Relocation

Compare Black Hills Communities

25 towns and unincorporated communities. Pick two to four and the full table appears underneath. Commutes are driving times to the Ellsworth main gate and downtown Rapid City. Median sold prices, where we have them, come from the MLS over the trailing twelve months with the source, window and sale count printed under each figure. Typical price bands are practical search ranges, not medians, and are labelled separately.

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1 of 25 communities

Under $400k Close to Ellsworth Close to Rapid City Short commute New construction available Acreage available City water and sewer Smaller market More rural Established housing Newer housing Clear filters Clear everything

Price filters only consider communities with a published trailing twelve month median, so towns without one do not appear in a price filter.

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The five facts that decide a shortlist

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Selected, 4 of 4

Rapid City and the Ellsworth corridor

Everything within about twenty five minutes of downtown Rapid City or the Ellsworth main gate, where most of the newer inventory, the shortest commutes and the jurisdiction questions about city versus county service are.

Rapid City
Typical price
$300k to $450kMedian sold $349,950. Black Hills MLS, single family, trailing 12 months, as of August 2026. 706 closed sales.
To Ellsworth AFB
24 min, 13.8 miDriving time and distance, off peak.
To downtown Rapid City
5 min, 1.5 miDriving time and distance, off peak.
Utility pattern
City water and sewer inside the limits
School district
Rapid City Area Schools 51-4Assignment follows the official boundary for the address. Confirm with the district.
4 is the most that fits. Drop one first.Guide

What changes

Between Summerset, Edgemont, Buffalo Gap, St. Onge

The rows below are the ones where these do not read the same. Ordered as the table runs, not by importance.

Region: SummersetRapid City and the Ellsworth corridorEdgemontCentral and Southern HillsBuffalo GapCentral and Southern HillsSt. OngeNorthern Hills and I-90
County: SummersetMeade CountyEdgemontFall River CountyBuffalo GapCuster CountySt. OngeLawrence County
Jurisdiction: SummersetCity of Summerset, incorporated July 2005EdgemontIncorporated city of Edgemont, with Fall River County outside the limits.Buffalo GapIncorporated town of Buffalo Gap, with Custer County outside the limits.St. OngeUnincorporated. No town government. Lawrence County zones the parcels and the Sheriff patrols them.
Corridor: SummersetI-90EdgemontUS 18 and SD 471Buffalo GapSD 79St. OngeSD 34, with I-90 seven miles southeast at Whitewood
To downtown Rapid City: Summerset15 min, 10.0 miEdgemontAbout 100 miles northeastBuffalo GapAbout 45 miles, roughly 56 minutesSt. OngeAbout 44 miles, roughly 48 minutes
To Ellsworth AFB: Summerset30 min, 19.2 miEdgemontAbout 110 milesBuffalo GapAbout 55 milesSt. OngeAbout 45 miles

Side by side

Summerset, Edgemont, Buffalo Gap, St. Onge

Rows marked as differing are the ones where these do not read alike. Rows without the mark sit on a quiet background because they say the same thing in every column.

