Gettysburg, SD
How exposed is Gettysburg to wildfire?
Gettysburg's 1,127 buildings earn a 48th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — modestly above the national average for wildfire risk. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Gettysburg at the 46th national percentile — 2 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS puts 79.6% of Gettysburg's 1,127 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 11.6% Direct and 8.8% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
How Gettysburg compares
Inside South Dakota, Gettysburg sits at just the 26th percentile even though it scores 48th 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, Gettysburg ranks 16,434 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 11,104 by building count (1 is largest). Within South Dakota alone, it ranks 327 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
Gettysburg's elevated rating (48th percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
What would actually reduce this score
Gettysburg's 79.6% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Gettysburg's 16,434-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Gettysburg, see the exposure-zones guide.