Agency-listedMunicipalFree
Selby City Park
Drive-up · public land · SD · 45.50961, -100.02891
Ask an AI about this campsiteOpens Grok already loaded with this site. It reads the same records this page is built from, and links whatever it tells you.
Ask about this camp →The land manager lists this site. Someone from the agency inventoried it, so it is a real camp — not a spot we guessed at. What changes is conditions — roads, gates, closures, fire rules. Check those with the unit before you commit to the drive.
Free overnight camping in the Selby city park, one mile off US-83 in Walworth County -- a genuinely useful stop on the long empty run between Pierre and the North Dakota line, and one of the very few places in South Dakota where a town says the word FREE out loud. The City of Selby's own site puts it simply: "Additionally the park offers free overnight camping and is equipped with restrooms, and multiple picnic areas." For a town of a few hundred people this is a surprisingly big park. The city lists a softball field, a baseball/football field, a tennis court, a sand volleyball court, rodeo grounds, two playground areas and a swimming pool. Restrooms and picnic areas are confirmed by the city. WHAT THE CITY DOES NOT SAY -- and we will not invent it -- is how many nights you may stay, whether there are hookups, whether there is drinking water for campers, or whether the restrooms stay open outside the summer season. None of that is on the page. Treat this as a flat, legal, free place to sleep rather than a campground with services, and call the city before you count on anything more. If the stop saves you a motel night, spend a few dollars in town -- that is how these small-town free parks keep existing. We have not visited this site.
USGS topo — contours & terrain
Aerial — USGS / NAIP
Weather outlook — at Selby City Park
Loading the latest forecast…
Live NWS area forecast (~2.5 km grid, not elevation-corrected). Camp sits at 1,905 ft.
Fire & smoke — around Selby City ParkNIFC · AirNow
Checking active fires & air quality…
Active wildfires from NIFC (within ~50 mi); air quality from AirNow. Always confirm current fire restrictions with the managing office before you go.
Everything you need — measured from Selby City Park · public land · SD
▲ your camp. Rings are 15, 30 and 60 straight-line miles; bearings are approximate and roads run longer.
Nearest of each
- FFuel0 mi
- MMechanic0 mi
- @Mail12 mi
- GGrocery19 mi
- HHardware20 mi
- OOutfitter20 mi
- +Urgent care20 mi
- EVEV fast charger23 mi
- RxPharmacy27 mi
- DDump30 mi
≤30 mi30–4545+water
The read: fuel & food sit about 0 mi out.
Not within 60 mi: Water, Propane. Plan those before you head up.
One dot per need — the nearest of each kind, straight-line from camp. Places from OpenStreetMap (© OpenStreetMap contributors); the EV fast charger from the US DOE station locator. Open in Google Maps ↗
The site — Selby City Park
Access
Drive-up
Land
public land
Elevation
1,905 ft
Ground slope
1.4% · flat
Nearest rail line
~0.4 mi · other track
State
SD
Coordinates
45.50961, -100.02891
Cost
Free
Nearby & resupply — around Selby City Park · public land · SD (OpenStreetMap)
- Water featurenone named within 1 mi (USGS NHD)
- Drinking waternone within 10 mi
- FuelCenex · ~0.5 mi
- Propane / LPGnone within 31 mi
- Dump station~29.8 mi
- GroceriesDrakes Place · ~18.6 mi
- PharmacyPharmacy · ~26.8 mi
- Hospital / clinicMobridge Medical Clinic · ~20.5 mi
- HardwareAce Hardware · ~19.8 mi
- Nearest rail line~0.4 mi · other track
- Nearest highwayno interstate or US route within 10 mi
EV charging — from Selby City Park · public land · SD — nearest public DC fast & Level 2 (US DOE station data)
- Nearest public DC fast charger23.4 mi straight-line W — Grand River Casino, Mobridge, SD (at a public site) · RED_E · CCS · 2 fast ports listed · listed open, last confirmed by AFDC 2026-09-16 · hours: not listed · directions
- Public DC fast stations within reach1 within 25 mi · 2 within 50 · 15 within 100 · 33 within 150
- Nearest listing NACS (Tesla)98.7 mi — Bismarck, ND - Tesla Supercharger, Bismarck
- Nearest listing CHAdeMO73.8 mi — STEVEN LUST AUT FAST CHARGE, Aberdeen
- Nearest public Level 2 (J1772)80.6 mi — WEGNER AUTO CO. WEGNER AUTO 1, Pierre, SD · ChargePoint Network · J1772 · 2 Level 2 ports listed · listed open, last confirmed by AFDC 2026-09-16 · hours: 24 hours daily
- Also listed, not counted aboveNACS-only Level 2 — Prairie Knights Casino & Resort - Tesla Destination, Cannon Ball, 60.3 mi · NACS (Tesla) · hours: 24 hours daily. Open to Teslas only. · AFDC lists it “Free”
- Pricing at the fast chargernot listed
- Power (kW)not listed by AFDC — “DC fast” spans roughly 24 to 350 kW, so ask the network.
- Read this honestlyStraight-line miles, like every distance on this site. Roads run longer than this, and you have to get back. We know where a charger is listed. We don’t know if it works today, how fast it is, or the road miles. Check the network before you commit.
