Free & Cheap Things to Do in Brookings

Family Fun

A downtown children's museum where the exhibits run from a sod house and a tipi in The Prairie to the shops, school and post office of KidStreet, with an outdoor Prairie Play area holding a dino dig, a living maze and a streamside. Mama T. Rex, the life-size animatronic dinosaur, is the one everyone remembers. Everyone over the age of one pays the same flat rate, and reserving a playtime online skips the door line.

Address: 521 4th Street, Brookings, SD 57006

Tip: Closed Mondays apart from a handful of Special Monday Play Days (June 15, July 20, Aug 17, Oct 12 and Dec 28 in 2026). Members get the museum to themselves 9–10am Saturdays. Through Museums for All, households on SNAP, WIC or TANF pay $3 a day. One adult must stay with every five children.

Museums & Galleries

The state's art museum sits on the SDSU campus beside the Coughlin Campanile and charges nothing at the door. Its named collections are Harvey Dunn, Oscar Howe, Paul Goble and Marghab Linens, and rotating exhibitions fill the rest of the galleries through the year. Education staff will tailor a tour to any group's interests, free of charge.

Address: 1036 Medary Ave, Brookings, SD 57007

Tip: Open Monday–Friday 10am–5pm, Saturday 10am–4pm and Sunday noon–4pm, but closed Sundays January through March and on state holidays. Donations are appreciated. It shares the SDSU campus with the free Agricultural Heritage Museum, so the two make one stop.

Museums & Galleries

An SDSU museum dedicated to preserving and interpreting South Dakota's agricultural history and rural heritage, built on a collection of agricultural tools, historical artifacts and large farm machinery. The hands-on Ag Xploration gallery gives children something to do while the adults read, and admission is free.

Address: 977 11th St, Brookings, SD 57007

Tip: Closed Sundays from January through March and on state holidays. Museum parking sits just west of the front doors; the overflow lot north of the building needs a pass on weekdays, and visitor passes are free at the front desk or online before you arrive.

Parks & Gardens

Twenty-five acres of formal display gardens backed by a 45-acre arboretum, all on the SDSU campus. The cheapest way in is a Community Day — the fourth Wednesday of every month from May through October, when admission is free for everyone. The rest of the year it is one of the best-value garden tickets in the region.

Address: 631 22nd Ave, Brookings, SD 57006

Tip: Children five and under are always free. Summer hours (May–October) are 10am–7pm daily with last admission at 6:30pm; winter hours (November–April) are Monday–Friday 10am–5pm. Groups of ten or more get $1 off each admission without booking a guide.

Parks & Nature

A 135-acre park on the south edge of town, laced with winding trails and benches, with ponds for fishing, paddling and birdwatching. The Larson Nature Center anchors the southwest corner with exhibits, a fireplace to warm up beside and gear you can rent by the hour.

Address: 22nd Avenue S & 32nd Street S, Brookings, SD 57006

Tip: The park itself is open daily 6am–11pm year-round; the nature center at 1705 32nd Street S keeps shorter, seasonal hours and closes for holidays. Mountain bikes, kayaks, paddleboards and snowshoes rent for $10 per 1.5 hours; fishing poles, binoculars and GPS units are $10 for two hours. Renters must be 18 with photo ID and a credit card.

Iconic Landmarks

SDSU's 165-foot bell tower has been the face of the university since 1929, when a 1909 electrical-engineering graduate paid the $75,000 to build it out of white Indiana limestone, red brick and 320,000 bricks' worth of masonry. It chimes the hour and plays music in the ten-minute gaps between classes, and it has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1987.

Address: 940 Medary Ave, Brookings, SD 57007

Tip: The tower is currently closed to the public for renovation — the grounds and the chimes are still free to enjoy, but the 180-step climb to the balcony is not available. When it reopens, the key is checked out at the SDSU Alumni Center on Medary Avenue or the University Police Department, and climbs are daylight-only because the stairwell is barely lit. The free South Dakota Art Museum is right beside it.

Arts & Culture

Twelve large murals fill the alleyways behind Main Avenue, painted by local and regional artists, SDSU art students, Upward Bound students and a San Diego design studio brought in for the state tourism department's State of Create campaign. It is a free, self-paced walk and the best photo backdrop in town.

Address: Downtown alleyways off Main Ave, Brookings, SD 57006

Tip: Walkable in under an hour and open whenever the alleys are. The Brookings Arts Council led two of the murals with community members and Upward Bound students, and its gallery at 524 4th Street is a few steps away.

Arts & Culture

A permanent 20-foot mosaic on the north exterior wall of VFW George Dokken Post 2118, built from 950 individual tiles hand-painted by Brookings residents, organizations and volunteers at community painting parties. The Americana design centers on a flag and eagle and is visible from 6th Street.

Address: North wall of VFW Post 2118, 6th Street, Brookings, SD 57006

Tip: Outdoors and visible any time, on foot or from the car. It was organized by the Brookings Regional Growth Alliance and paid for with a Brookings Public Arts Commission grant — look closely and you can pick out individual painters' tiles.

