Badlands National Park of South Dakota

The beauty and charm of the wilderness are his for the asking, for the edges of wilderness lie close beside the beaten roads of the present travel.

~Theodore Roosevelt

In 2020, Herb, our dog, Sherman, and I drove across South Dakota to visit our son and his wife in Spearfish. We planned to make a number of stops along the way, but we both definitely wanted to visit the Badlands National Park. Having grown up in South Dakota, Herb had seen the Badlands as a child, but I had never been there. We had heard so much about it over the years from friends and family that we knew it was going to meet our expectations. With all of its history and massive beauty, we were not disappointed. After paying our entry fee of $30, it took us about two hours to take in the sites and make a few stops along the way. If we had done any hiking, we could have spent another couple hours exploring. I am told the park is even more spectacular at night.

Located just 8 miles south of one of South Dakota’s top tourist towns, Wall (home to the world-famous Wall Drug), aka “Window to the West,” the Badlands National Park runs along SD Hwy 240, Badlands Loop Road. It is 40-miles of jagged rocks, prairie land, wildlife, and desert landscapes. If you are lucky, you will see American bison, prairie dogs, bighorn sheep, pronghorns, a variety of birds, and even rattlesnakes. The park covers nearly 245,000 acres and is a treasure trove of history, archeologic fossils, and a number of trails to explore. (Note: Some trails do not allow dogs.)

Referred to as “mako sica” or “land bad,” the Lakota people named the Badlands. The rocky terrain, lack of water, and extreme temperatures both in the summer and winter made it difficult to travel over and across for the natives. Despite the adversities, the American Indians have used the area for hunting for hundreds of years.

The geologic formations in the park are millions of years old, but they weren’t always here. Layers of sedimentary rock were deposited in the area as the landscape changed drastically from sea, to subtropical forests, to open savanna. After all these layers were formed nearly 500,000 years ago, waters began flowing from the Black Hills to wear into the sediment and carved valleys and other shapes which created the Badlands as we know it today. The erosion is still going on at a rate of about one inch per year. It is estimated that in about another 500,000 years, the Badlands will have eroded away completely.