South Dakota
The Badlands in southwest South Dakota were originally called maco sica, which means “land bad,” by the Lakota people. Later the derogatory moniker was used by pioneers who didn’t appreciate the challenges of the region’s severe topography, which was a nightmare to navigate on foot and useless for farming. But for those who can appreciate the unique beauty of harsh terrain, the Badlands is one of the most striking landscapes in Middle America.
From altitude, the Badlands appear as a dramatic, bleak break in otherwise lush, rolling country. Green and yellow mixed-grass prairies flourish right up to the brink of the Badlands, where few plants can survive because of the constant erosion and nutrient-poor soil chemistry. On the ground, the place feels otherworldly, more like the surface of Venus than Earth. It’s hard to believe any life-form would choose to reside here, but the prairies surrounding the Badlands are home to a vast array of wildlife, including bighorn sheep, bison, coyote, bobcats, rattlesnakes, and a healthy population of black-footed ferrets—one of the most endangered mammals in North America. All of these animals are protected today within the 240,000 acres of Badlands National Park.
The distinctive stripes of the Badlands represent layers of sediment deposited during different climatic and ecological conditions over a 50-million-year time span.
The rugged terrain tells a story of millions of years of deposition, followed by ongoing erosion. Composed of layers amassed between 75 million and 26 million years ago, the multi-hued bands of sediment—brown, yellow, red, white, and more—were laid down in a variety of ecosystems. These systems ranged over geologic time from a warm inland sea, to a tropical forest, to temperate woodlands, to a meandering river valley—with the younger layers supplemented by a generous helping of gray volcanic ash from eruptions in Nevada around 30 million years ago.
For nearly 25 million years, all these strata lay flat within a floodplain, where new sediment was continuously being deposited, until around 500,000 years ago. The Cheyenne River then captured many of the streams running out of the Black Hills and diverted their flow away from the Badlands, ending the supply of new sediment. Once the balance was tipped, the Badlands went from an environment of deposition to one of erosion: small intermittent streams cut the once-flat floodplain into a jagged maze of columns, hoodoos (totem pole–like spires of rock), and towers of sediment. Currently, the Badlands are eroding at a rate of an inch a year. In another 500,000 years, the Badlands will be gone.
This beautiful but rocky territory holds more aesthetic appeal for modern visitors passing through than it did for the pioneers.
This region is perhaps even more famous for its long-dead residents; specimens from the late Eocene Epoch to early Oligocene Epoch make it one of the most prolific fossil beds in North America, in part thanks to the excellent environment of preservation within the Badlands’ sedimentary layers. During the Oligocene Epoch, between 33.9 and 23 million years ago, this part of North America was populated by exotic mammals, including relatives of the rhinoceros, hippopotamus, and camel, as well as early wolves, deer, and horses.
Look for the Badlands en route to Rapid City or Pierre, South Dakota. Keep an eye out for stark, earthy tones in a sea of green and yellow prairies.