Historic Districts

Fifty-nine buildings line Main Avenue in a commercial historic district where 83 percent of the construction happened between 1894 and 1928. The styles stack up block by block — Classical Revival, Beaux-Arts, Romanesque and Art Deco — and the shops and cafes behind the facades are still working businesses.

Address: Main Avenue, Brookings, SD 57006

Tip: The Brookings Historic Preservation Commission publishes a walking-tour map with short notes on individual buildings — download it before you go. The Urban Canvas murals sit in the alleys directly behind these blocks, so the two make one loop.

Festivals & Events

South Dakota's premier juried art festival fills Pioneer Park for one weekend every July with more than 175 artists across 15 disciplines, three dozen food booths, an artisan food and naturals area, historic and antique booths, a children's area and live music from the park's historic bandshell. Admission is free.

Address: Pioneer Park, Brookings, SD 57006

Tip: Held the second full weekend in July every year — Saturday 10am–7pm and Sunday 10am–5pm. Leave pets at home; service animals are welcome. It is volunteer-run, and the festival program and map are posted on the site each summer.

Parks & Nature

Eight connecting glacial lakes on the edge of Bruce, a short drive northwest of Brookings, with swimming, boating, hiking and disc golf. A log cabin built by settler Samuel Mortimer, who arrived here in 1869, still stands on the grounds, and the site was a summer camp and annual gathering spot for American Indians long before that.

Address: 20247 Oakwood Drive, Bruce, SD 57220

Tip: The daily fee is a per-vehicle park entrance licence — South Dakota residents pay $10, everyone else $15, and an annual licence is $60 for nonresidents. The park loans out disc golf sets, fishing poles, snowshoes, life jackets and lawn games free with the entrance licence, and rents canoes, kayaks and paddleboards.

Parks & Nature

A free 20-hole course redesigned in 2020, with concrete tee pads, multiple pin placements, real elevation change and some tight lines through the trees. Larson Hill gives the best views in Brookings, and leagues run Tuesday and Thursday evenings through the summer.

Address: 22nd Avenue & Olwien Street, Brookings, SD 57006

Tip: The city posts a course map and rules as PDFs on the park page. It is open whenever the park is, and there is no fee or check-in — just bring discs. Larson Park also holds trails, shelters and playgrounds if the rest of the group is not playing.

Family Fun

Brookings' city water park, open since 2006, built around four pools — a 50-meter pool with 1- and 3-meter diving boards and a drop slide, a large wading pool, zero-depth entry, tube slides, fountains and interactive splash zones — with a concession stand for poolside food.

Address: 1505 5th Street, Brookings, SD 57006

Tip: Open swim runs 1–7pm daily during the season, which is Memorial Day through late summer. A ten-visit discount card is $63, which works out to $6.30 a swim, and season tickets are $70 per person or $160 for a family of three. Schedule changes get posted to the pool's Facebook page.

Markets & Food

Attached to the Davis Dairy Plant, the Dairy Bar sells ice cream made by SDSU students in more than 30 flavors, with cookies and cream as the flagship. Food Network Magazine called it the best ice cream treat in South Dakota, and the university has been making commercial ice cream here for more than a century.

Address: Alfred Dairy Science Hall, 1224 Medary Ave, Brookings, SD 57007

Tip: Open Monday–Friday 8:30am–5:30pm only — no weekends, which catches out a lot of visitors. Parking is in the lot north of the Dairy Bar. Ice cream also sells in 48-ounce and three-gallon containers, and free guided tours of the Davis Dairy Plant can be booked through SDSU Explore Tours for groups of ten or more.

Historic Sites

A log cabin built as a tribute to the county's homesteaders and dedicated on July 4, 1989, after Governor George Mickelson asked every South Dakota community to mark the state centennial. The Brookings Area Genealogical Society led the build using logs hand-selected from trees growing along the Big Sioux River.

Address: 6th Street and 1st Avenue, Brookings, SD 57006

Tip: A five-minute outdoor stop rather than a museum visit — worth pairing with the mosaic mural a few blocks along 6th Street. The Brookings County Museum in Volga has the fuller pioneer collection, including an 1870s log cabin you can walk into.

History & Culture

Nine miles west in Volga, the county historical society spreads more than 4,500 artifacts across five historic buildings — an 1870s log cabin, an 1880s one-room rural school, an 1884 Brookings house, a horse-drawn vehicle museum and a farm equipment building — plus photographs, newspaper files and donated family archives.

Address: 207 Samara Avenue, Volga, SD 57071

Tip: Open daily 1–4pm from Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day — confirmed current on the museum's Facebook page, though one page of its own website still shows an out-of-date COVID closure notice. Individual, group and school tours can be arranged on 605-827-2303. No admission rate is posted online, so call ahead if it matters to your budget.