Waterfalls in South Dakota

South Dakota's waterfalls: Black Hills canyons and one prairie river

Two very different landscapes carry South Dakota's eleven named waterfalls. In the northern Black Hills, Spearfish Canyon cuts through banded limestone and shale, and creeks off its rim drop in a short string of falls; more than a hundred miles east, the Big Sioux River crosses a single outcrop of ancient quartzite in the middle of Sioux Falls.

Where the waterfalls are

Lawrence County holds three falls in Spearfish Canyon — Bridal Veil, Roughlock and Spearfish Falls — cut through brown Deadwood Shale, pink Englewood Limestone and thick gray Pahasapa Limestone on top. To the south, granite country around Custer gives Custer County two listings, and Pennington County two more, including the long-closed Thunderhead Falls. Fall River County, near Hot Springs at the Black Hills' southern edge, holds Cascade Falls and Fall River Falls. Away from the Black Hills entirely, Minnehaha County on the eastern prairie holds Sioux Falls in the city itself and Devils Falls near Garretson.

Waterfalls worth the trip

• Bridal Veil Falls, 75 feet over resistant rock in Spearfish Canyon, is a roadside pull-off view with an observation platform; hiking into the immediate area isn't allowed. A tourism page gives it closer to 60 feet.
• Roughlock Falls, 42 feet in tiers on Little Spearfish Creek, is an easy, mostly level 1-mile walk from Spearfish Canyon Nature Area — the name recalls wagon drivers who once locked their wheels to descend the steep grade nearby.
• Spearfish Falls, 47 feet by lidar survey (often given as 60), sits at the end of a steep, roughly 3/4-mile trail; a hydroelectric plant serving the Homestake Gold Mine diverted the creek away from the falls from 1917 until 2003, when the flow returned.
• Sioux Falls, 50 feet where the Big Sioux River crosses four main steps of 1.5-billion-year-old quartzite, is a short walk from parking in the city's Falls Park.

Fees and access

Custer State Park charges $25 per vehicle (or $20 per motorcycle) for a 2026 pass covering one to seven days; an annual pass runs $40 for residents and $60 for nonresidents, and vehicles passing straight through on US 16A need no pass. Spearfish Canyon Nature Area, home to Roughlock Falls, charges nothing to enter. Falls Park in Sioux Falls is also free, open 5 a.m. to nearly midnight daily. Thunderhead Falls, a mine-tunnel attraction near Rapid City, has been closed to visitors for years with no reopening announced.

Safety

Falls Park bans swimming in the river between Falls Park Drive and Sixth Street; two people drowned there on March 14, 2013 trying to rescue a six-year-old boy who had gone into the foam-covered water below the falls, and the boy survived. At Bridal Veil Falls, visitors are kept to the platform rather than the streambank itself.