I was in the Badlands National Park wayyy back in 1973 when I was 12. I especially remember that trip because my father wanted to go exploring, turned off the main road onto some dirt track, and got us lost for half the day.
During my visit, I stuck to the main road. ;)
For those who don't know, I live in a converted campervan and travel around the country, posting photo diaries of places that I visit. I am currently in South Dakota.
As sea levels began to rise around 100 million years ago, the entire central part of what is now the United States was flooded by the Western Interior Seaway, a shallow warmwater arm of the Atlantic averaging about 2000 feet deep that stretched from the Gulf of Mexico all the way through Canada to the Arctic Sea. North America was split into two halves: Appalachia in the east and Laramidia to the west.
After the end of the Cretaceous Period 65 million years ago, global temperatures began to cool, causing sea levels to lower. At the same time, geological forces were pushing up the land in Laramidia, forming what would become the Rocky
Mountains. The Interior Seaway drained away, leaving behind layers of sandstone, shale and carbonates that had once formed the ocean bottom. Many of these layers are exposed today and form much of the geology of the flat western plains
states like South Dakota.
By about 30 million years ago, the mammals had begun to reach a high level of diversity, and giant creatures known as Oreodonts were roaming the American plains. As river and wind erosion continued to deposit new layers of sediment, the skeletons of these ancient mammals became trapped and preserved, and although the area today is dry, hot and hostile, it remains one of the best fossil-collecting sites in the world and is the site of many scientific expeditions.
The Paleo-Indians had arrived in the northern plains by around 10,000 years ago, and eventually they became the Native American Nations that we know today. Around 1700, the Lakota Sioux were pushed out of their ancestral home near the Great Lakes by the Iroquois, and in turn migrated into the northern plains, where they established a powerful nation that dominated most of the area. They called this forbidding area of central South Dakota “mako sica”, which means “bad lands”, and that name stuck. Today this unique landscape is preserved in the Badlands National Park.
During the Second World War the US Army took control of 341,000 acres of Lakota land on the Pine Ridge Reservation and used it for a practice bombing range. After the war it became an artillery range that was used by the South Dakota National Guard. By 1968 the Air Force declared all but 2500 acres as “surplus”, and it was returned to the Lakota. Now known as the Stronghold District, the land is jointly managed by the Lakota Nation and the National Park Service.
Although there are two rivers that flow around it, the Cheyenne and the White, the area is arid and hot, and the crumbly soil nourishes scant plant life (though the Park is surrounded by the Buffalo Gap National Grassland). Most of the area has been sculpted by wind and rain into sharp ridges and crags, with vivid rainbow layers of exposed sediments.
The constant erosion and the lack of vegetation makes the Badlands an ideal place for paleontologists, and each year there are a number of excavations. Most of the exposed layers date between 20 and 30 million years ago, during the Oligocene epoch, and they contain a wide variety of ancient mammals including saber-tooth cats, three-toed horses, bison, and ancient relatives of the camel and rhinoceros. There are also areas of ancient riverbed deposits which contain fossils of turtles, fish and alligators.
Today, despite the harsh climate, the Park still contains a number of plant and animal species, including the very rare Black-Footed Ferret, which has been reintroduced as part of a captive-breeding program. The Park also contains bison (reintroduced to the area in 1963), ground squirrels, bighorn sheep, pronghorns, rattlesnakes, magpies, elk, and prairie dogs.
The Badlands first received protection in March 1929, when they were earmarked by President Calvin Coolidge to become a National Monument (though the land was not actually obtained and the Monument itself established until 1939). In 1978 an area of 379 square miles was designated as Badlands National Park.
There are two Visitors Centers, which have exhibits illustrating the area’s history. Much of the Badlands are left in their wild state and have no roads or trails, but there are paved roads that reach the most popular tourist trails, including the Fossil Trail, the Castle Trail, the Door Trail, the Notch Trail and the Saddle Pass Trail. There also a series of scenic pull-outs along the road.
Some photos from a visit.