Snapshot 2026-09-16 · AFDC record 451911 · US DOE Alternative Fuels Data Center
Nearby restrooms — around Selby City Park · public land · SD — pit toilets, restrooms & rest areas (government data)
- No mapped restroom within 30 miles — plan to pack it out.
Coming out here — Selby City Park · public land · SD
- No named surface water mapped within 1 mi of the pin in USGS's National Hydrography Dataset (data refreshed October 2022), and none within about a mile and a half in our OpenStreetMap pull — which is not proof there is none, only that neither map has one. Plan to carry washing water as well as drinking water.
- Ground slope around the pin: about 1.4% — flat. Measured on USGS's 3DEP elevation model (1 m data here), sampled every 10 metres around the point. That is the hillside, not the ground under your wheels — a graded pullout or a bench a few metres across is too small to show up at that spacing, and nobody has checked this one for you.
- Rail line mapped ~0.4 mi from the pin — the national rail atlas classes it as other track. That is the FRA/BTS North American Rail Network (data updated Jul 21, 2026), which records that a line is there and what class of track it is. Whether anything runs on it, how often, and at what hour, it does not say, and nobody has checked this one for you.
- No interstate or US route is mapped within 10 mi of the pin in the Census's TIGER/Line primary roads (TIGER/Line 2025, released Oct 2025). That file holds the divided, limited-access highways only — a state expressway or a two-lane US route near this camp would not be in it.
- Power: Dave carries his own — batteries or solar. A generator will run your rig and it is also the thing everybody camped near you can hear.
- Getting online: Dave recommends Starlink. He has had it since SpaceX introduced it, used it for four years living on the road, and it delivers as promised — several hundred nights out, and he can count on one hand the places he could not connect. The cable on his unit runs 150 feet, which is usually all it takes to find enough sky. Starlink → Referral link — Starlink pays Dave $100 in cash if you sign up through it, and that money funds this site and the next trip. It costs you nothing and does not change the recommendation.
Open Selby City Park elsewhere
How we know this — Selby City Park
Source
public land records
Confidence
Researched — The record is detailed and internally consistent, and the coordinates land where the managing agency says this site is.
How it was placed
SOURCE: City of Selby official website, https://selbysd.com/parks-rec/ -- fetched this fire and the sentence string-matched in the RAW page body via data/fetch_town_page.py, not taken from a search summary. Quote verbatim: "Additionally the park offers free overnight camping and is equipped with restrooms, and multiple picnic areas." The amenity list quoted in field_note is from the immediately preceding sentence on the same page. The page shows no date. NOT STATED ANYWHERE ON THE PAGE, therefore not claimed and left NULL/absent in this row: night limit, hookups, potable water, seasonal closure. water is NULL for that reason -- the city mentions restrooms but never mentions drinking water. COORDINATE: OpenStreetMap via Overpass API, park polygon (way, leisure=park) centre 45.5096098,-100.028909. The polygon is UNNAMED in OSM, so identification rests on the amenity match rather than on a name: inside/adjacent to that polygon Overpass returns a leisure=swimming_pool at 45.5104,-100.029331, multiple leisure=pitch, a leisure=track and several leisure=playground -- which matches the city's own list of pool, ball fields, tennis, rodeo grounds and two playgrounds. A swimming pool is a distinctive thing for a town this size, so the match is treated as conclusive. The OTHER unnamed leisure=park in Selby, at 45.5069072,-100.0340102, has no amenities mapped in it at all and sits on the town centre -- that is a square, not this park, and was rejected. GNIS was checked first and has NO park feature in Walworth County, so USGS could not supply this coordinate. Selby town centre per GNIS is 45.5063788,-100.0320657; the park pin is about 0.4 mi north-northeast of it, consistent with an edge-of-town park. CAVEAT: the pin is the PARK, not a marked campsite -- the city does not publish where in the park you camp. Dedupe: nothing in the database within 5 km; nearest row is Gettysburg City Park 56 km away. Verified 2026-08-17 01:05:16. | auto:agency-trust 2026-08-18: state agency GIS record with a source URL and coordinates, confidence not low. Fee value is the agency's own, not field-checked. Not field-verified -- confirm access, road conditions and fire rules before you go.
EV chargers
US DOE Alternative Fuels Data Center station locator, snapshot 2026-09-16. Straight-line miles to the nearest public, open, unrestricted station; restricted and planned units are shown but never counted.
Field check
On the agency's books. The land manager inventoried this site, so its existence is not in question — current conditions are. Nobody from here has camped it recently.
What we don’t know about Selby City Park
A land record can put you within a few meters of a spot. It cannot tell you any of this — so check it yourself, and treat anything below as the open question it is.
- Road surface & last-mile access
- How many rigs actually fit
- Cell coverage by carrier
- Seasonal & winter access
- Current fire restrictions
- Whether any water here is drinkable
- Shade & wind exposure
- Noise and who else shows up
- Whether a listed EV charger works today, or the road miles to it
Before you go — Selby City Park
Water on public land →Cold-weather camping →Fire rules & restrictions →Camping with a dog →All field notes →