Badlands National Park, Glen Allison/Getty ImagesScott Catronrugged, eroded area of buttes, saw-toothed divides, and gullies in southwestern South Dakota, U.S. It was established as a national monument in 1939 and designated a national park in 1978. It lies in a semiarid high-plains region mostly between the Cheyenne and White rivers, 40 miles (65 km) southeast of Rapid City, and occupies an area of 379 square miles (982 square km).
The park consists of three units: the North Unit, which is the location of the park headquarters and the Badlands Loop Road and is nearly surrounded by Buffalo Gap National Grassland; and the Stronghold and Palmer Creek units to the south, which are within the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation of the Oglala Sioux. The Stronghold Unit is where Sioux warriors performed the Ghost Dance rituals in the 1890s.
Extending generally from west to east through the North Unit is a ridge, or “wall,” 80 miles (130 km) long that forms the backbone of the park. The prairie grasslands to the north of the wall, drained by tributaries of the Cheyenne River, are 200 feet (60 metres) higher in elevation than the bottomlands and prairie grasslands to the south of the wall, which are drained by tributaries of the White River. Erosion by both water and wind of the sedimentary rock deposits along the face of the wall at a rate of about 1 inch (25 mm) a year has created the characteristic scenic Badlands landscape of bare peaks, pinnacles, ridges, spires, and valleys. These formations are noted for their delicately banded colours, including white (volcanic ash), orange and rusts (iron oxide), grays and tans (mixtures of silt, clay, and ash), and purple (oxidized manganese).
The Badlands themselves are almost devoid of vegetation, but the park’s grasslands encompass the largest protected mixed-grass prairie in the United States and are inhabited by bison, bighorn sheep, pronghorn antelope, mule deer, coyotes, jackrabbits, the endangered black-footed ferret, and numerous species of birds. Prairie dog towns are a special feature of the park. The few trees include Rocky Mountain juniper and Great Plains cottonwood. The park also contains numerous fossil beds, including the world’s richest beds from the Oligocene Epoch (33.7 to 23.8 million years ago). These beds have yielded the fossil remains of such animals as the three-toed horse, camel, sabre-toothed cat, and an ancestor of the rhinoceros, all of which lived in the region when the climate was comparatively warm and moist.