The selected Black Hills communities compared on location, housing, utilities, schools, daily errands, mapped subdivisions and the trade each one asks for
Attribute	Rapid City and the Ellsworth corridorSummerset	Central and Southern HillsEdgemont	Central and Southern HillsBuffalo Gap	Northern Hills and I-90St. Onge
Where it sits
Regiondiffers	Rapid City and the Ellsworth corridor	Central and Southern Hills	Central and Southern Hills	Northern Hills and I-90
Countydiffers	Meade County	Fall River County	Custer County	Lawrence County
JurisdictiondiffersCity versus county decides who provides service and who inspects the work.	City of Summerset, incorporated July 2005	Incorporated city of Edgemont, with Fall River County outside the limits.	Incorporated town of Buffalo Gap, with Custer County outside the limits.	Unincorporated. No town government. Lawrence County zones the parcels and the Sheriff patrols them.
Corridordiffers	I-90	US 18 and SD 471	SD 79	SD 34, with I-90 seven miles southeast at Whitewood
To downtown Rapid Citydiffers	15 min, 10.0 miDriving time and distance, off peak.	About 100 miles northeastDistance only. Drive time is not measured for this community, so time it from the parcel.	About 45 miles, roughly 56 minutesDriving time and distance, off peak.	About 44 miles, roughly 48 minutesDriving time and distance, off peak.
To Ellsworth AFBdiffers	30 min, 19.2 miDriving time and distance, off peak.	About 110 milesDistance only. Drive time is not measured for this community, so time it from the parcel.	About 55 milesDistance only. Drive time is not measured for this community, so time it from the parcel.	About 45 milesDistance only. Drive time is not measured for this community, so time it from the parcel.
Winter drivingdiffers	The commute is I-90, so winter driving here is interstate driving rather than a two lane canyon road.	Cold semi-arid country with a recorded low of 40 below. US 18 is the lifeline and it is a long way to anywhere in a storm.	Highway 79 is state maintained and is the connection to Hot Springs and Rapid City. Off it, this is open prairie with blowing snow.	Highway 34 is state maintained and connects three directions. County and private roads off it are a different conversation.
Housing and lots
Typical pricediffers	Builder inventory sets the level here, and the MLS publishes no Summerset median on its own.	About $155,000 average sold, 13 sales over 24 monthsAverage sold $155,285. Black Hills MLS, single family, 24 months through August 2026, as of August 2026. 13 closed sales.	One single family sale shows in the Black Hills MLS over 24 months, at $80,000. One closing is a sample of one rather than a price level, so read it that way.	No figure published. St. Onge is Mount Rushmore Area MLS territory and the current feed covers only the Black Hills MLS, so a zero here would be a gap in the data rather than a fact about the market.
Housing agediffers	Mostly 2000s to present	An 1890 railroad town, so mostly older stock, with about a quarter of units vacant at the 2020 count.	An 1885 to 1939 historic core with an aging housing stock and about a fifth of units vacant.	An 1891 townsite with genuinely old buildings, surrounded by ranch and acreage property of every era.
New constructiondiffers	Limited, mostly infill and small projects	None underway	None underway	Limited, mostly infill and small projects
Acreagediffers	Not recorded townwide in this guide. The recorded plat carries the lot size.	Acreage parcels are common here	Acreage parcels are common here	Acreage parcels are common here
Typical lotdiffers	Wide lots on new streets	Town lots inside the limits, ranch scale outside them.	A handful of historic townsite lots, with grassland and ranch ground around them.	Small townsite lots, with acreage and ranch ground around them.
Covenants and HOAdiffersCovenants are recorded per plat. The title commitment lists what binds the parcel.	Recorded covenants on some plats, none on others	Few plats here carry recorded covenants	Few plats here carry recorded covenants	Few plats here carry recorded covenants
Utilities and rules
Utility patterndiffers	Sewer collection is provided by the City of Summerset. Water service varies by address and can include Black Hawk Water User District or Diamond D Water in Sun Valley.	City water and sewer inside the limits	Mixed, municipal service in town with well and septic outside it	Mostly private well and septic
Waterdiffers	Black Hawk Water User District, or Diamond D Water in Sun Valley	City of Edgemont municipal water. Rural parcels are on private wells.	Town of Buffalo Gap municipal water from a single well, serving about 93 connections. Rural parcels are on private wells.	The Saint Onge Sewer and Water Company serves about 78 connections around the townsite, with a clean compliance record. Parcels outside that system are on private wells. There is no rural water district covering this area.
