Just about every visitor attraction around the Black Hills region has some sort of a road sign announcing its presence. Heck, Wall Drug has thousands of them scattered all over the world.

We don’t discriminate, so here in the hills even the wild animals get their own roadside signs. Sure, we’ve all seen the run-of-the-mill deer crossing signs; they’re plenty common around the country. But, in the Black Hills we really do have some interesting ones that you just don’t see in other places.

Case in point – the brand new, hard to miss, bighorn sheep signs between Sheridan Lake and Hill City. They’re HUGE. And for very good reason. I’ve driven that stretch of Hwy 385 more times than I can count and about half of the time there are bighorns just hanging around on the road. Traffic often comes to a standstill while it waits for the herd to move on.

Black Hills visitors often stop to take photos of the “Buffalo Are Dangerous – Do Not Approach” signs. While unique  – the signs are no joke. Bison, although they appear slow and lumbering, can easily outrun a horse and turn on a dime.

Down in Custer State Park, in the Stockade Lake area near Custer, there are Turtle Crossing signs. A while back, the little fellers had begun taking their lives into their own hands, er…feet, uh…appendages – to cross the highway from the lake to the quiet marsh on the other side. Turns out cars and turtles don’t mix, so signs were put up and a culvert under the highway was remodeled into a turtle-safe route.

Near the town of Pringle, there are elk crossing signs and if you really want to get technical about it, there are even caribou and black bear crossing signs – albeit within the confines of Bear Country USA, near Rapid City.

I admit – road signs are a bit of a strange topic for the travel blog, but the point is that the Black Hills region is full of incredible wildlife. It really is one of the premier wildlife viewing areas in the U.S. South Dakota actually has a mind-blowing 6,600+ different species of wildlife, fish and insects!

Visitors come from every corner of the globe each year to see the Black Hills wildlife and explore the natural beauty. Sometimes the animals are out in plain sight  – like the bighorns near Hill City, other times they’re much more hidden and take a little more effort to see.

Obvious or not – the wildlife is here. Sometimes, you just have to pay attention to the signs.