Castlewood, SD
How exposed is Castlewood to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Castlewood lands at the 36th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a figure built from its 428 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Castlewood at the 32nd national percentile — 4 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Castlewood's buildings actually sit
USFS classifies 51.2% of Castlewood's buildings as Direct exposure, higher than its 0% Indirect share and far above its 48.8% Minimal share — a profile where 219 structures sit close enough to vegetation that lot clearing matters most.
Castlewood against the rest of the country
Inside South Dakota, Castlewood sits at just the 8th percentile even though it scores 36th nationally — the state's overall wildfire exposure is high enough to make this a relatively quiet corner of it. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Castlewood ranks 20,307 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 18,701 by building count (1 is largest). Within South Dakota alone, it ranks 402 of 439 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for South Dakota on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Castlewood's moderate rating (36th percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Castlewood's 51.2% Direct-exposure share means lot clearing around the structure typically outweighs any single material upgrade here. The home-hardening guide ranks the options for a place shaped like this.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Castlewood's 20,307-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Castlewood, see the exposure-zones guide.