Free Badlands Entry Today Kicks Off a Big Black Hills Week

If you have been putting off a trip to South Dakota's Black Hills and Badlands region, today is a genuinely good reason to stop waiting, and the ten days after today are a genuinely good reason to book your travel now rather than later. Wednesday, September 17 is Constitution Day, one of the National Park Service's eight fee-free entrance days for 2026, and it lands the same week Custer State Park gears up for one of the biggest tourism draws in the entire region. Start with what today's waiver actually covers. Badlands National Park normally charges $30 per vehicle for a seven-day pass, $25 for a motorcycle, or $15 per person on foot or bicycle, and that fee is waived today at all three of the park's entrance stations: Northeast, Pinnacles and Interior. Devils Tower National Monument, just across the Wyoming line, gets the same waiver, though that one falls outside the Midwest region proper. Two caveats matter before you plan around this. First, the waiver only covers entrance fees; camping fees, cave tours at nearby Wind Cave and Jewel Cave, and any reserved activities still cost the same as any other day, since Wind Cave and Jewel Cave don't charge entrance fees in the first place and never needed today's waiver. Second, and this is new for 2026, the National Park Service has restricted fee-free days to U.S. residents for the first time. International visitors can still get in without paying at the gate, but only by buying an annual interagency pass in advance through Recreation.gov; simply showing up on a passport is no longer enough to waive the fee the way it was in past years. If you have overseas guests visiting the Badlands this week, get that pass sorted before you drive out rather than assuming today's date alone covers everyone in the car. The bigger planning story, though, is what happens one week from today. The Custer State Park Buffalo Roundup and Arts Festival runs September 24 through 26, with the roundup itself, cowboys and park staff driving roughly 1,400 bison across the park's valleys into corrals for health checks and vaccinations, happening the morning of Friday, September 25. This is one of the largest organized bison drives in the country, and it draws a crowd to match: park officials expect up to 20,000 spectators for the roundup morning alone, on top of the three-day arts festival running alongside it near the State Game Lodge, with more than 150 vendors, food and live entertainment. Layer on the Crazy Horse Memorial's Fall Volksmarch the following weekend, September 27, and you have a stretch of nearly two weeks where lodging across the Black Hills is under real pressure. That pressure is already showing up in the numbers. Rapid City, about a 35-minute drive from Custer State Park, has the largest concentration of hotel rooms in the region and is the default base for roundup visitors, but rooms there are already commanding premium rates for the September 24-26 weekend, and in-park lodges like State Game Lodge and Blue Bell Lodge tend to sell out well before the event given their limited room counts. If you want to stay inside the park or in Custer, Hill City or Keystone for easier access to the corrals the morning of the roundup, book this week; those small towns have far less inventory than Rapid City and fill first. Getting there is easier than it used to be. Rapid City Regional Airport (RAP) now has daily nonstop service from Chicago on both American, which began April 7, and United, which began March 30, plus multiple daily United flights from Denver and American flights from Dallas-Fort Worth, and seasonal Delta service to Atlanta. For Midwest travelers specifically, the Chicago nonstops on RAP are the most direct path in, whether you're departing O'Hare on United or American, and both airlines are running full daily service on that route through the fall. Because roundup week overlaps with the tail end of RAP's regular fall schedule, book those flights now rather than a few days out; a 20,000-person event pulling from across the country will absorb seats on a regional airport's limited daily departures faster than a comparable date without a major draw. One more fee to plan around: Custer State Park itself is a South Dakota state park, not a national park, so it is not affected by today's federal fee-free day at all. Entry requires its own park entrance license, $25 for a seven-day vehicle pass or $40 to $60 for an annual pass depending on residency, purchased separately through South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks or at the gate. If you're combining a Badlands visit today with a Buffalo Roundup trip next week, budget for both fees rather than assuming one covers the other. Put it together and the sequence for Midwest-region travelers is straightforward: if a Black Hills or Badlands trip has been sitting on your list, use today's fee waiver for the Badlands portion if your schedule allows it, confirm any international guests have a Recreation.gov pass in hand rather than relying on the date alone, and then treat next week's Buffalo Roundup as a distinct, much bigger logistics problem. Lock in Rapid City-bound flights and a hotel room in Rapid City, Custer, Hill City or Keystone this week, budget separately for Custer State Park's own entrance license, and arrive early on roundup morning, since gates open at 6:15 a.m. and parking lots close by 9 a.m. ahead of the 9:30 a.m. herd run. Sources Free National Park Days in the Black Hills & Badlands | 2026 Dates & Trip Tips - Black Hills & Badlands Tourism Association - https://www.blackhillsbadlands.com/blog/post/free-national-park-days-in-the-black-hills-and-badlands-dates-tips-and-trip-ideas/ Presidents Day Fee-Free Kickoff: Celebrate America in America's National Parks - National Park Service - https://www.nps.gov/orgs/1207/presidents-day-2026.htm September in the Black Hills & Badlands | Buffalo Roundup, Fall Color & Scenic Drives - Black Hills & Badlands Tourism Association - https://www.blackhillsbadlands.com/blog/post/roundup-and-wind-down-the-black-hills-badlands-in-september/ Custer State Park Buffalo Roundup & Arts Festival - Visit Rapid City - https://www.visitrapidcity.com/events/annual-events-and-festivals/custer-state-park-buffalo-roundup-arts-festival/ Badlands National Park ($30/vehicle) — 2026 Visitor Guide - National Park Data - https://www.nationalparkdata.com/badl Where We Fly - Rapid City Regional Airport - https://rapairport.com/where-we-fly/ Park Entrance License - South Dakota Game, Fish, and Parks - https://gfp.sd.gov/pel/