HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena — as catalogued
A summer theater in old CCC camp buildings inside Custer State Park, with a resident-ghost tradition
24834 S Playhouse Road, Custer, SD 57730
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$
Show tickets vary by production; see website. A Custer State Park entrance license is also required to reach the venue.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Theater building in a wooded state park; gravel parking and some uneven ground
Equipment
No Photos
Est. 1946 · Civilian Conservation Corps Camp · South Dakota's First Professional Theater Company · Oldest Continuously Operating Summer Stock Theaters in the US
The buildings that became the Black Hills Playhouse were not built for theater. They were a Civilian Conservation Corps camp, put up in the early 1930s when the federal work program moved crews into the Black Hills to fight erosion, build roads, and develop Custer State Park. When the CCC wound down, the camp was left behind.
In 1946, Dr. Warren M. Lee, a drama professor at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion, drove west over Memorial Day weekend to start South Dakota's first homegrown professional theater company. He took over the empty CCC structures and turned them into a theater and dormitories for actors. Known to nearly everyone as 'Doc,' Lee ran the company for decades and built its reputation as a destination for performers and audiences from across the region. He was later inducted into the Black Hills, Badlands and Lakes Tourism Hall of Fame.
The Playhouse has operated for more than seventy-five years and is counted among the oldest continuously running non-equity professional summer theaters in the country. It remains a non-profit, drawing actors and crew nationally each summer for its season in the woods. The setting, a cluster of Depression-era buildings surrounded by pine forest and reached by a state park road, gives the theater a remoteness that most playhouses do not have.
Sources
The Playhouse carries the kind of resident-ghost tradition common to old working theaters. Accounts collected by South Dakota tourism writers describe a presence that staff and company members have long associated with the building, attributed in different tellings either to a Civilian Conservation Corps worker from the camp's earlier years or to Doc Lee, the founder who spent decades here.
The story most often repeated is a helpful one. Cast members say they have found costumes set out for them, ready before anyone remembers doing it, and chalk it up to the theater's unseen caretaker. It is a stagehand sort of haunting rather than a frightening one, in keeping with a company that has occupied the same Depression-era buildings for generations.
These reports are anecdotal, passed along through the company and repeated in regional travel coverage rather than documented by investigation. As a working summer theater, the Playhouse presents the tradition as part of its long history in the park, not as a paranormal attraction.
Notable Entities
Attend a play or musical during the summer season at one of America's oldest continuously operating non-equity professional summer theaters. The theater sits in buildings the Civilian Conservation Corps put up in the 1930s, deep in Custer State Park.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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