 2026 its site printed admission of $15 for ages 13 to 59, $14 for 60 and over and $13 for ages 4 to 12. It opens 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. from 1 November to 28 February, then 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. from 1 March to 21 May.

Evans Plunge, a pool owned by the City of Hot Springs and established in 1890, keeps an average water temperature of 87°F. Adults aged 16 and over pay $19 and children aged 3 to 15 pay $14, plus sales tax. The pool is closed on Tuesdays and opens from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. on other weekdays and from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at weekends.

How do you find the Wind Cave visitor centre without trusting GPS?

The Wind Cave visitor centre is 11 miles north of Hot Springs off US 385, about half a mile west of the highway. "Do not use your GPS to find the visitor center," the park says, because many units place it north on SD 87. No public transport serves the park, and the nearest commercial airport is Rapid City's.

The park calls the 7-11 Road, with 8.25 miles of gravel, "the fastest and least curvy route" from Rapid City. It does not say whether the gravel suits a hire car in rain or snow. Our routing from the airport also takes it; the paved route via Hot Springs is 10 miles longer but only three minutes slower. The route through Custer and Hill City carries "a lot of traffic in the summer", the park adds.

Badlands National Park is about 143 miles from the Wind Cave visitor centre by the park's figures. Its Ben Reifel Visitor Center is about 83 miles from Rapid City's airport by our routing.

Beaver Creek Road (Forest Service Road 391) was due to close on 4 May 2026 for a new cattle guard, for up to 180 days by the park's release. That period ends on 31 October. The Wind Cave Canyon Trail was to close from mid-May for several weeks. On 28 October 2026 the park had published no reopening notice and no alert for either, so whether they have reopened is unconfirmed.

Why is the 54°F cave the warm place in a Black Hills January?

The cave at Wind Cave holds 54°F (12°C) all year, while NOAA's station beside the visitor centre averages a January high of 39.7°F and a low of 14.8°F. In July the same station reaches 84.7°F, so the cave becomes the cool place in summer.

The table gives NOAA's 1991 to 2020 average highs and lows. The Wind Cave station, 0.1 miles from the visitor centre at 4,155 feet, gets 21.20 inches of precipitation a year, most in May. It records 45.9 inches of snow, most in March, 21.6 days a year at 90°F or more and 172.1 nights at or below freezing. The park says severe thunderstorms are common in June and July and can bring large hail.

July was the park's busiest month in 2025, with 111,639 visits, and February the quietest, with 10,191. June to August brought 52.7% of the year's visits.

Wind Cave is one of the National Park Service sites in South Dakota, and our state guide covers Jewel Cave, Mount Rushmore and Custer State Park alongside it.