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South Dakota Oddities

Unusual destinations, curious landmarks, and worthwhile detours across South Dakota.

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11 documented oddities Highest curiosity first

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Giant Objects

Skeleton Man Walking Skeleton Dinosaur

Midland, South Dakota

Beside Interstate 90, a towering human skeleton casually walks a skeletal Tyrannosaurus rex on a leash as if this is a perfectly normal South Dakota errand.

Curious Landmarks

Corn Palace

Mitchell, South Dakota

Mitchell covers a full-size public arena with giant murals made from actual corn, grains, and grasses, then tears much of it down and starts again.

Natural Oddities

The Mammoth Site

Hot Springs, South Dakota

An entire building surrounds an ancient sinkhole packed with mammoth bones, leaving visitors face to face with an active Ice Age excavation.

Roadside Attractions

Wall Drug’s Giant Dinosaur and Jackalope

Wall, South Dakota

Wall Drug surrounds a working drugstore with an eighty-foot dinosaur, a giant rideable jackalope, an animatronic T. rex, and enough roadside kitsch for an entire town.

Roadside Attractions

Lemmon Petrified Wood Park & Museum

Lemmon, South Dakota

Thousands of tons of petrified wood, fossilized grass, and round boulders were stacked into towers, pyramids, arches, and buildings across a downtown city block.

Roadside Attractions

Cosmos Mystery Area

Rapid City, South Dakota

Balls appear to roll uphill, visitors seem to change height, and gravity feels deeply unreliable inside this classic Black Hills mystery spot.

Strange Museums

International Vinegar Museum

Roslyn, South Dakota

A tiny South Dakota town turned vinegar into a full museum, complete with global bottles, tastings, vinegar art, and an annual Vinegar Queen.

Giant Objects

World’s Largest Pheasant

Huron, South Dakota

Huron's forty-foot-long, twenty-two-ton pheasant has been looming over Highway 14 since 1959, because apparently an ordinary pheasant was not enough.

Roadside Attractions

Porter Sculpture Park

Montrose, South Dakota

A sixty-foot bull head, skeletal beasts, giant metal creatures, and more than sixty handmade sculptures rise from the prairie at this gloriously strange roadside art park.

Historic Oddities

Delta-09 Missile Silo

Wall, South Dakota

A deactivated Minuteman II training missile still sits beneath the open prairie at a former launch site where almost everything dangerous was designed to remain invisible.

Roadside Attractions

Dinosaur Park

Rapid City, South Dakota

Seven huge vintage concrete dinosaurs have been frozen on a Rapid City ridge since the 1930s, including an eighty-foot-long green Apatosaurus.