Sewerdiffers	City of Summerset	City sewer inside the limits, with private septic on rural parcels.	Not documented in the public record. There is no municipal wastewater project or discharge permit on file that I could find. Confirm with the town finance officer before assuming either town sewer or septic.	The water company's name implies sewer service, but I have not been able to verify from the public record which parcels it reaches. Assume private septic outside the townsite and confirm the rest before closing.
Short term rentalsdiffers	The thinnest rules on this list, which means a rental plan has to be pinned down for the specific address.	Edgemont is not a tourism town. Short-term rental demand here is work crews, hunting season and Rally traffic passing through, not visitors staying to see something.	This is hunting and grassland country rather than a tourism corridor. Demand is seasonal and specific.	Unincorporated Lawrence County, so no municipal ordinance applies. Note that unincorporated Lawrence County declined to require a vacation home rental permit, so there is no county permit to obtain either.
Schools
School districtdiffers	Meade 46-1 and Rapid City Area Schools 51-4, split within the cityAssignment follows the official boundary for the address. Confirm with the district.	Edgemont School District 23-1Assignment follows the official boundary for the address. Confirm with the district.	Hot Springs School District 23-2, despite the town being in Custer CountyAssignment follows the official boundary for the address. Confirm with the district.	Spearfish 40-2 at the townsite, with Belle Fourche 09-1 to the north and Meade 46-1 to the east. Parcel specific.Assignment follows the official boundary for the address. Confirm with the district.
Daily errands
Groceriesdiffers	Not recorded in this guide. Check what is open near the address.	Small-town grocery and convenience in Edgemont, with Hot Springs about 35 miles east for more.	Nothing full service in town. Hot Springs, about 14 miles south, is where errands happen.	Nothing in town. Spearfish is eleven miles southeast and Belle Fourche thirteen northwest.
Healthcarediffers	Hospital-level care is in Rapid City, about 15 minutes south.	No hospital in town. Fall River Health Services in Hot Springs is a 25 bed critical access hospital with a 24 hour emergency department.	Fall River Health Services in Hot Springs, a 25 bed critical access hospital with a 24 hour emergency department and a rural health clinic, about 18 minutes away.	Monument Health Spearfish Hospital, a 35 bed facility with a 24 hour emergency department, about 18 minutes away.
Recreationdiffers	Leisure Lane, Steamboat and Castlewood parks are the everyday recreation. Leisure Lane is the big one, with playgrounds, basketball, picnic shelters, open grass and the community garden.	The hundred-year-old city park, the campground, the Elk Mountains and open country in every direction.	Buffalo Gap National Grassland, hunting, rock collecting and OHV country, with the Cheyenne River nearby.	Creek bottoms, hay ground and hunting country, with Spearfish Canyon and the northern Hills half an hour away.
Mapped subdivisions
Outlines on filediffers	2 mapped outlines, 2 with a full guideReference outlines from county and city GIS, not surveys. The recorded plat controls.	No recorded subdivision outlines drawn for this community yet.	No recorded subdivision outlines drawn for this community yet.	No recorded subdivision outlines drawn for this community yet.
The trade
Housing and patterndiffers	New streets and builder inventory, with Highlands at Norman Ranch adding over 100 first phase homesites across more than 300 acres.	A working BNSF crew-change town founded in 1890, at the far southern edge of the Hills below the Elk Mountains.	A nearly intact turn-of-the-century western streetscape on the National Register, mostly quiet, at the gate to the grassland.	An 1891 French-Canadian railroad townsite that is now a cattle auction crossroads and an acreage corridor.
What you gaindiffers	Newer houses on city sewer with Hills views at a price central Rapid City does not offer, and Highlands at Norman Ranch is still selling first phase homesites.	More town per dollar than anywhere else in the region, with its own school district and city utilities.	Eighteen minutes from the hospital in Hot Springs, with 600,000 acres of grassland out the door and one MLS closing in two years to price from.	The cheapest ground in the northern Hills that still puts you eleven miles from a hospital and sixteen from three towns.
What you give updiffers	You are fifteen minutes out from most of Rapid City's services and you drive I-90 to get to them in the winter. The city is also split between Meade 46-1 and Rapid City Area Schools 51-4, so the district follows the address.	A hundred miles from Rapid City, 35 from a hospital, with two unresolved questions hanging over the local economy.	No school, no store and no services in town, an aging water system with an open compliance item, and an undocumented sewer situation.	A three-way school district split you have to verify per parcel, and no services of any kind in town.

