One glimpse of Badlands National Park in South Dakota makes it clear why this unforgiving landscape of rocky buttes and parched gullies has earned a “bad” reputation. Not only is the deeply rutted land nearly impossible to navigate, but temperatures range from scorching highs of 116 degrees Fahrenheit to lows of -40 degrees in the dead of winter.
For centuries, the Oglala Lakota people have called this corner of South Dakota mako sica or “bad lands.” When French fur trappers arrived in the 18th century, they followed the Lakota’s lead, calling the area les mauvaises terres a traveser or “bad lands to travel across.”
When the Badlands area was first proposed as a national park in 1922, promoters suggested calling it “Wonderland National Park.” Despite its “bad” name, Badlands National Park attracts about 1 million visitors a year.
How did the Badlands form?
The Badlands’ striking landscape was shaped over millions of years by layers of deposition and erosion.
Around 75 million years ago, the Great Plains were covered by a vast inland sea. The fossil-rich sediment of that ancient seafloor forms one of the oldest visible rock layers in the Badlands. As the Rocky Mountains pushed upward, the sea drained and the landscape transformed into a lush swampland, then a prairie. The last layer of sedimentary rock in the Badlands was deposited 28 million years ago.
The Badlands have been eroding for 500,000 years. Rivers like the Cheyenne and White carved most of the Badlands' largest channels and canyons, but the region also experiences torrential summer rainstorms and whipping winds. Today, the buttes erode at a rate of 1 inch per year and will be gone entirely in another 500,000 years.
Are there other badlands?
The Badlands of South Dakota are the most famous, but there are several other examples of this type of geological formation in the United States, Canada and around the world. Lowercase “badlands” is the scientific name for rugged landscapes where soft sedimentary rocks have been eroded into striking geological formations.
Other badlands include the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona, Toadstool Geologic Park in Nebraska and the Putangirua Pinnacles of New Zealand.
