This year’s Buffalo Roundup at Custer State Park set an attendance record.
State officials say 22,452 people attended the event. That broke the previous record of 22,078 set in 2015.
State Tourism Secretary Jim Hagen predicted the record during a press conference at the roundup last week.
“It has been incredible. When I saw the number of cars lined up to get in today, Matt, I wasn’t even sure that they were going to make it by the time the buffalo ended up in the corrals.”
The superintendent of Custer State Park is Matt Snyder. He says the roundup arts festival also set a record with more than 150 vendors.
The buffalo roundup is a tool to manage the park’s bison herd, which numbers more than a thousand. The park will sell about 370 bison at a sale in November.