Rapid City and the Ellsworth corridorSummerset
Central and Southern HillsEdgemont
Central and Southern HillsBuffalo Gap
Northern Hills and I-90St. Onge

Where it sits

Regiondiffers

Summerset: Rapid City and the Ellsworth corridor
Edgemont: Central and Southern Hills
Buffalo Gap: Central and Southern Hills
St. Onge: Northern Hills and I-90

Countydiffers

Summerset: Meade County
Edgemont: Fall River County
Buffalo Gap: Custer County
St. Onge: Lawrence County

Jurisdictiondiffers

City versus county decides who provides service and who inspects the work.

Summerset: City of Summerset, incorporated July 2005
Edgemont: Incorporated city of Edgemont, with Fall River County outside the limits.
Buffalo Gap: Incorporated town of Buffalo Gap, with Custer County outside the limits.
St. Onge: Unincorporated. No town government. Lawrence County zones the parcels and the Sheriff patrols them.

Corridordiffers

Summerset: I-90
Edgemont: US 18 and SD 471
Buffalo Gap: SD 79
St. Onge: SD 34, with I-90 seven miles southeast at Whitewood

To downtown Rapid Citydiffers

Summerset: 15 min, 10.0 miDriving time and distance, off peak.
Edgemont: About 100 miles northeastDistance only. Drive time is not measured for this community, so time it from the parcel.
Buffalo Gap: About 45 miles, roughly 56 minutesDriving time and distance, off peak.
St. Onge: About 44 miles, roughly 48 minutesDriving time and distance, off peak.

To Ellsworth AFBdiffers

Summerset: 30 min, 19.2 miDriving time and distance, off peak.
Edgemont: About 110 milesDistance only. Drive time is not measured for this community, so time it from the parcel.
Buffalo Gap: About 55 milesDistance only. Drive time is not measured for this community, so time it from the parcel.
St. Onge: About 45 milesDistance only. Drive time is not measured for this community, so time it from the parcel.

Winter drivingdiffers

Summerset: The commute is I-90, so winter driving here is interstate driving rather than a two lane canyon road.
Edgemont: Cold semi-arid country with a recorded low of 40 below. US 18 is the lifeline and it is a long way to anywhere in a storm.
Buffalo Gap: Highway 79 is state maintained and is the connection to Hot Springs and Rapid City. Off it, this is open prairie with blowing snow.
St. Onge: Highway 34 is state maintained and connects three directions. County and private roads off it are a different conversation.

Housing and lots

Typical pricediffers

Summerset: Builder inventory sets the level here, and the MLS publishes no Summerset median on its own.
Edgemont: About $155,000 average sold, 13 sales over 24 monthsAverage sold $155,285. Black Hills MLS, single family, 24 months through August 2026, as of August 2026. 13 closed sales.
Buffalo Gap: One single family sale shows in the Black Hills MLS over 24 months, at $80,000. One closing is a sample of one rather than a price level, so read it that way.
St. Onge: No figure published. St. Onge is Mount Rushmore Area MLS territory and the current feed covers only the Black Hills MLS, so a zero here would be a gap in the data rather than a fact about the market.

Housing agediffers

Summerset: Mostly 2000s to present
Edgemont: An 1890 railroad town, so mostly older stock, with about a quarter of units vacant at the 2020 count.
Buffalo Gap: An 1885 to 1939 historic core with an aging housing stock and about a fifth of units vacant.
St. Onge: An 1891 townsite with genuinely old buildings, surrounded by ranch and acreage property of every era.

New constructiondiffers

Summerset: Limited, mostly infill and small projects
Edgemont: None underway
Buffalo Gap: None underway
St. Onge: Limited, mostly infill and small projects

Acreagediffers

Summerset: Not recorded townwide in this guide. The recorded plat carries the lot size.
Edgemont: Acreage parcels are common here
Buffalo Gap: Acreage parcels are common here
St. Onge: Acreage parcels are common here

Typical lotdiffers

Summerset: Wide lots on new streets
Edgemont: Town lots inside the limits, ranch scale outside them.
Buffalo Gap: A handful of historic townsite lots, with grassland and ranch ground around them.
St. Onge: Small townsite lots, with acreage and ranch ground around them.

