Rushmore Shadows Resort
19 RV Sites
Rushmore Shadows Resort in Rapid City, South Dakota, is a full-service camping resort with cabins, tent sites, full-hookup RV sites at 30 and 50 amps, a swimming pool, mini-golf, playground, and sports courts in Pennington County's Black Hills — a campground positioned in the most concentrated outdoor recreation and American heritage tourism landscape in the Great Plains, within 25 miles of Mount Rushmore National Memorial and a day's drive of five national park and monument units in the Black Hills and Badlands country that South Dakota's southwestern corner uniquely concentrates in a single extended-stay travel destination. Rapid City's Pennington County position as the eastern gateway to the Black Hills gives the resort the logistical convenience of the region's primary airport and commercial hub.
Cabins, tent sites, and full-hookup RV sites at 30 and 50 amps with the family amenity infrastructure — swimming pool, mini-golf, playground, and sports courts — give Rushmore Shadows the complete family resort experience that the Mount Rushmore visitor market requires when multi-day Black Hills stays include young children whose campground energy needs extend beyond the national park visiting schedule. The resort's Rapid City position on the Black Hills' eastern edge gives guests the efficient access to both the northern and southern Black Hills attractions. Pets are welcome.
Mount Rushmore National Memorial, 25 miles southwest of Rapid City via U.S. 16 in Keystone, preserves the 60-foot granite portrait sculptures of Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Lincoln carved by Gutzon Borglum's crew between 1927 and 1941 in a monument whose combination of human achievement, natural scale, and patriotic symbolism makes it the most visited site in South Dakota at over 3 million annual visitors. The sculptor's studio and the Avenue of Flags give the visitor center experience the craft process and the historical context that the monument face's distance from the viewing terrace alone cannot convey.
Crazy Horse Memorial, 17 miles south of Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills via U.S. 16/385, is the world's largest mountain carving still under construction — a private, tribally supported monument to the Oglala Lakota chief Crazy Horse begun by sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski in 1948 that will depict the chief pointing toward the horizon from horseback in a monument that will ultimately measure 563 feet tall and 641 feet long when completed. The museum complex, the Indian University of North America, and the Native American Cultural Center give the Crazy Horse site a substantial visitor experience independent of the mountain carving's eventual completion.
Rushmore Shadows Resort serves guests through the Black Hills camping season from May through September, with the peak summer season from late June through August representing the highest Mount Rushmore visitor volume and the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally — typically the first full week of August — generating the largest accommodation demand surge in the region's annual calendar. Custer State Park, 30 miles south in Custer County, protects 71,000 acres of Black Hills ponderosa pine forest with one of the largest publicly owned bison herds in the world, the Wildlife Loop Road, and the Cathedral Spires hiking in a state park that rivals the surrounding national parks in wildlife viewing and scenic quality. Reserve sites and cabins many months ahead for the Sturgis Rally week and the peak summer season.
from $55/night
