RV Parks & Campgrounds in Jones County, SD

Murdo's position on Interstate 90 already supports an established RV park, and Jones County's confirmed absence of a zoning ordinance means a new campground here doesn't clear a special-use permit process the way it would in most zoned counties. That doesn't mean no approval is required -- a South Dakota Department of Health campground license and, for any site with direct interstate frontage, a state highway access permit reviewed by the Federal Highway Administration both still apply.

This page covers what's specific to Jones County. For the general explanation, see the national guide.

No zoning gate -- but a state health license is still the real one

Because Jones County has adopted no county-wide zoning ordinance -- confirmed on the county hub through the absence of any Planning & Zoning entry in the state's own Dakota At Home directory -- a new RV park or campground here skips the conditional-use-permit or rezoning step that would apply in a zoned South Dakota county. The gate that does apply instead is state-level: any public campground in South Dakota, RV park included, needs a license from the South Dakota Department of Health's Office of Health Protection under Administrative Rules of South Dakota 44:02:14. The licensing process requires submitting a scaled site drawing to the Office of Health Protection at least 30 days before construction begins, completing a Department of Health license application and plan-review questionnaires, and passing an on-site inspection before the business opens. If the campground will use a private water or sewer system rather than connecting to an existing municipal one, that system separately needs approval from the South Dakota Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources.

In effect, the absence of county zoning removes one layer of approval a Jones County RV park would face in a zoned county, but it doesn't remove the state licensing layer that applies to every public campground in South Dakota regardless of county zoning status -- budget for the Department of Health's 30-day pre-construction review and site-plan requirement as a real, binding step in any project timeline.

Direct interstate frontage adds a federal layer: the SDDOT access permit

A site with its own direct driveway or intersection onto Interstate 90 itself -- as opposed to a site reached via a local road or a frontage road -- needs a highway access permit from the South Dakota Department of Transportation, administered under the access-management rules the state legislature authorized SDDOT to adopt in 2000. Because I-90 is part of the federal Interstate system, SDDOT's own process forwards any request for direct interstate access to its Office of Right-of-Way to obtain concurrence from the Federal Highway Administration after the regional SDDOT engineer's initial approval -- an extra federal review step that a driveway onto an ordinary county road wouldn't trigger. For a parcel near Murdo's I-90/US Route 83 interchange specifically, confirm early in a project's planning stage whether the site's access point requires this direct-interstate review, since it adds both time and a layer of approval beyond what a state highway driveway permit alone would involve.

A parcel that instead accesses the campground via an existing local road, a frontage road, or a road already maintained by the county avoids this federal concurrence step and would instead go through the relevant road authority's own driveway or access permit -- worth confirming which category a specific site falls into before assuming the interstate-access timeline and process apply.

RV Parks and Campgrounds in Jones County, South Dakota

No zoning gate -- but a state health license is still the real one

Direct interstate frontage adds a federal layer: the SDDOT access permit

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