Covenants and HOAdiffers

Covenants are recorded per plat. The title commitment lists what binds the parcel.

Summerset: Recorded covenants on some plats, none on others
Edgemont: Few plats here carry recorded covenants
Buffalo Gap: Few plats here carry recorded covenants
St. Onge: Few plats here carry recorded covenants

Utilities and rules

Utility patterndiffers

Summerset: Sewer collection is provided by the City of Summerset. Water service varies by address and can include Black Hawk Water User District or Diamond D Water in Sun Valley.
Edgemont: City water and sewer inside the limits
Buffalo Gap: Mixed, municipal service in town with well and septic outside it
St. Onge: Mostly private well and septic

Waterdiffers

Summerset: Black Hawk Water User District, or Diamond D Water in Sun Valley
Edgemont: City of Edgemont municipal water. Rural parcels are on private wells.
Buffalo Gap: Town of Buffalo Gap municipal water from a single well, serving about 93 connections. Rural parcels are on private wells.
St. Onge: The Saint Onge Sewer and Water Company serves about 78 connections around the townsite, with a clean compliance record. Parcels outside that system are on private wells. There is no rural water district covering this area.

Sewerdiffers

Summerset: City of Summerset
Edgemont: City sewer inside the limits, with private septic on rural parcels.
Buffalo Gap: Not documented in the public record. There is no municipal wastewater project or discharge permit on file that I could find. Confirm with the town finance officer before assuming either town sewer or septic.
St. Onge: The water company's name implies sewer service, but I have not been able to verify from the public record which parcels it reaches. Assume private septic outside the townsite and confirm the rest before closing.

Short term rentalsdiffers

Summerset: The thinnest rules on this list, which means a rental plan has to be pinned down for the specific address.
Edgemont: Edgemont is not a tourism town. Short-term rental demand here is work crews, hunting season and Rally traffic passing through, not visitors staying to see something.
Buffalo Gap: This is hunting and grassland country rather than a tourism corridor. Demand is seasonal and specific.
St. Onge: Unincorporated Lawrence County, so no municipal ordinance applies. Note that unincorporated Lawrence County declined to require a vacation home rental permit, so there is no county permit to obtain either.

Schools

School districtdiffers

Summerset: Meade 46-1 and Rapid City Area Schools 51-4, split within the cityAssignment follows the official boundary for the address. Confirm with the district.
Edgemont: Edgemont School District 23-1Assignment follows the official boundary for the address. Confirm with the district.
Buffalo Gap: Hot Springs School District 23-2, despite the town being in Custer CountyAssignment follows the official boundary for the address. Confirm with the district.
St. Onge: Spearfish 40-2 at the townsite, with Belle Fourche 09-1 to the north and Meade 46-1 to the east. Parcel specific.Assignment follows the official boundary for the address. Confirm with the district.

Daily errands

Groceriesdiffers

Summerset: Not recorded in this guide. Check what is open near the address.
Edgemont: Small-town grocery and convenience in Edgemont, with Hot Springs about 35 miles east for more.
Buffalo Gap: Nothing full service in town. Hot Springs, about 14 miles south, is where errands happen.
St. Onge: Nothing in town. Spearfish is eleven miles southeast and Belle Fourche thirteen northwest.

Healthcarediffers

Summerset: Hospital-level care is in Rapid City, about 15 minutes south.
Edgemont: No hospital in town. Fall River Health Services in Hot Springs is a 25 bed critical access hospital with a 24 hour emergency department.
Buffalo Gap: Fall River Health Services in Hot Springs, a 25 bed critical access hospital with a 24 hour emergency department and a rural health clinic, about 18 minutes away.
St. Onge: Monument Health Spearfish Hospital, a 35 bed facility with a 24 hour emergency department, about 18 minutes away.

