Abandoned places in South Dakota are scattered across a landscape so vast and empty that entire military bases and mining towns can sit for decades without anyone noticing they're gone. With over 45 documented abandoned locations on the Urbex Maps atlas, South Dakota holds a surprising density of Cold War relics, ghost towns, and military installations for a state that most people only associate with Mount Rushmore. The Black Hills hide 19th-century mining camps in their pine-covered canyons. The Great Plains east of the Missouri River are dotted with railroad towns that died when the trains stopped running. And buried in the prairie between Rapid City and the Badlands, you'll find the concrete remnants of America's nuclear deterrent: missile silos, command centers, and munitions depots built during a half-century standoff with the Soviet Union. South Dakota is a state where the frontier era and the atomic age left ruins side by side, separated by less than a century and sometimes by less than a mile.
Free urbex GPS: how Urbex Maps works
Every spot in this guide has a free GPS pin on the Urbex Maps interactive atlas. No paywall for these 6, no registration wall, just coordinates dropped onto the map with access notes. The atlas works on mobile, which matters when you're driving long stretches of I-90 across the plains looking for the Okaton exit or navigating the dirt roads south of Edgemont to find the Igloo bunkers. The full South Dakota database has over 45 locations and growing, covering everything from Black Hills gold towns to prairie railroad ghosts and Cold War infrastructure.
1. Black Hills Ordnance Depot (Igloo)
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The Black Hills Ordnance Depot is one of the largest abandoned military installations in the United States. Spread across 21,000 acres of rolling grassland south of the Black Hills near the town of Edgemont, this facility was built in 1942 to store ammunition and explosives for the war effort. At its peak, it contained over 800 earth-covered concrete bunkers, known as igloos (which gave the adjacent company town its name), along with maintenance shops, administrative buildings, rail spurs, and housing for a community of 4,200 people. The depot was a self-contained military city, complete with its own schools, fire department, movie theater, and bowling alley.
The Army closed the depot in 1967, and the community of Igloo emptied out almost overnight. The homes, shops, and public buildings were left standing. The bunkers remained sealed. For decades, the site was simply too large, too remote, and too contaminated to attract redevelopment. In more recent years, the Vivos Group purchased a portion of the bunker complex and converted some igloos into survivalist shelters, marketing the site as the world's largest doomsday community. But the vast majority of the depot remains untouched: row after row of grass-covered bunkers stretching to the horizon, connected by crumbling roads that haven't seen regular traffic in over 50 years.
The town site of Igloo itself is haunting. Empty residential streets, a boarded-up general store, and a school building with its windows knocked out sit in silence on the prairie. The contrast between the domestic scale of the town and the industrial scale of the bunker field is striking. This was a place where families lived normal lives while surrounded by enough munitions to level a city. Now both the homes and the bunkers are slowly returning to the grassland.
2. Okaton Ghost Town
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Okaton is the kind of ghost town that most people drive past at 80 miles an hour without realizing what they just missed. It sits right off Interstate 90 in Jones County, roughly halfway between Rapid City and Sioux Falls, in the emptiest stretch of highway in the state. If you take the exit and drive a quarter mile down a gravel road, you'll find a cluster of weathered wooden buildings standing in the prairie wind: an abandoned school, a few houses, a gas station, and the skeletal remains of what was once a functioning small town.
The town was founded in 1906 along the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad (commonly called the Milwaukee Road). Like hundreds of similar towns across the northern plains, Okaton existed because the railroad needed water stops and grain elevators at regular intervals. When the Milwaukee Road went bankrupt and ceased operations in 1980, the towns it had created began to die. Okaton's population, already small, dwindled to nearly nothing. The post office held on until 2013, making it one of the last services to go. Today, the official population is listed in the single digits.
The abandoned school is the most photographed building, a two-story wood-frame structure with empty windows that face the interstate. Inside, desks and chalkboards reportedly remained for years after the last class was held. The gas station's pumps are long gone, but the canopy still stands, an accidental monument to roadside America. Okaton's location makes it one of the most convenient ghost towns in South Dakota: you can see it from the highway, visit in 20 minutes, and be back on the road to the Badlands without losing much time. But those 20 minutes will stick with you.
3. Minuteman Missile Silo Delta-09
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Delta-09 is the last intact Minuteman II intercontinental ballistic missile silo in the United States, preserved exactly as it was when it came off nuclear alert. It sits in a fenced enclosure in the open prairie about 15 miles west of the Badlands, part of the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site managed by the National Park Service. Through a glass viewing window set into the concrete silo door, you can look straight down the launch tube at a deactivated Minuteman II missile, the same type of weapon that stood ready to deliver a nuclear warhead to the Soviet Union for nearly 30 years.
From 1963 to 1991, 150 Minuteman II missile silos were scattered across the western South Dakota prairie, each one containing a weapon capable of destroying a city. The silos were operated from underground launch control facilities and kept on hair-trigger alert around the clock. When the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) was signed in 1991, the missiles were removed and the silos were deactivated. All but one were demolished with explosives and filled with rubble, per treaty requirements. Delta-09 was the exception, preserved as a historic site to remind future generations of the Cold War's stakes.
The site is both mundane and terrifying. From the outside, it looks like nothing: a chain-link fence around a concrete slab in a cow pasture, with no visible buildings and no dramatic architecture. But once you look through that glass window and see the missile sitting in its tube, pointed at the sky, the scale of what happened here becomes real. For three decades, a rancher's cows grazed above a weapon that could kill millions of people. The NPS visitor center at the nearby Delta-01 Launch Control Facility adds context, but Delta-09 itself delivers the punch. It's free to visit, open daily, and sits just off I-90.
