The Bison of Custer State Park
Near Custer, South Dakota
The animals grazing in the wide valleys of Custer State Park are descendants of a species that nearly vanished from the earth in a single generation. Before the great commercial hunt of the late nineteenth century, an estimated thirty to sixty million bison roamed the North American plains. By eighteen eighty-nine, fewer than one thousand survived on the continent, the survivors of a slaughter so complete it remade the ecology of the interior of the country.
In nineteen fourteen, the state of South Dakota purchased thirty-six bison from a rancher named Scotty Philip, who had protected a small remnant herd near Fort Pierre. From those animals, the park built its herd over the following century. Today about thirteen hundred bison range across the park's seventy-one thousand acres.
Each year in late September, the park holds its bison roundup, a genuine working event that has become one of South Dakota's signature spectacles. Wranglers on horseback push the full herd into corrals in a single sweeping drive that can cover many miles of terrain. Four hundred to five hundred calves are born each spring, and the park auctions off several hundred animals each fall to keep the population in balance with the available grass.
The roundup draws thousands of spectators. Tickets to the viewing areas sell out months in advance. It is not a performance.
It is a working cattle drive with animals that outweigh cattle by several hundred pounds and have considerably shorter patience for cooperation.
