Chadron State Park

Nebraska'S First State Park (Nebraska Game And Parks Commission), In The Pine Ridge · Chadron, Nebraska

Chadron State Park lies about 8 to 10 miles south of Chadron on US Highway 385 in Dawes County, in the Pine Ridge, an escarpment of buttes, canyons and ponderosa pine that rises out of the northern Nebraska plains and surprises people who think the state is flat. Established in 1921, it is Nebraska's first state park, and it has the feel of a classic family park: rental cabins among the pines, a campground, a summer swimming pool, a small fishing lagoon, picnic shelters, trails and a scenic drive up to overlooks across the ridge. It is small, roughly a thousand acres, and much of the surrounding pine country is national forest, so the park works best as a base for the Pine Ridge National Recreation Area, the Museum of the Fur Trade and Fort Robinson rather than as a destination on its own. Wildfire is part of the story here: the Pine Ridge burned heavily in 2012, and parts of the park and the forest around it are still recovering, with open, blackened slopes among surviving pines. The park is on Mountain time and busiest in summer.

15951 US Highway 385, Chadron, Nebraska, 69337, United States

NO OPENING TIME HERE WAS CHECKED. The typical pattern: the park is open year round, with day-use hours roughly from early morning to around 10 pm Mountain time, while the office keeps shorter daytime hours. Cabins, the pool and trail rides are seasonal, roughly late May to Labor Day for the pool and spring to autumn for most cabins. The traps are arriving in the shoulder seasons and finding the pool and cabins closed, forgetting that Dawes County runs on Mountain time, and dry-summer fire bans that shut down campfires. Confirm current times before relying on them.

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