Towns where the basics are in town
Where the school and the grocery store are both inside the limits, and where they are not.
Out here the question that decides whether a town works for you is not the price, it is how far you drive for a gallon of milk and where the kids go at 7:45 in the morning. These are the small towns where at least one of those answers is inside the limits, roughly in order of how complete they are, with what each one is still missing said out loud.
- 1 / Community guide
Custer
The most complete small town on this list. A hospital with a 24 hour emergency department, the full school district, groceries, a main street and a state park at the edge of town. What you pay for it is the price level and an hour to Rapid City.
- 2 / Community guide
Hot Springs
Fall River Health Services is a 25 bed critical access hospital with a 24 hour emergency department and a rural clinic at the same address, plus the schools and the shopping. What you give up is the hour on US 79 to Rapid City.
- 3 / Community guide
Belle Fourche
Schools, groceries, a real main street and a Monument Health clinic in town. The hospital is in Spearfish, which is the one thing you drive for.
- 4 / Community guide
Wall
Its own school district, a Monument Health clinic on 7th Avenue and the Wall Food Center, in a town of 699. What is missing is a hospital, and it is 50 miles away.
- 5 / Community guide
Newell
Elementary, middle and high school on one campus, a grocery store, a hardware store and a library, in a town of 584. No clinic and no hospital: Sturgis is 26 miles and that is the honest cost of living here.
- 6 / Community guide
Edgemont
Its own school district with both buildings in one place, city water and sewer, a bank and a library, at the lowest price level in this guide. The hospital is 35 miles east in Hot Springs, and the local economy has two unresolved questions on it worth reading about first.
- 7 / Community guide
Hermosa
An elementary and a middle school in town plus a real grocery store, 26 minutes from Rapid City, which is the shortest run to a city on this whole list. The high school is 27 miles away in Custer, so the teenagers do the traveling.
- 8 / Community guide
New Underwood
The counterpoint. All three school buildings are in town, which almost no community of 590 can still say, and there is no grocery store, no hardware store and no clinic. Whether that trade works depends entirely on which half of the question matters more to you.
Two places that people ask about and that do not belong on this list, for the same reason. Keystone has no school building at all, so every grade travels to Hill City, and no grocery store. Buffalo Gap has neither, and its kids go to Hot Springs in a different county. Both are perfectly good places to buy for other reasons, and I would rather you heard the missing pieces from me now than found them out in February. The rest of that detail is on each town's own page.
Looking for towns where the basics are in town?
If you are deciding between this and somewhere else on this site, say so. That is a faster conversation than a tour.
Last updated August 2026
This page is general information, not legal, tax, lending or financial advice. Facts and figures are cited from public sources as of August 2026 and change over time. Henry Roy is a licensed real estate professional with Ascend Realty in South Dakota. Equal Housing Opportunity.