Recreationdiffers

Summerset: Leisure Lane, Steamboat and Castlewood parks are the everyday recreation. Leisure Lane is the big one, with playgrounds, basketball, picnic shelters, open grass and the community garden.
Edgemont: The hundred-year-old city park, the campground, the Elk Mountains and open country in every direction.
Buffalo Gap: Buffalo Gap National Grassland, hunting, rock collecting and OHV country, with the Cheyenne River nearby.
St. Onge: Creek bottoms, hay ground and hunting country, with Spearfish Canyon and the northern Hills half an hour away.

Mapped subdivisions

Outlines on filediffers

Summerset: 2 mapped outlines, 2 with a full guideReference outlines from county and city GIS, not surveys. The recorded plat controls.
Edgemont: No recorded subdivision outlines drawn for this community yet.
Buffalo Gap: No recorded subdivision outlines drawn for this community yet.
St. Onge: No recorded subdivision outlines drawn for this community yet.

The trade

Housing and patterndiffers

Summerset: New streets and builder inventory, with Highlands at Norman Ranch adding over 100 first phase homesites across more than 300 acres.
Edgemont: A working BNSF crew-change town founded in 1890, at the far southern edge of the Hills below the Elk Mountains.
Buffalo Gap: A nearly intact turn-of-the-century western streetscape on the National Register, mostly quiet, at the gate to the grassland.
St. Onge: An 1891 French-Canadian railroad townsite that is now a cattle auction crossroads and an acreage corridor.

What you gaindiffers

Summerset: Newer houses on city sewer with Hills views at a price central Rapid City does not offer, and Highlands at Norman Ranch is still selling first phase homesites.
Edgemont: More town per dollar than anywhere else in the region, with its own school district and city utilities.
Buffalo Gap: Eighteen minutes from the hospital in Hot Springs, with 600,000 acres of grassland out the door and one MLS closing in two years to price from.
St. Onge: The cheapest ground in the northern Hills that still puts you eleven miles from a hospital and sixteen from three towns.

What you give updiffers

Summerset: You are fifteen minutes out from most of Rapid City's services and you drive I-90 to get to them in the winter. The city is also split between Meade 46-1 and Rapid City Area Schools 51-4, so the district follows the address.
Edgemont: A hundred miles from Rapid City, 35 from a hospital, with two unresolved questions hanging over the local economy.
Buffalo Gap: No school, no store and no services in town, an aging water system with an open compliance item, and an undocumented sewer situation.
St. Onge: A three-way school district split you have to verify per parcel, and no services of any kind in town.

Where this comes from

Commute figures are driving times off peak, from the community guide each card links to. Median sold prices come from the MLS, and each figure carries its own source, window and closing count, because Sturgis, Spearfish and the northern hills report through a different MLS than Rapid City. Under five closings there is no median, and the price row says so. Five to nine closings carries a small sample note. School districts follow the official boundary for the address, and the district office is the only place to confirm an assignment. Short term rental lines are summaries. Read the guide and the current ordinance before you count on rental income.

The filters use these definitions: under $400k is the MLS sold figure for the town, a median where one is published and otherwise the average sold, comes in under $400,000; close to ellsworth is 25 minutes or less to the Ellsworth main gate; close to rapid city is 20 minutes or less to downtown Rapid City; short commute is 15 minutes or less to either downtown Rapid City or the Ellsworth gate; new construction available is the guide establishes active or limited new construction; acreage available is acreage is common or present in the guide; city water and sewer is city water and sewer across the community; smaller market is fewer than 100 closed single family sales in the trailing twelve months; more rural is acreage is common, or water and sewer are not municipal throughout; established housing is the guide classifies the housing stock as established, meaning largely pre 2000; newer housing is the guide classifies a meaningful share of the housing stock as 2000s or later.

Every row here is a townwide summary and a single parcel can read differently. Buyer due diligence should include verifying water and sewer service, school assignment, recorded covenants and HOA obligations, rental rules, legal access, insurance availability and which jurisdiction inspects and permits the work, for the exact address. Confirm with the city or county, the utility or district, the school district office, the title company and your insurer as applicable.

Last updated August 2026

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