Everything OddWay knows about. Narrow it down by what you're after, or where you're going.
Giant objects, odd monuments and things built for no clear reason.
Custer State Park, SD
A tall granite spire contains a narrow opening that gives the formation its needle-and-thread name. It sits directly beside the Needles Highway, where weathered granite towers create some of the state's most improbable natural shapes.
Custer State Park, SD
This one-lane tunnel was cut through solid granite immediately beside the Needle's Eye formation. Its extremely narrow opening forces modern vehicles through a passage designed around the landscape rather than removing the rock entirely.
Garretson, SD
Split Rock Creek cuts through billion-year-old Sioux quartzite, forming vertical pink-red cliffs and narrow rock formations unlike most of eastern South Dakota. The park also preserves traces of a vanished mill town and a short-lived nineteenth-century silver rush.
Montrose, SD
More than 60 handmade metal sculptures rise from the prairie, including giant animals, strange figures and a massive bull's head. Artist Wayne Porter created the entire outdoor collection and continues adding works to the site.
Rapid City, SD
This long-running Black Hills attraction specializes in snakes, crocodilians and other reptiles, with a giant dome anchoring the grounds. Its unusual concentration of reptile exhibits has made it a classic piece of South Dakota roadside-tourism history.
Savoy, SD
Little Spearfish Creek breaks into multiple cascades as it drops through a narrow side canyon. Boardwalks and trails provide lawful access to a landscape whose layered rock and divided waterfall look far more secluded than its relatively easy approach suggests.
Keystone, SD
The cave beneath Rush Mountain contains twisting passages and rooms decorated with flowstone and other formations. Guided access makes the underground geology itself the OddWay draw, separate from the amusement attractions developed above ground.
Midland, SD
A skeletal human figure appears to lead an equally skeletal dinosaur beside Interstate 90 near the 1880 Town. The absurd pairing makes this one of the state's more surreal quick roadside photo stops.
Savoy, SD
Spearfish Creek plunges roughly 47 feet over a rock ledge below the canyon community of Savoy. A public trail reaches the base, revealing a waterfall that was once largely hidden after hydroelectric development diverted water from the creek.
Rapid City, SD
This free children's park fills a wooded island-like landscape with oversized storybook characters, castles and fantasy scenes. Decades of locally built figures give it the handmade quality of an old roadside fairy-tale attraction rather than a modern theme park.
Aberdeen, SD
This city-run park fills its grounds with oversized nursery-rhyme scenes and an elaborate Wizard of Oz area. Visitors can enter Dorothy's house and pass through a simulated tornado before emerging into Munchkin Land.
Custer State Park, SD
A small dam created this lake between giant granite formations in the late nineteenth century. The resulting combination of artificial water and natural boulders is so visually unusual that it has become one of the defining landscapes of the Black Hills.
Spearfish, SD
Artist Dick Termes paints complete scenes across suspended spheres designed to be viewed from every direction. Dozens of these rotating six-point-perspective paintings create a disorienting gallery where rooms, landscapes and figures wrap continuously around curved surfaces.
Mitchell, SD
Mitchell's landmark building is redecorated with enormous exterior murals made from corn, grain and other plant material. The designs change regularly, turning a civic arena into one of the country's strangest pieces of agricultural architecture.
Rapid City, SD
A waterfall rushes from a tunnel blasted through the rock during an abandoned attempt to divert water for gold mining. Visitors follow a short path into the canyon to see where human engineering accidentally created one of the Black Hills' more unusual waterfall attractions.
Wall, SD
What began as a small drugstore became an enormous roadside complex advertised by hundreds of miles of famous highway signs. Inside and around the property are Western displays, mechanical figures, giant photo props and enough deliberate kitsch to make the store an attraction in its own right.
Wall, SD
A huge green dinosaur stands near Interstate 90 as an old-school advertisement for Wall Drug. The giant concrete creature is separate enough from the main store to function as its own roadside landmark.
Hot Springs, SD
Wind Cave contains an immense underground maze famous for delicate boxwork formations, while the small natural entrance carries deep importance in Lakota oral tradition. Cave access is controlled through park tours, and the surrounding prairie is also protected habitat.
Nemo, SD
This privately operated cave sends visitors down hundreds of steps through narrow passages and chambers in the northern Black Hills. Its long history as a roadside cave attraction adds another layer to a region where underground tourism developed alongside mining.
Huron, SD
Huron’s enormous pheasant was built in 1959 as a tribute to South Dakota’s celebrated pheasant-hunting culture. The roughly 28-foot-tall bird still stands beside U.S. Highway 14 on the east side of town, where travelers can pull off for photos.
Badlands National Park, SD
Bands of yellow, purple, gray and red sediment create one of the strangest color shifts in Badlands National Park. The formations expose an ancient weathered soil layer and look dramatically different from the pale pinnacles elsewhere in the park.
