Palisades State Park is under renovation for the next five years to make way for more camping space, a new welcome center, and a new entrance on the west side of the park.
The area will more than double with the addition of 250 acres of donated land.
Travis Theilan is with the South Dakota Game, Fish, and Parks. He says the renovations are needed for a more informative and inviting atmosphere.
"The current entrance is fairly small," says Theilan. "It’s hard to handle the influx and exiting of traffic at peak times, and so this property acquisition gives us the ability to facilitate an entrance with what we like to do with some of our other locations, where we have a larger building that would house offices for administrative staff, and it would also provide us a way to handle incoming guests that, whether it be for camping or bay use and entrance license sales, they’ll all be in one building.”
Theilan says the G-F-&-P has only enough funding for the first phase of the project.
The full renovation is expected to be completed by the summer of 20-25.