RAPID CITY, S.D. — When she heard I was headed to South Dakota's Black Hills with family, my friend Barbara, who regularly heads that way with her husband and kids, emphatically recommended that we find time to see Custer State Park.

Iconic Mount Rushmore was already at the top of our list of places to visit. The towering memorial-in-stone to presidents Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt was, in fact, intended all along to be the long-range target of our summer cross-country trip, which in the end included huge swaths of Wyoming and bits of Montana, Idaho and Utah.

Also on the proposed itinerary in South Dakota were the still-in-progress Crazy Horse memorial near Rushmore, Badlands National Park east of Rapid City, fabled Wall Drug in the tiny town of Wall (just for kicks) and the historic gold-and-gambling center of Deadwood. Oh, and Custer State Park, subject like the others to last-minute decisions and the weather.

Barbara's enthusiasm vaulted Custer State Park into the top tier.

When we got back home, I couldn't thank her enough.

Simply put, Custer is the heart of the Black Hills. Rushmore, Rapid City and the Hills themselves are a tourist magnet, deservedly so in many respects, but the result is also a forest of roadside billboards urging visitors to do this or see that, many of the "attractions" having more to do with $$$ than the area's beauty and history.

Its size (71,000 acres), varied scenery (from grasslands and lakes to mountaintop granite spires) and wildlife (including one of the largest bison herds anywhere) make Custer as close to a national park as a state park could hope to be.

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"We do hear 'wow' a lot. We do hear that we're the 'best-kept secret,"' says Custer State Park Superintendent Richard Miller.

Not that the park really is a secret anymore — or that South Dakota wants it to be considered as such.

"We host over 1.5 million visitors a year," Miller says. "And no, we are not a secret. We market extensively, doing our darndest to attract people. And we're centrally located" among other national parks, national monuments, forests, famous caves and other Black Hills attractions.

Originally organized as the 48,000-acre Custer State Forest in 1912, and soon to include a state game preserve, the park itself was created in 1919, due in large part to the foresight of Peter Norbeck, at the time South Dakota's governor and subsequently a U.S. senator.

"He's generally known as the father of Custer State Park," Miller says. "It was his vision and his hard work that brought it together."