4. Fort Meade (Abandoned Sections)
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Fort Meade was established in 1878 at the eastern edge of the Black Hills, just outside present-day Sturgis, as a military post to enforce order during the Black Hills Gold Rush and maintain peace with the Lakota Sioux following the Great Sioux War. The 7th Cavalry, George Custer's old regiment, was stationed here just two years after the Battle of the Little Bighorn. For the next several decades, Fort Meade served as a frontier cavalry post, with stone and brick buildings arranged around a parade ground in the classic military style of the era.
The fort's active military life effectively ended after World War I, though it saw brief use as a prisoner of war camp during WWII. Today, portions of the historic fort are occupied by a VA hospital, the South Dakota National Guard, and the Fort Meade Recreation Area. But scattered among the active buildings are the abandoned ones: cavalry barracks with limestone walls and empty window frames, officer's quarters with collapsed roofs, and support buildings that haven't seen maintenance since the Eisenhower administration. The combination of active use and active decay, modern VA facilities sitting next to crumbling 1880s stonework, gives Fort Meade a split-personality quality that's rare in abandoned military sites.
The fort is also notable for its connection to the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, which brings hundreds of thousands of bikers to the area every August. During rally week, the contrast is even more surreal: Harleys thunder down the road past 19th-century cavalry barracks that are slowly losing their roofs. The fort's museum and some restored buildings are open to the public, but the abandoned sections require some walking and attention to find. They're worth the effort.
5. Spokane Ghost Town
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Spokane is a Black Hills mining ghost town tucked into a narrow canyon in the hills south of Lead, accessible only by a rough dirt road that discourages casual visitors. The town was established in 1890 after the discovery of silver, lead, zinc, and gold deposits in the area. The Spokane Mine drove the town's economy, and at its peak, Spokane had enough residents to support basic services and a small commercial district. But the ore bodies were limited, and by 1940, the mine was exhausted and the town was empty.
What remains is scattered through the pine forest along a creek bed: collapsed cabins with their log walls splayed outward, stone foundations covered in pine needles, rusted mining equipment half-buried in the dirt, and the concrete and timber remnants of the mine buildings themselves. Unlike the well-preserved ghost towns on the open prairie, Spokane has been claimed by the forest. Trees grow through former buildings. The creek has shifted its course and washed through what used to be the town's main road. Nature is winning here, and it's winning fast.
The isolation is part of the appeal. You won't find other tourists at Spokane. The road in is narrow and unpaved, and there are no signs marking the site. Once you're there, the silence is total except for wind in the pines and the creek. It's a stark contrast to the tourist-heavy attractions of the Black Hills, where Rushmore and Crazy Horse draw millions of visitors annually. Spokane is a reminder that the Black Hills were, first and foremost, a mining district, and that most of the mines and most of the towns didn't make it. Bring a vehicle with good clearance and expect to get your boots dirty.
6. Rockerville Ghost Town
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Rockerville has died twice, which makes it unusual even by ghost town standards. The first time was in the 1880s, when the placer gold that had drawn miners to the gulch in 1876 ran out and the prospectors moved on to richer claims. The second time was in the 1990s, when a tourist attraction built on the site of the original mining camp was abandoned after the state rerouted Highway 16, cutting off the flow of visitors traveling between Rapid City and Mount Rushmore.
The original Rockerville was a typical Black Hills gold rush settlement: rough, temporary, and violent. Miners panned the creek for gold, built crude cabins, and left when the color stopped showing. By the 1880s, the camp was largely empty. In the 1950s, entrepreneurs saw an opportunity in the site's location on the main tourist route to Rushmore and built a Western-themed attraction, complete with staged buildings, gift shops, and entertainment. For several decades, Rockerville Ghost Town was a roadside stop where families could pose for photos in a fake Old West setting while driving to see the presidents carved in granite.
Then the highway was rerouted. The new road bypassed Rockerville entirely, and the tourist traffic vanished. The attraction closed, and the buildings, a mix of genuine 19th-century ruins and mid-20th-century tourist facades, were left standing. Today, Rockerville sits in an odd limbo: part authentic ghost town, part abandoned theme park, with weathered wooden storefronts that might be 150 years old or might be 70 years old and built to look 150. The confusion is part of the charm. The site is visible from the old highway and accessible on foot, though it sits on private property and visitors should be respectful.
Beyond the List
South Dakota's abandoned places cover an enormous geographic and historical range. From the Cold War bunkers of the Igloo depot to the gold rush ruins of Spokane, this state has left physical evidence of every major chapter in American western history. The Urbex Maps atlas has over 45 locations across South Dakota and growing, including prairie ghost towns, abandoned missile infrastructure, and forgotten railroad stops that never made it onto any tourist map. The GPS coordinates are free on the Urbex Maps interactive atlas. Grab them, fill up your gas tank (you'll need it out here), and go see what the Great Plains left behind.
Explore more abandoned places in the United States
- ●Abandoned Places in North Dakota: 6 Iconic Urbex Spots
- ●Abandoned Places in Wyoming: 6 Iconic Urbex Spots
- ●Abandoned Places in Montana: 6 Iconic Urbex Spots
- ●Abandoned Places in Nebraska: 6 Iconic Urbex Spots
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- ●Abandoned Places USA: 50 States, 50 Iconic Urbex Spots
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Explore More Abandoned Places Nearby
Looking for more abandoned locations? Check out these neighboring states:
- ●Abandoned Places in North Dakota
- ●Abandoned Places in Wyoming
- ●Abandoned Places in Montana
- ●Abandoned Places in Nebraska
- ●Abandoned Places in Minnesota
- ●Abandoned Places in Iowa
Or explore our complete guide: Abandoned Places USA: 50 Iconic Spots, One Per State.
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