The Buffalo Roundup at Custer State Park, an annual livestock chore that includes the branding of bison calves, is also a huge tourist draw that successfully "brands" the Black Hills in the minds of thousands of tourists each year.

The Roundup has grown into a major fall event for the park, ever since a couple hundred people showed up 42 years ago to watch park officials perform their annual livestock management on the park's herd of buffalo.

But combine a unique experience with a beautiful state park, and soon you have a great tourism event, one that's expected to draw more than 12,000 people from around the world to watch more than a thousand bison being herded into corrals, where they are vaccinated, branded and sorted for auction.

The real beauty of the roundup is that it must be done, whether tourists come to watch it or not. The fact that thousands of them do, filling area hotels and restaurants in the fall "shoulder season" of a largely summertime vacation destination, is a testament to the wisdom of marketing by park management and state tourism officials.

There's not an empty hotel room to be found in the park this weekend, and hotels in Custer, Keystone and Hill City are full, too.

Two of those much sought after late-season tourists are Ryan and Mary Ellsworth of Des Moines, who are back for their third consecutive Buffalo Roundup this year. They got married last year at the State Game Lodge chapel and have made the roundup an annual tradition, which they tack on to the end of a week-long autumn vacation to the Black Hills.

The only thing the Ellsworths don't love about the Roundup is the fact that they can never get a room at the State Game Lodge that weekend, since the place is mostly filled with tourism industry and media guests of the governor, invited to help promote the Roundup and the rest of Hills tourism around the world.

While it might be nice of Gov. Rounds to give up his bed to the Ellsworths, we think the larger tourism picture is best served by an administration that continues to promote the CSP Buffalo Roundup and its many accompanying activities to an ever-wider audience.

That's the "brand" of tourism the Black Hills could use a lot more of.